Conference Programme

In 2006 Cranfield University adopted Turnitin as its primary coursework collection and plagiarism checking mechanism. One year later, the University Senate voted to ban the use of the multiple submissions facility it offered on the suspicion that it may provide students with opportunities to manipulate their work and “beat the system”. Students would instead receive just one demonstration of the originality reporting system to illustrate that aspect of the coursework assessment process, but would not gain access to any information it provided in relation to their submissions thereafter.

A policy change of this magnitude was worrying since there was no evidence to support the suggestion that Turnitin had been subverted in this way. Not only did it limit the value of Turnitin as a formative tool but it also appeared to contradict the university's obligation to instill a sense of personal responsibility and academic integrity in its students.

This paper describes the case being constructed in an attempt to reverse this decision. It will discuss potential reasons for and the impact of such a policy change. It will present an analysis of the data collected from the Turnitin system in order to identify any significant trends in plagiarism at the university, as well as anecdotal evidence uncovered in the course of this investigation which indicates ways in which the system might be circumvented. Finally this paper will describe how the multiple submissions mechanism should form part of a coherent strategy for plagiarism prevention (rather than be excluded from it).

Increasingly, context-sensitive approaches to writing, based on activity theory, new genre theory, and related scholarship, show students how the varied social, intellectual, and disciplinary norms and conventions of different communities influence these communities' writing practices (Bazerman and Russell). However, such contextual understanding rarely characterizes discussions of plagiarism. We educate students about plagiarism based on the norms within academia alone, where credit and credibility accrue from the production of original text and the notions of individual authorship (Anson).

In this presentation, I will describe my research on three contexts in which, from the perspective of activity theory, understandings of intellectual property differ from those taught in the schools: public (the sharing of information in the pubic interest, such as advice on safely freezing and thawing meat); business (the marketing of vacation properties by "brokers" who use the texts produced by the property owners in their own advertising); and military (the creation of field manuals and operations orders). In each of these contexts, I will document specific examples of unattributed material (not boilerplate) that would be considered to violate most academic plagiarism policies. Yet in these contexts, entirely acceptable purposes for non-attribution relate to the specific goals of the communication; whether original authors stand to gain, in Latour and Woolgar's sense, either credit or credibility from their creations; and how the broader community's goals are defined relative to individuals working within it (Adler-Kassner, Anson, and Howard, in press). After briefly presenting a synthesis of this research, I will return to the problem of discursive representation and the honesty with which we teach students about worlds of written discourse.

The continuing advancement of electronic technology poses increasing challenges for ensuring authenticity in student academic work. Along with important changes to academic practice proposed within the holistic framework of addressing plagiarism (Carroll and Appleton, 2001; Carroll, 2002), a more global change to academic culture as a whole might be overdue, a change that would safeguard student (and staff) adherence to core academic values irrespective of advances in information technology and sophistication of information handling tools.

At the 2006 JISC Second International Plagiarism Conference, the focus among the academic community was clearly on moving towards a culture of academic integrity, which implies a positive representation of the ideas behind the avoidance of plagiarism, and an institution-wide emphasis on upholding these principles and promoting good academic practice.

The US honour code model might provide useful pointers as to how the transition towards a culture of academic integrity can be implemented. This model seems to offer a viable alternative to more traditional top-down approaches to ensuring proper academic practice among students.

So far, the research-grounded UK response to the idea of honour codes has been very limited. This paper reports on a recent cross-institutional study undertaken at the University of Leicester, whose purpose was to explore staff and student attitudes to the concept of academic integrity and the elements of the US honour code system, and to elicit participants' views on the feasibility of applying this system in the UK setting.

The expansion of essay writing services of the kind offered, for example, by coursework4you¹ and Academic Answers Ltd² has attracted the ire of the academic community. The detection of such essays submitted by students has presented a real challenge to the sector. The fact that the Turnitin software relies upon comparisons to websites and other essays submitted to its database makes the routine detection of bespoke essays effectively beyond its reach. It is unclear the extent to which such essays are actually submitted by students but press reports suggest that for those operating these services, it is a lucrative business.

In some circumstances, the severity of student academic misconduct may take it beyond an issue of purely institutional regulation. Following incidents at The University of York in 2007, four individuals were charged and subsequently pleaded guilty to fraud offences as a result of impersonating students in exams. It could be argued that any student who purchases and submits a custom written essay for assessment falls into a similar category.

This paper examines the possibilities for wider legal regulation of the bespoke essay writing services market and the extent to which this is desirable. Analysis will focus on the applicability of current legal provisions such as the Fraud Act 2006, areas for potential reform and the possible engagement of the essay providers in this process.

1. http://www.coursework4you.co.uk
2. http://www.academicanswers.co.uk/about.htm
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/jul/29/highereducation.education
4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jan/22/highereducation.students

"The future is not given, to be received, but is created." Freire (1993) p21

This workshop will be an amazing feat for a piece of unashamed polemic, with a vein of rhetoric and the occasional vague reference; A list of papers is less useful without the experience of reading them. However the following important question will be considered: “What right do we have to question the accepted notion of assessment?”

Reflections on this topic are hard to justify with citation, reference and quotation – For those proposing that the Earth is not flat, and orbits the Sun, prior work seems irrelevant to be included in the debate – so this workshop will have to be unlike any other, in that the last thing that will be discussed is plagiarism per se. However, there will be no apology or excuses made for pinning the tail on the donkey and stating where the true cause for plagiarism comes from.

This is not to make excuses for breaking one of academia's most enshrined principles, namely that of copying without attribution, but to question whether it is a good principle. This should not be confused with post-modernist thought that anything is fair game. Deeper questions are needed, such as “What is the purpose of assessment?” and even “What is the purpose of learning?”

While the definition, identification and occurrence of plagiarism (and other academic offences) has undergone a phase shift in recent years, little work has been done to address the social and cultural artifacts that create the environment where plagiarism can occur. In this workshop a social model of plagiarism (and of learning as a political act) will be forged, which will identify the power relationships and lack of educational progress has been made in formal adult education in the last two decades.

In this workshop a social model of plagiarism (and of learning as a political act) will be forged, which will identify the power relationships and lack of educational progress has been made in formal adult education in the last two decades. This social model is contrasted with a variety of other views of adult learning, in an attempt to make explicit certain political truths about our current education system, to aid recognition of the hierarchy of power that exists in education, which allows 'institutional plagiarism' to occur.

The power structure of Western academia, and its inherent culture, has constructed systems to safeguard knowledge, but these rules can serve to limit learning. This 'disenabling' of education needs exploration provides a convenient smokescreen for those in privileged positions to maintain the status quo. Therefore a case for 'decriminalising' plagiarism needs to be made, with the understanding that specific examples will always remain offensive.

Freire, P. (1970), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 20th anniversary edition, Penguin Books

Abstract -

Haviland, C.P. & Mullin, J.

While there is considerable work on plagiarism detection (Turnitin) and prevention (web sites, handouts, instruction), there has been less examination of the ways disciplinary assumptions lead to instructional methods that may actually contribute to plagiarism rather than reduce it.

Uniformly, faculty members agree that downloading a paper and passing it off as one's own is plagiarism, and they agree that taking large passages and claiming them as one's own is also plagiarism. However, “plagiarism” - commonly defined as intellectual stealing—is far more complexly constructed in disciplines. For example, in computer sciences, codes are “built on,” and in art, images are “appropriated.”

Our work with academic staff in a variety of subject areas has led us to investigate whether and how disciplinary differences that may seem small to students may in fact lead them to construct inaccurate rules for themselves about what and how they should cite the sources they use.

With colleagues, we interviewed academic staff from five different communities of practice: anthropology, art, computer sciences, biology, and chemistry. First we inquired about their definitions of intellectual property, ownership, and plagiarism, and then we asked how those definitions related to the definitions of plagiarism they give their students.

In this session, we will report on our findings, noting particularly the important gaps between the community practices—and therefore, what faculty tacitly expect—and what students are told.

Drawing on this research that connects academic staff's professional constructions of plagiarism, intellectual property, and collaboration, we will discuss an alternative explanation for student's persistent plagiarism. We will end by proposing new practices that may help prevent plagiarism before it begins.

For academics, addressing plagiarism increasingly means protecting their own materials on web as well as verifying the originality of work produced by their students.

These days, it is routine for academic works posted to the Web to wind up in essay mills, spam blogs and forums and other Web sites, all without proper attribution or credit. In some case such works end up on contract cheating sites where people bid to do the work! Not only does this dilute the value of the work to the original author, but it helps students and others who might want to plagiarise to do so.

Learning how to protect your work is important not just as an author, but for overall academic integrity. In this presentation, we will look at how to prevent online plagiarism of your work, how to detect it when it does happen and what to do about it when you discover your work has been plagiarised. Along the way, we will discuss various tools and laws, both U.S. and EU, that can help you protect your works online and keep it out of the hands of plagiarists and those that wish to sell to them.

To Be Confirmed

Abstract - Expand

There are many software systems that suggest that they can reliably determine if a submitted text or an online document is plagiarized or not. This paper discusses the problems of such software and reports on a test of plagiarism detection and collusion detection systems conducted in 2007.

I teach the history of philosophy, and over the years I have evolved methods of teaching which mean that my students do not plagiarize. I verify that they do not plagiarize by use of Turnitin, anonymous questionnaires, and long experience of comparing my students' work with that written for other teachers.

In the paper, I shall outline a range of techniques I have deliberately adopted to make plagiarism counter-productive. These include: explicitly rewarding students for independent thinking; assessing skills rather than factual knowledge; setting questions such that relevant answers are not in the public domain; fostering a culture of honesty in which my relations with students are as personalized as is practicable; discussing student's work with them in short, individual tutorials; warning them that I use Turnitin.

These deliberate techniques are supplemented by the outcomes of a student questionnaire about why they don't plagiarize. They are interestingly different from (though not inconsistent with) my own perspective, and they reinforce the importance of encouraging a healthy learning culture, and establishing a relationship of mutual respect between teacher and students.

Although my direct experience has been confined to the teaching of the history of philosophy at a Russell Group University, it is generalizable to most other disciplines and institutions.

Since Chomsky, transformation is a key term in formal linguistics. Literary scholars, such as Van Dijk, have also employed the concept to explain how the raw material of observation and experience becomes texts. Academic writers are not formal linguists, yet they use language. They are not novelists, yet they employ narrative techniques (sequencing, plotting, structuring) in telling the stories of their research and the sources they have read. Could the concept of transformation (“creative transformation” as Angélil-Carter calls it in Stolen language) then not be a tool in teaching academic writers their trade? Van Dijk distinguishes five transformational or operational types in text construction: deletion, addition, ordering, repetition, and substitution. In a course on the foundations of academic writing conducted at the UFS in South Africa, these transformation types were discussed and applied to examples of academic writing. We have, however, supplemented these types by adding transformations such as cumulation, reasoning, questioning, contrasting, narrating, and dialoguing (see Bakhtin The dialogic imagination). In our paper, we aim to contemplate this process and to provide a brief demonstration of how it unfolded. The value of the transformational approach within a tertiary educational framework, is that it not only contributes towards pro-active didactics in order to curb plagiarism, but it also empowers student-writers in their struggle to become part of an academic writing community. It offers a more fundamental approach to plagiarism, complementing technological detection programmes (see Levin Why the writing is on the wall for plagiarism police). In a transformational approach, re-working and re-thinking source material, the concept of originality is demystified: in academic writing we build on the work of predecessors but we do it in our own way.

While in the last decade there has been a growth of research on e-plagiarism in higher education, relatively little research has been conducted in secondary schools, particularly with regard to the extent to which it is being practised, its implications on assessment practice, and the pedagogical and technical strategies used to cope with it. This paper will report on the findings of a study investigating the depths of understanding of New Zealand secondary school principals and teachers on the nature of plagiarism, as well as their responses to it. Data in this study has been collected in a number of ways: (1) a questionnaire survey was administered to a random sample of first-year university students to solicit responses on their understanding of plagiarism when they were in secondary school; (2) a content analysis of all the secondary schools websites in New Zealand (about 400) was undertaken to gather data on school rules and policies with regard to e-plagiarism; and (3) a random sample of secondary school principals has been surveyed to solicit their school's responses to e-plagiarism. Results of this study show that the nature of plagiarism has not been clearly understood in the school sector, and many schools consider it primarily as a copyright issue, with rules and regulations on plagiarism written as part of the Internet acceptable use policy.

In posing the question 'are we assessing the product or the processes that produced it' Brown, Race and Rust (1995) have identified a real issue with assessment inherent in Higher Education. This paper will show that the processes behind assessment have a powerful developmental role to play in constructing learners' knowledge and preventing plagiarism. It will also explore the applicability of the process and show examples of how this works in practice.

The University of Wolverhampton are using ePortfolios to chart the journey of learning through regular, iterative feedback, using the ePortfolio as an 'active vehicle of learning', Johnston (2004). Staggered formative assessment allows information and ideas to be continuously reviewed and reshaped with support and guidance from tutors, mentors and where appropriate, peers. A method which Marino (2002) states is not only a learning process but is the social basis of intellectual enterprise.

This process is aided by scaffolding areas of learning into a completed unit using a webfolio, the ePortfolio presentational tool. A patchwork style of writing further allows for synoptic links to be made between learning artifacts. The continual growing and developing of knowledge through the semester is clearly visible to the tutor who, in consequence, becomes more familiar with their students writing style.

Using ePortfolios to record these incremental advances in learning and also to identify work inconsistent with a student's normal writing style help to address any areas of potential plagiarism at an early stage.

Williams (2001) contends that there are two main reasons for the proliferation of cheating, and for plagiarism in particular: the increased use of assessed coursework, and rapid advances in technology that have led to information being readily available and not always traceable to its source. Only a few other authors, such as Ashworth et al. (1997) and Le Heron (2001), have identified changing patterns of assessment as a contributory factor in cheating. Motivation theorists such as Dweck, 2000; Anderman & Midgely, 2004; suggest that students' goal orientation provides underlying reasons for some students choosing to cheat.

This paper focuses on the student perspective and presents findings from a questionnaire and interview study of student cheating in H.E. Interviews explored student perceptions of:

• The types of assessments that lead to student learning
• The seriousness of a given range of cheating behaviours
• Other students who cheat
• Excuses for cheating
• Discouraging cheating
• Academic regulations
• Preliminary findings from the questionnaires;

and academic perceptions of:

• Assessments that lead to student cheating
• Their students' understanding of academic integrity, how to avoid plagiarism, and the penalties for cheating
• Discouraging cheating

The paper provides an insight into the most frequently self-reported behaviours, the reasons identified, the impact of university deterrents and the student view of how to discourage cheating. It should be of interest to academics and administrators who seek to reduce opportunities for cheating.

Academic integrity and plagiarism have become a more acute problem since the widespread use of ICT in teaching (Groark et al. 2001); Underwood & Szabo 2003). While there are now many plagiarism detection tools available to help educators combat academic dishonesty and cheating, these reactive measures cannot be solely relied upon. It is important that, at the earliest possible stage, students are supported with positive encouragement and timely reinforcements. Not only students will appreciate the values of academic integrity, they are also better informed to treat plagiarism an unacceptable behaviour.

This paper will look at how three schools at the University of Southampton have successfully used an online academic integrity guideline to engage students to understand why academic integrity is a central part in professional and personal development during and beyond their study. The guideline comprises reading resources and a formative quiz that are adapted from the outcome of the DialogPLUS project funded jointly by JISC in the UK and NSF in the US (Fill et al., 2006). Students are now equipped with a coherent and accessible self-contained resource that helps them to gauge their understanding of the issues. The guideline is no longer a read-only passive resource for box ticking but an online activity that requires students to play an active role in checking and agreeing with the plagiarism statement. While this work is still in progress, the paper will assess whether this highly visible student-centred guideline has made academic misconducts less excusable, and more importantly, less likely.

References

Groark, M., Oblinger, D and Choa, M (2001) Terms paper mills, anti-plagiarism tools, and academic integrity. Educause Review, 36(5): 40-48.

Fill, K., Leung, S., DiBiase, D. and Nelson, A. (2006). Repurposing a learning activity on academic integrity: the experience of three universities. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2006/01. Retrieved June 30, 2007, from http://jime.open.ac.uk/2006/01/.

Underwood, J. and Szabo, A. (2003) Academic offences and e-learning: individual propensities in cheating. British Journal of Educational Technology, 34(4): 467-477.

The ifs School of Finance is a distance-learning organisation that is seeking to implement an education and prevention strategy to promote academic integrity. Evaluation of existing study resources related to academic integrity resulted in the conclusion that if we could provide students with more 'exciting' information we were more likely to engage them and improve their grasp of the need to attribute and reference work correctly. Between October 2006 and May 2007 we introduced web based tools to support the Harvard Referencing Convention: TurnitinUK, PLATO (Plagiarism Teaching On-line) and an exemplar.

We have monitored the initial impact of these resources against data collected prior to their introduction and evaluated their impact on cases of plagiarism in student assignments. We are also developing 'policing' policies and penalties appropriate for the educational culture in which we operate. The results whilst inconclusive are encouraging.

We are clear about our destination and will present the steps that we have taken on our journey thus far knowing that we still have a long way to go. In 2008 we will be giving our students the opportunity to tell us how they feel about the tools we have provided. Initial evaluation of this data should be available at the conference.

I will explain, using a Powerpoint presentation, the challenges that we have faced, the actions that we have taken and the outcomes thus far. There will be opportunity for questions and sharing of experiences.

This article explores the extent to which the use of the copy detection software Turnitin has impacted on, or transformed assessment practice at Massey University. Staff at Massey University have had access to Turnitin now for three years and during that time they have, to varying degrees, developed a greater understanding of the issues of; authenticity, academic writing skills and subsequently assessment design. The use of Turnitin has challenged academic staff to think more creatively about the ubiquitous “written assignment”. Through structured interviews with staff using Turnitin, I describe the changes that have taken place and effectiveness of various approaches deployed by staff in order to improve academic outcomes for students.

Plagiarism and intellectual property law share a long tradition of attempting to determine the way information from one source can be incorporated into another source. They also share a long tradition in searching for metaphors to help conceptualize their fundamental principles (e.g. Howard, 1999; Litman, 2006). Discussions about intellectual property and plagiarism have been dominated by what has been called “the stealing metaphor,” which holds that any illicit or inappropriate use of intellectual property is similar to the stealing of physical property, and therefore should be treated as a moral act. Recently, the use of such metaphors has been challenged both in the field of intellectual property law and in the teaching of composition. It has been argued that the stealing metaphor has wrongly transformed what are potentially legal and pedagogically valuable acts into illegal and immoral actions, making all potential violations equally immoral. Moreover, the stealing metaphor does not support the development of a pedagogy for teaching about plagiarism, which is particularly important in composition classrooms where students may not be familiar with all the nuances and complexities of plagiarism. As an alternative to the stealing metaphor, the paper proposes “the game metaphor” as a basis for better focusing the discussion of plagiarism on its variations as well as on the pedagogical issues for use of intellectual property rather than only on the moral ones. Based on this new metaphor, the paper concludes with a pedagogical approach for discussing plagiarism in an academic writing class.

This paper develops earlier work on the role of codes and contracts in focusing student thinking about the values which underpin a commitment to appropriate academic behaviour.(Aiello and Clarke 2006) This work discussed the potential for policy on academic behaviour being rooted in actual or notional codes (on the North American model) or contracts (modelled on those developed in Adult and Professional Education. It concluded that it was important to address the issue of academic values from the point of view of both staff and students and to highlight the importance of the conception of a shared academic community. This paper focuses on the position of international students and their induction into academic processes in the UK. It is based on an evaluation of approaches to “values induction” using responses from the international students within a large diverse faculty. A range of qualitative and quantitative data was collected from students and staff using questionnaires and focus groups to identify experiences and explore values, commitments and the expectations students have of staff and vice versa. The aim of the paper is to investigate the extent to which international students benefit from a uniform institutional induction to academic values and processes. An induction model is proposed for all students (home and international) based on an explicit engagement with a commitment to educational norms and values.

References

Aiello M. and Clarke J. “Codes Contracts and Consequences- positive approaches to academic misconduct” Proceedings of Second International Conference on Plagiarism Newcastle June 2006

The nature of the student learning process has fundamentally changed as a result of the expanded array of electronic information sources. This change has been rapid and its ongoing evolution will continue to facilitate the development of knowledge synthesis capabilities in University graduates. Universities have recognised that within this dynamic, assessment practices must develop in a manner that retains the full integrity of the assessment process. As a consequence, electronic tools for the monitoring of Academic Integrity have been introduced at whole-of-University level in a number of Australasian Universities. Reported here is an overview of the change processes associated with a methodical implementation of this technology into the University environment. Emphasis is placed on the actions necessary to integrate the latest generation of Academic Integrity monitoring systems into a stable and sustainable component of student assessment practice University-wide. This includes communication to students that is well-matched to their understanding, and specifically covering the expectation of evidence-based writing at University level. It is acknowledged that text matching technologies are at an early stage of development, and the projected maturity path out to 2010 of Web-based service-oriented architectures for software in this field will be discussed along with successful strategies for University-wide adoption, covering the operational changes required to ensure that the method of use of these systems translates to a more valuable experience for the student learner.

This paper extends the lessons learned from research on student plagiarism to other forms of plagiarism, specifically self-plagiarism by academics. Recognising the difficulty in defining plagiarism, the authors find the common element between the various types of plagiarism to be the lack of appropriate attribution to the original source. The use of electronic text-matching software to detect different types of plagiarism is explored, in the light of existing research and the author's own work on self-plagiarism. Finally, the authors adapt their model for identifying self-plagiarism to apply it to the identification of student plagiarism. Both models centre on using electronic detection within a holistic and educative framework.

Although (or, perhaps, because) Imperial attracts academic 'hot-shots', it has shared, from the start, the national concern regarding student information literacy, including plagiarism and referencing. Imperial's interest in antiplagiarism is heightened by its habit of retaining its own graduates as PhD researchers who require utmost academic probity and appropriate academic skills. Traditionally, Imperial has had a regulatory-discipline approach but that strategy addresses offences: it was clear to the librarians at Imperial that a plagiarism-prevention strategy was required and that it needed to be embedded within an information literacy strategy. This paper sets out a description of the information literacy teaching and the specific antiplagiarism tools (both for hearts-and-minds as well as knowledge-and-skills) that have been built up since 2003, with a statement of the underpinning rationale for the approach taken. In particular, it analyses the benefits of collaboration with the enterprise division of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA Enterprises Ltd) in creating online resources designed to capture student interest and shift attitudes on plagiarism. These resources include a 10minute movie homage to David Attenborough (where the species being studied is a student, finding their way through the academic jungle, avoiding the pitfalls of plagiarism), a sci-fi movie with an android learning how not to plagiarise (if a robot can learn to avoid plagiarism, a student can) and a podcast. The types of messages presented (and the types of messages avoided) in these antiplagiarism resources are analysed and discussed. Practical considerations are noted for those interested in making their own tools in future.

Over the past three years 104 students within a large Department of Nursing were investigated for academic misconduct. This equates to less than 1% of the student population. 86 students (83%) were awarded penalties for plagiarism, cheating and / or collusion. The Department has led the development of Faculty and University guidelines for staff, emphasising a preventative approach and engagement of staff in the challenges that surround plagiarism. The investment in time and concerns over implications for professional nursing practice, has led to a wider study. The key questions posed are: 1. What are the perceptions of nursing students, lecturers, support and clinical staff as to what is academic misconduct? 2. What are the features of academic misconduct occurring in academic and clinical settings? 3. What are the characteristics of a strategic approach promoting academic integrity in nursing students?

The Department of Nursing and a selection of partner organisations are the focus of a case study approach. Data collection is planned through four homogenous focus groups, involving nursing students, nursing lecturers, administrative support staff and managers / mentors from practice settings. Semi-structured individual interviews with senior NHS Trust managers and use of documentary evidence form part of a multi-method approach.

This paper will share progress within the pilot study, including a review of the nursing literature, the key terms discovered, the emerging themes and further research advocated. Analysis of documentary evidence highlighting the types of students, course and level of study and types of assessment will be presented, together with emerging issues influencing the study.

Article spinning is a form of plagiarism where ostensibly new Web articles are created by copying existing material and systematically rewording it to appear original. Software tools exist to automate this task. Our experiments show that despite the rewording both Turnitin and WebFerret are effective in detecting such reworded content. WebFerret performs slightly better than Turnitin, as there are some reworded passages for which Turnitin does not find the source but WebFerret continues to be successful even as the density of synonym substitution in a document increases. Whether rewording is automatic or manual, whether it is in advertising copy or copied coursework, plagiarism detection tools can still play a useful role in seeking out inappropriate similarity. Better similarity metrics also assist in automating this search.

Although there is conflicting advice as to the advisability of allowing students access to non-originality detection systems in advance of coursework submissions there appears to be no empirical evidence to support either position. This paper reports on an analysis of the pre-submissions and final reports of the final year dissertations of about 100 undergraduate BIT and Computing students. The interpretation of the results would suggest that there is no measurable impact upon student behaviour.

Work at Northumbria University has focussed on activity that extends opportunities for students to engage directly with the skills development necessary for sound academic practice. This has included highly visual campaigns on the 'Plagiarism trap', providing access to Turnitin plagiarism detection software, guides and sessions to highlight use of associated referencing tools. Sessions on a variety of topics, such as supporting study skills and reading of originality reports, have been provided for students on taught, undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. This provision has included students working on collaborative partners' sites and also those on research programmes.

Alongside the activities with students, 'designing out' approaches have been embedded in staff development within the educator community at Northumbria. Formative use of Turnitin is integrated throughout programmes and academic practice development is formally recognised within the University Learning and Teaching Strategy's focus on Information Literacy.

This paper will outline and review these activities in a critical institutional context and evaluate responses from a variety of students and educators to determine how effective these measures have been. Developments underway for the University's eLearning Portal using emerging technologies will be indicated and the extent to which these will assist in academic practice development considered.

Plagiarism was revamped as an opportunistic convention by the scholars and literary elite of the 18th century when their works began to attract financial reward: the authors wanted the benefit of being able to 'own' their own words. But such a convention has become unworkable in the mass literacy/ mass education – and now mass authorship – of the 21st century.

Plagiarism (which is not a legal infringement) has always been difficult to pin down – depending on intent, status, context and convenience – and there has generally been one rule for the 'greats' (who are 'playing with' or parodying the original), and another for students who are 'cheating'. On the campus today there is also evidence that the definitions are blurred in favour of academic staff (honorary authorship, lecture notes and confidentiality agreements) and against students (particularly non-native English speaking students).

While some members of staff are assiduous in their policing of student plagiarism, many institutions are reluctant to pursue the offenders as there is much to lose (reputation, benefactors, students, staff, costs of litigation and payouts), and little (if anything) to gain. These however are not the only objections to current policy.

The new technologies have fostered the downloading and mixing of text as the new form of writing (in much the same way as the downloading and mixing of music has been defined as the new form of music). This shift does not represent a decline in standards, or a plagiarism epidemic: it is the evidence of the transformation of the culture and practice of writing. And it is the ultimate irony that the academic response to the latest change in the history of writing practice should be to define it as plagiarism, and to spend vast amounts of precious educational dollars trying to catch out the offending students, in order to show that something is being done about 'the problem'.

The issue is not that students have not 'answered the question' but that they have not acknowledged the source. Yet to argue that their assignments/essays – in today's information economy – would be superior products if downloads were paraphrased – or provided with scholarly acknowledgements – is absurd.

Mixing and mashing for assignment purposes is to be distinguished from fraud: such as the purchasing of essays, and cheating in exams – both practices that should be targeted by universities. There is also a pressing need for a new form of webpage acknowledgment – that has more to do with credibility and authentication, rather than the preservation of anachronistic forms. When more than 66% of the population of the developed world are engaged in the production of information, there are sound arguments for the benefits of text recycling – for the purpose of re-creating. And an overwhelming case for new policies on plagiarism in the academic community.

In Finland, The National Advisory Board on Research Ethics published a document “Good scientific practice and procedures for handling misconduct and fraud in science” in 2002. All universities have agreed to follow the exact procedures defined in the document. However, plagiarism within higher education is still a silenced topic, and practically no scientific articles have been published about it in Finland. This article will scrutinise the phenomenon of plagiarism by analysing five plagiarism cases within two universities. The focus is on the time-consuming process of addressing plagiarism in which emotions are expressed strongly both verbally and literally.

The analysis is based on ethnographic data that include observation, documents (notifications of suspected plagiarism, decisions by ethical committees), emails written by suspected plagiarists during the process, and accounts produced by four whistleblowers. Narrative thematic analysis is applied to describe the stages of the process. The first three stages of addressing plagiarism are named disbelief, anger and explaining. When a person notices s/he has been plagiarised, when a teacher notices plagiarism in a student's paper or when the suspected plagiarist is informed about the suspicion, they all go through stages of disbelief and anger when confronting the situation. Questioning the authenticity of a document can create a hostile conflict in the whole educational community. Explaining the situation from (every)one's own point of view is the third recognised stage in the process. The fourth stage is dependent on the decision given by authorities or ethical committees: either admission of plagiarism or cover-up/denial of plagiarism.

Effective plagiarism detection is one of the pillars of the holistic approach to addressing plagiarism. Specialised electronic detection software that can assess the degree of textual similarity of a piece of writing against a database of sources has been steadily gaining in popularity in recent years. Although electronic tools such as TurnitinUK offer wide scope of opportunity with regard to systematic screening of student work, they have built-in restrictions which do not allow them to serve as a 'panacea' for plagiarism identification.

This paper draws on a study of plagiaristic practices of undergraduate students at the University of Warwick, UK, and presents a Plagiarism Identification Framework developed in the course of this study. The elements of the Framework are described and the results of its application to student writing are presented, with reference to the TurnitinUK output received for the same samples of student writing. The paper considers the strengths and limitations of the two procedures for identifying plagiarism and discusses pedagogical implications of the proposed Plagiarism Identification Framework for EAP and subject tutors.

The present research represents an initial attempt in exploring the postgraduate students' views on authorship and plagiarism in a university of Hong Kong. Specifically, the study aimed to explore students' perceptions of difficulties involved in establishing their authorship in academic writing in English, which is not the first language for most of them. Using both questionnaires and interviews, factors like students' language competence, understanding of plagiarism and prior learning experience were examined. The impact of other factors in relation to society and technology on students' perceptions on authorship was also studied. The results provided a better and more holistic understanding regarding the formation of the understanding of authorship in academic writing. Implications for pedagogic practice, assessment methods and provision of further support and guidance for postgraduates by the university will be discussed in the presentation. Possibilities in constructing an alternative approach in understanding the very complex, subtle and inter-related relationship between authorship, writer identity and plagiarism will also be explored.

This paper reports on an initiative in the communication course of a Bachelor of Business Administration degree, jointly run by Taylors University College, Malaysia and the University of South Australia. The innovation was designed to assist students understand academic integrity and avoid inadvertent plagiarism. The text-matching software program Turnitin was used in a student-centred way, to enable students to take responsibility for ensuring that their essays were not plagiarised. Students were required to submit a draft of their essay to Turnitin, and use the Originality Report to make revisions as necessary, prior to formal submission of the assignment. The findings demonstrate that this initiative resulted in second submissions with lower percentage text-matches, a reduced number of plagiarism cases, and students' evaluations that suggest an increased understanding of academic integrity issues.

In the creative industries, especially those concerned with the use of the image, it has always been the case that new concepts are bourne out of the use of existent materials. There are real questions to be asked around the use and reuse of images within a creative context. This paper will examine the use of images in terms of availability in a digital environment, the moral and legal position on the use of an image, purposing and re-purposing of content, and the instantiation of creativity through the use of images. The concept of plagiarism within non-textual materials, and a history of image useage in the creation of 'new' images will be outlined. The paper will conclude with an examination of how graphical information may be identified in order to assist in the detection and prevention of plagiarism.

Hadrian's Wall is a stone and turf fortification built by the Roman Empire across the width of modern-day England. ... [It was] 117 kilometres long, ... [I]ts width and height [were] dependent on the construction materials [that] ... were available nearby. ... [T]he wall in the east follow[ed] the outcrop of a hard, resistant igneous diabase rock escarpment. ... Local limestone was used in the construction, except for ... section[s] in the west ... where turf was used instead ...

The Broad Wall was initially built with a clay-bonded rubble core and mortared dressed rubble facing stones, but this seems to have made it vulnerable to collapse, and repair with a mortared core was sometimes necessary.... [I]n time ... [Hadrian's] Wall was abandoned and fell into ruin. Over the centuries and even into the twentieth century a large proportion of the stone was reused in other local buildings. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian's_Wall]

Throughout history, humans have (re)used local resources to create not only buildings and fortifications, but monuments, roads, and a wide variety of other structures. For countless generations, artists, composers, and writers have freely incorporated elements from local and distant cultures to create new visual, musical, and textual forms.

In The Web 2.0 World, the open (re)combination of multiple media has become commonplace in many venues, practices that Lawrence Lessig [http://lessig.org/], founder of Creative Commons [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons], and others, would characterize as emblematic of a 'Remix ' or 'Read/Write' culture. Indeed, from his point of view, “the health, progress, and wealth creation of a culture is fundamentally tied to this participatory remix process” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remix_culture].

In the recently-released Horizon Report 2008 - a joint publication of the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), six emerging information technologies and practices that are expected to significantly impact educational organizations are profiled: Grassroots Video, Collaborative Webs, Mobile Broadband, Data Mashups, Collaborative Intelligence, and Social Operating Systems [http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2008-Horizon-Report.pdf].

In this presentation, we will review the Read/Write Traditions of the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences; analyze key Past / Present / Future Participatory Technologies; and explore the potential of Web 2.0 for creating/fostering Disruptive Learning / Scholarship / Teaching in the 21st century.