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Transcript of 1 Strategies for Preventing Student Plagiarism Kam-Por Kwan, EDC x6287 [email protected] EDC...
1
Strategies for Preventing Student Plagiarism
Kam-Por Kwan, EDCx6287
EDC Lunchtime Session
30 March 2001
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Plan for this session
Meaning and forms of plagiarism: why is it a concern
Reasons for students to plagiarize
Sharing of experience and practice in combating plagiarism
Ideas about good practices in preventing student plagiarism
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A cheating game?
Advances in IT make plagiarism much easier than ever downloading/purchase of online papers cut-and-paste plagiarism of electronic materials
U.S. News (1999): 80% of high-achieving high school students
admitted to having cheated at least once 75% of college students confessed to cheating
at least once 90% believed that cheaters never pay the price
No comparable data for Hong Kong or PolyU
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What is plagiarism?
Consider the following cases: a student copies the entire/a substantive part
of another student’s essay or work a student copies and pastes large chunks of
materials from various sources (e.g. the Internet) without thinking or integration
a student utilizes materials directly from textbooks and notes without citing the sources
a student quotes other people’s work without providing proper citation/referencing
a group of students discuss ideas and produce work that are similar in many aspects
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Why does it matter?
Brainstorming For each of the cases above, explain: whether they should be
considered plagiarism, and
whether those practices should be discouraged, and why or why not.
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Plagiarism: A definition
“… to steal from the writings or ideas of another” (Chambers English Dictionary, 1988)
“… to take and use as one’s own the thoughts, writings, or inventions of another” (Oxford English Dictionary, 1987)
“… using another’s work without giving credit” (UC Davis: http://sja.ucdavis.edu/sja/plagiarism.html )
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Why students plagiarize?
Plain laziness
Low chance of being caught
To save time and effort, especially when overloaded
Poor time management and planning skills
Perceiving the task as trivial/unimportant/not useful
Fear of failure/lack of confidence in own writing
Unclear about the permissible level of collaboration
Lack of guidance on proper way of quoting and citing other people’s work
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Intentional versus unintentional plagiarism
Intentional direct copying of
past or present students’ work
direct copying of other people’s work from various sources
downloading the workload: obtaining term papers from the Internet
…
Unintentional unaware of the
need /proper way of citing or quoting other people’s work
poor writing style collaborative
effort in dealing with assessment tasks
…
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How do you prevent plagiarism?
Sharing of experience How often do your students
plagiarize in their submitted work? What are the most common forms?
Do you or your department have a clear policy about plagiarism? How do you make it known to students
What actions do you/your dept take to educate students about plagiarism?
What strategies have you used to prevent student plagiarism?
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Preventing plagiarism
Make the penalties clear
Make it more difficult for students to plagiarize
Reduce the incentive for students to plagiarize
Help students avoid unintentional plagiarism
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Make the penalties clear
Set clear policy on: what constitutes plagiarism the penalties for plagiarism and other forms
of academic dishonesty
Make clear to students the policy
Stress the severe sanctions for plagiarism
Make visible your efforts to detect plagiarism and confront students who are suspected of having plagiarized
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Make plagiarism more difficult
Set assessments that require students to apply ideas or relate to their personal experience/ a particular (local) example
Require specific components for the assessment e.g. most recent references, personal
interviews or surveys, case studies, personal reflections, etc.
Require process steps for the assessment task: e.g. outline, drafts, annotated bibliography
Require oral reports of student work Keep copies of past paper/student work
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Reduce incentives to plagiarize
Make the assessment relevant/meaningful/ useful to learning
Ensure that students are not overloaded
Make clear the requirements and expectations of the assessment tasks
Explain the assessment criteria
Structure the assessment by setting a series of deadlines for various intermediate tasks
Assure/inform students of help available
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Help students avoid plagiarism
Educate students about plagiarism: discuss with students what plagiarism is and
why it is an unacceptable practice in education
clarify the permissible level of collaboration in assessment
explain the proper way of citing and quoting other people’s work
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Useful resources for staff
Examples of anti-plagiarism policy Northwestern University
http://www.nwu.edu/uacc/uniprin.html University of Kentucky
http://www.chem.uky.edu/courses/common/plagiarism.html
Strategies for preventing plagiarism: Preventing Academic Dishonesty (University of
California, Berkeley) http://www.uga.berkeley.edu/sled/bgd/prevent.html
Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers (Vanguard University of South California) http://www.vanguard.edu/rharris/antiplag.html
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Useful resources for staff (2)
Preventing and Detection Websites: Downloadable term papers: What’s a Prof. to Do
http://www.uiowa.edu/~centeach/newsletter/online/term-paper-download.shtml
Cut-and-Paste Plagiarism: Preventing, Detecting and Tracking Online Plagiarismhttp://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/~janicke/plagiary.htm
Plagiarism.orghttp://www.uga.berkeley.edu/sled/bgd/prevent.html
MOSS: A System for Detecting Software Plagiarism http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~aiken/moss.html
EVE (Essay Verification Engine) http://www.canexus.com/eve/index3.shtml
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Resources for students
How not to plagiarize Plagiarism and how to avoid it (Gardner, HKU,
2001)http://ec.hku.hk/plagiarism/introduction.htm
Avoiding Plagiarism: Mastering the art of scholarship (UC Davis) http://sja.ucdavis.edu/sja/plagiarism.html