How Educators can Help Graduate Students Define and Avoid Plagiarism

The Internet has given students instantaneous access to massive amounts of literature and data while the prevalence of portable computing and communication devices enables “cut-and-paste” sharing of information in real-time. How have norms and practices surrounding plagiarism changed for this new reality? The advent of online learning presents additional challenges for educators. Originality checkers, such as Turnitin, have offered educators tools to detect plagiarism and improper citation.  

This conversation will allow participants to exchange views, experiences, and best practices about plagiarism and academic integrity in contemporary education. At the completion of this session, you will be able to:

• describe plagiarism in the 21st century
• compare different approaches to dealing with plagiarism in classroom and online settings
• explain how originality checks benefit students and faculty
• prevent barriers to using an originality checker
• describe potential consequences of plagiarism

The Council of Writing Program Administrators in their Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism: The WPA Statement on Best Practices recommends that in order for the definition to be useful it ”needs to be as simple and direct as possible within the context for which it is intended.” They came up with this definition: ”In an instructional setting, plagiarism occurs when a writer deliberately uses someone else’s language, ideas, or other original (not common-knowledge) material without acknowledg­ing its source. How do you define plagiarism? Does this definition work for your discipline or educational setting?

At Clarkson University, faculty, staff, and students are provided with information about how to avoid plagiarism. Matriculated students agree to a Code of Ethics that includes the statement that “... a student will not claim as his or her own, the work of another, or any work that has not been honestly performed.” If a student is proven to have plagiarized, consequences can range from receiving a failing grade on the assignment or for the course to suspension or even expulsion from the university, depending upon the findings of the Academic Integrity Committee. How does your institution define academic integrity or plagiarism?

Prior to 1990, the Internet did exist but the early ‘90’s is when browsers allowed the average person to get access to the World Wide Web and to more information than we could possibly have imagined. Before then if you wanted to do any kind of research, you needed to spend hours, days, or weeks in a library reading books, journals, newspapers...remember microfiche?

Now we can just as easily visit our campus library without leaving home or office and we have instant access to a variety of digital media. Now  a copyright owner can maintain ownership but still share materials with others who can use them in various ways set by the originator’s choice of a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons licensing did not exist prior to 1990, why?

Prior to the widespread use of the Internet lower rates of academic dishonesty have been reported. Charles Drake estimated that 24% of students cheat on tests based on a field experiment conducted in 1941 (The Journal of Higher Education, Nov. 1941); Goldsen et al (What College Students Think, 1960) reported cheating rates of 38% and 49% for 1952 and 1960, respectively. Published estimates for the 1980s range from 40% to over 80%. A 2011 Pew Research Center survey of college presidents found that 55% “say that plagiarism in students’ papers has increased over the past 10 years.” Eighty-nine percent of the college presidents surveyed who saw an increase in plagiarism concluded that computers and the internet were an important factor in the rise of plagiarism (“The Digital Revolution and Higher Education").  A survey of graduate students conducted by Dr. Donald McCabe and the International Center for Academic Integrity from 2002-2015 found 43% of students admitted to cheating on a test or written assignment. Have your classroom practices changed to reflect changes that have resulted from the Internet

An experience in modifying the curriculum for Managerial Epidemiology, a required course in the MBA in Health Care Management at Clarkson University, illustrates how the instructors integrated an originality checker into one of their assignments.  What started out as an exercise in setting up a peer reviewed assignment in an online offering of the course turned into something else entirely and changed our teaching practices forever. The instructors, who had not previously used an originality checker, discovered there are both benefits and barriers to its use. The revised assignment allowed students to see the originality checker and review the associated similarity reports. How have you used an originality checker in your classrooms? Did your students see their similarity reports?  What difficulties have you experienced in using an originality checker?

In the past, our assignments were constructed to limit opportunities for plagiarism thus avoiding the time, effort, and unpleasantness associated with academic integrity issues. The use of an originality checker as a teaching tool rather than as a forensic tool was a key insight for the epidemiology instructors. Using an originality checker to help students learn about proper attribution provides them with skills for handling intellectual property and prepares them for workplace success. Studies by Sims (1993) and Nonis and Swift (2001) in the Journal of Education for Business showed an association between academic dishonesty and unethical business practice. In what circumstances are having skills in handling intellectual property useful for students and their careers in your discipline?

Session slides will be available on the conference website.