Cheating and Plagiarism in the Electronic Age

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Cheating and Plagiarism in the Electronic Age

• Page Wolf
• Teaching and Learning Center
• College of Lake County
• October 25, 2004

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Terminology

• Plagiarism
• Using someone elses work as your own
• Fabrication
• Inventing/falsifying research
• Cheating
• Misleadingly representing mastery of information
  or giving/receiving unauthorized help
• Academic Dishonesty
• Intentional violation of university policies

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Plagiarism
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Hitting Close to Home

• How many of you have ever suspected Internet
  plagiarism in your students' work?
• Were your suspicions confirmed? Were you able to
  confront the student about the plagiarism?

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Defining Plagiarism

• CLCs definition
• Student Rights and Responsibilities mentions that
  Academic dishonesty such as cheating,
  plagiarism, or knowingly furnishing flase
  information to the college is an act of
  misconduct.
• No actual definition of plagiarism to students.

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CLC English Dept. Statement on Plagiarism

• Stealing an idea (phrase, statistic) from someone
  else by stating it as though it were your own
  without giving the other person credit.
• The CLC Writing Center also has resources to help
  students, but no definition

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Stealing!!

• Websters definition
• "take the ideas, writings, etc. from another and
  pass them off as one's own" (570).

This is a form of academic dishonesty STEALING!
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Kinds of Plagiarism

• The following definitions are cited from the
  Univerisity of British Columbia and are common in
  plagiarism literature
• Complete plagiarism
• Near-complete plagiarism
• Patchwork plagiarism
• Lazy plagiarism
• Self plagiarism

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Complete Plagiarism

• Most obvious student submits essay that has been
  written by someone else
• Usually original source is published journal
  article or book chapter
• Use of unpublished work, including the work of
  another student, is just as serious

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Near-complete Plagiarism

• Student may also lift portions of another text
  and use them in own work
• Still unacceptable! Even with some attribution,
  the bulk of the work has been done by another
  person.

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Patchwork Plagiarism

• Student copies ideas, phrases, sentences and
  paragraphs from other people's work and
  "patches" them together into his or her own work
• Sometimes tough to assess since most essays
  attempt bring together a range of sources and
  arguments.

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Lazy Plagiarism

• Student inadvertently copies another person's
  language and uses it as if it were his or her own
• Often due to sloppiness but still cheating
• Sometimes difficult for instructors to
  distinguish between purposeful and accidental
  plagiarism

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Lazy Plagiarism, examples

• Student fails to distinguish between direct
  quotes and general observations when taking notes
  
• Use of footnotes or material quoted in other
  sources as if they were the results of your
  research 
• Sloppy or inadequate footnoting which leaves out
  sources or page references

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Self-plagiarism

• Student submits own work to multiple sources
  (e.g. using a report written for one course in
  other courses)
• This is acceptable only if permission is obtained
  from all the sources

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Cheating
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Prevalence of Cheating in Higher Education

• 2003 Survey Center for Academic Integrity at
  Duke University (14,000 students, 23 schools)
• More than 1 in 5 admits cheating on a test in
  past year
• More than half admit to cheating on a paper
• Three-quarters admit to minor cheating
• Why the increase?

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Technology as a partner in dishonesty?

• Text messaging on cell phone
• Storing messages on calculator
• Cutting/pasting from website
• PDAs with wireless Internet access

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Ways that students cheat

• Blur of Insanity Cheating Tricks
• http//www.blurofinsanity.com/cheatingpage.html
• TeachopolisTechniques used by cheaters
• http//teachopolis.org/justice/cheating/cheating_h
  ow_to.htm
• Paper Mills
• Evil House of Cheat, Anti-Essays, School Sucks!

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Why Students Cheat

• To maintain high GPAs
• Unlikely to get caught
• Pressure to get into good college
• No longer socially unacceptable
• Cutting/pasting is quick, easy, tempting
• Dont understand what plagiarism is
• Some faculty ignore the problem

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Recognizing the Signs

• Vocab/writing styles are unusually advanced
• You see a sentence/paragraph that is less
  sophisticated than rest of paper
• Gray letters appear in text
• Layout of paper seems strange
• Inactive websites in bibliography

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Detecting Cheating

• Detection tools
• Turnitin http//www.turnitin.com
• Matches papers to web and database
• Safe Assignment for Blackboard--
  http//www.safeassignment.com
• Matches exact phrase and similar wording
• Turnitin.com Issues and FAQ
• http//www.dal.ca/ilo/ilo_2177.html

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Preventing Cheating

• Banning food, drinks, personal calculators
• 22 Ways to Handle Technology-Enhanced Cheating
  (SUNY)
• http//tlt.suny.edu/cheating.htm
• Anti-plagiarism strategies for research papers
• http//www.virtualsalt.com/antiplag.htm

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Activities

• VAILVirtual Academic Integrity Lab
• http//www.umuc.edu/distance/odell/cip/vail/
• Indiana Universitys School of Education
• http//education.indiana.edu/frick/plagiarism/
• Cyberplagiarism Detection and Prevention (Penn
  State)
• http//tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/cyberplag/quiz.
  html

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Sources

• The Mother of All Plagiarism compilations
• http//www.web-miner.com/plagiarism
• SunTimes article (7-25-04)
• http//www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-cheat2
  5.html
• Agenda for Staff and Student Awareness
• http//www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan02/lincoln.h
  tm

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Sources, cont.

• Plagiarism Resources for Faculty
• Includes activity sheets, online quizzes and self
  tests, links to paper mills, etc.
• http//lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/faculty/plagforfac
  .htm
• Faculty Toolkit
• http//www.ivygreen.ctc.edu/library/plagiarism.htm
  

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What about YOUR college?

• Is there a written up definition, policy, and/or
  honor code?
• Standard text to include in syllabi?
• Better student understanding through plagiarism
  quizzes and exercises?
• Info to faculty on how to prevent and detect?
• Use of plagiarism-detection software?

Other ideas?