Human Resources
The Student Plagiarism story
continued:
Induction, skill development and
detection
Jude Carroll
Oxford Brookes University
Help 1: ‘complex problem, complex
solution(s)’
Good induction
Teaching the skills
Course design: designing out easy
cheating, designing in practice
Detection using a range of strategies
Fair punishments, transparent
decisions
Procedures designed for large numbers
Human Resources
I admit …….
• Students are not following the rules because
they don’t know they exist
• Students are not following the rules because
they are confused about how to comply (and it’s
difficult to do).
• Students are not following the rules because
they are cheating / deliberately breaking them
and every variation in between these positions…..
Human Resources
Hindering 2: relying on teaching ‘referencing’
How do I reference this
person’s ideas that I found
in my research?
….give readers a true
impression or fool them?
…make the work or
find the work?
…am I confident enough to
risk writing my own instead
of finding it?
Human Resources
..do I have the skills
to do a good one?
Q: What helps students be ready to follow
the rules? One answer: Induction
‘Ensuring students know their responsibilities’
Induction: necessary but not sufficient
Doing, not telling
Avoiding multiple repeats
Needs will change as levels rise……. Think about
revisiting induction later on?
Human Resources
Students will follow the rules….
1. if they know what they are,
2. If they have the skills to do so,
3. If they can see no other way to
meet the requirements, and
4. If you defend and protect the
rules and are seen to be doing
so…..
Human Resources
• Analysing
• taking apart; creating &
answering sub-questions
• Evaluating
• making judgments (value,
reliability, authority
• Paraphrasing Summarising
• Structure
• others’ words and views
• what goes first, what
order to put things in etc
• Supporting personal opinions
with others’ authority
• Finding authority
• ‘Mining’ texts
• Citing and acknowledging
• Using referencing
Human Resources
systems
Good practice for detection
Fair:
Students know the rules & have the skills
A range of strategies are used
Effective;
Pro-active and reactive
Staff have the skills to do it
Efficient
Skill sharing
Agreement on what is ‘enough’ evidence
Human Resources
Electronic text-matching:
Should we use it?
Advantages
• Allows you to screen
Disadvantages
• Only covers perhaps 40%
• Tells you where to look
• Only useful for some
plagiarism. Useless for
translation, ghost writing, good
‘smoothers’…
• Probably fairer because it does
not just use change of
language
• Speed
• Still requires academic
judgment and academic time
• Most students do not cheat so
time spent is useless
• Makes a record
• Studies have been done to
show reliability
Human Resources
Use a wide range of detection strategies.
electronic
manual
Proactive
•Using a commercial tool
‘Should I look
carefully at
anyone’s
work?
(Urkund, Turnitin, etc)
•Matching exams and coursework
•Viva xx%
•Meta-writing task
•Keeping the order of submission
Reactive
•Advanced Google
search
• ‘Properties’ function
• checking formatting,
•Using a commercial tool
‘Is this really
the student’s
own work?’
(Urkund, Turnitin etc)
•changes in language
•Changes in referencing
•Changes in formatting, word
processing
•Off the topic
•Too advanced language or content
•Inappropriate words, content
Human Resources
‘Detection’ is a process…..
suspicion
action
investigation
confirmation
Human Resources
Final stages: dealing with
cases
How much evidence?
Classifying the seriousness
Matching penalty to the level of breach
Keeping records
Monitoring and learning from data
Human Resources