Academic staff's perspectives upon student plagiarism: a case study at a university in Hong Kong

Much of the previous research concerning student plagiarism has been conducted in Anglo-American settings. The present paper reports a case study of academic staff's perspectives upon student plagiarism at a university in Hong Kong. Based on interviews with 16 instructors, the study focused on the teachers' views and pedagogical practices, including their use of Turnitin. The paper ends by noting certain areas that need to be addressed in tackling student plagiarism and by proposing a few lines of future research.     

Undergraduate plagiarism: a pedagogical perspective

Student plagiarism is a pervasive and increasing problem at all levels of study in tertiary institutions. This study attempted explicitly and implicitly to address issues of plagiarism within the broad context of an academic writing framework in tutorials in a first‐year module at the University of KwaZulu‐Natal in South Africa. Despite these interventions, a quarter of the students were judged to have plagiarised in an essay assignment. The study revealed little deliberate intention to deceive but instead poor understanding of both technical matters such as correct referencing norms that had been addressed in the module and higher‐order issues such as writing as process, knowledge as constructed and the establishment of authorial voice through language and referencing. Lack of real engagement with plagiarism and referencing issues was also a problem, with certain groups of students being more at risk in terms of committing plagiarism than others. It is argued that, particularly in a demographically diverse society, acquiring values, attitudes, norms, beliefs and practices that help prevent plagiarism should be viewed as a long‐term and iterative process.     

Evaluation of a four-prong anti-plagiarism program and the incidence of plagiarism: a five-year retrospective study

Maintaining academic integrity and preventing students from cheating and plagiarising academic work are challenges faced by higher education institutions. These areas have become even more problematic with the growth of the Internet and readily available information, which increase the temptation for students to copy and paste information directly into academic work. Institutions have turned to various strategies to mitigate these aspects. This retrospective research study examined a four-prong anti-plagiarism programme and its impact on the incidence of plagiarism in a Post-Professional Doctor of Physical Therapy programme. The results showed that, using a combination of a structured education module related to plagiarism, Turnitin plagiarism detection software, implementation of policies and procedures, and support from the institution’s writing centre resulted in significant differences in the rate of plagiarism (P < .001) over the five-year period. The rate of plagiarism in year 1 (0.96%) was 2.7 (95% CI, 1.4–5.3) times the rate in year 5 (0.35%, P = .004). The rates of plagiarism in years 2, 3, and 4 were 0.74, 0.35, and 0.30%, respectively. Using a combination of these strategies may help higher education institutions address episodes of plagiarism and improve academic integrity.     

First‐year university science and engineering students’ understanding of plagiarism

This paper is a case study of first‐year science and engineering students’ understandings of plagiarism. Students were surveyed for their views on scenarios illustrating instances of plagiarism in the context of the academic work and assessment of science and engineering students. The aim was to explore their understandings of plagiarism and their judgement about the seriousness of each incident, and to shed light on the decisions they might make in response to such situations. The data indicated that although students could provide sound definitions of plagiarism, they did not always appreciate the scope of class‐based activity that constitutes plagiarism. Some examples of plagiarism were regarded as less serious than others, and in contradiction with the institution’s policy. Students also generally favoured more lenient penalties than provided for by policy. The purpose of the study was to ascertain first‐year students’ developmental needs in relation to academic honesty, plagiarism and appropriate acknowledgement of others’ work.     

Rebels without a clause: towards an institutional framework for dealing with plagiarism by students

This paper explores why an institutional framework for dealing with plagiarism by students is necessary and it outlines the main ingredients of such a framework that has been developed at Lancaster University. It defines plagiarism as a form of academic malpractice and frames it as a breach of academic integrity. The framework places a strong emphasis on prevention and education, backed up by robust and transparent procedures for detecting and punishing plagiarism. It is informed by a number of core pillars, including transparency, ownership, responsibility, academic integrity, compatibility with the institution's academic culture, focus on prevention and deterrence and support for and development of students' skills. The key criteria in evaluating the usefulness of such an institutional framework are transparency, appropriateness, fairness and consistency.     

Student Plagiarism in Universities: What are we Doing About it?

Student plagiarism subverts the system of course evaluation, debases qualifications and offends against academic integrity. Research findings from the U.S.A. and the U.K. indicate the widespread nature of student plagiarism in universities. Opportunities for plagiarism among university students appear to be on the increase but there is evidence to suggest that official policies, procedures and responses on the part of some universities and academic staff may be inconsistent and inequitable. Universities need to be more proactive in: developing strategies to raise student awareness of the unacceptability of student plagiarism; developing and enforcing policies aimed at controlling student plagiarism; and setting up programmes to promote academic integrity. A continuum consisting of seven plagiarism behaviours linked to a suggested set of procedures and penalties can be used by academic staff to classify instances of plagiarism and deal with individual cases in a fairer, more consistent manner.     

从著作权法考察学术抄袭及其治理

学术抄袭不仅违反了学术道德规范,而且也是一种学术侵权行为。遏制这种行为,不仅要在学术道德上自律,还要在法律制度上他律。从著作权法的角度对学术抄袭概念界定、学术抄袭的判定、产生的原因以及治理入手,全面分析学术抄袭现象,并提出强化学术管理,建立一个良好、规范的学术氛围,促进学术健康发展。     

Discourses of plagiarism: moralist,proceduralist, developmental and inter-textual approaches

This paper reconstructs prevalent academic discourses of student plagiarism: moralism, proceduralism, development, and writing/inter-textuality. It approaches the discourses from three aspects: intention, interpretation and the nature of the academic community. It argues that the assumptions of the moralistic approach regarding suspect intention, the transparency of interpretation, and the homogeneous nature of the academic community are in effect sustained by discourses of proceduralism and development. This results, first, in the simplistic rendition of student identities as honest/dishonest, and, second, in the proposal of or acquiescence to the triad of prevention, detection and punishment. The paper concludes that radical re-conceptualization of plagiarism may only be discovered in the discourse of inter-textuality where intention, interpretation and the academic community are construed as social practices concerning the negotiation of various identities and values – those of students as well as those of academics.     

Evaluation of intervention on Chinese graduate students’ understanding of textual plagiarism and skills at source referencing

Abstract

Textual plagiarism is a serious violation of established academic protocols, but it requires considerable writing experience and care to avoid as well. Although student understanding of textual plagiarism and their plagiaristic behaviour in English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts have been quite well researched, few studies have sought to evaluate instructional interventions specifically designed to reduce plagiarism by empowering student writers with a better knowledge of plagiarism and skills at source referencing. To the best of our knowledge, no study to date has ever systematically assessed students’ understanding of plagiarism and their source referencing performance in response to intervention. This classroom-based research, at a university in Beijing, aimed to discover whether a 6-hour block of instruction could facilitate better understanding of plagiarism and appropriate source referencing skills. The results showed that the intervention did generally give students a better appreciation of how textual plagiarism looks and significantly reduced blatant and subtle plagiarism in their writing. However, students’ heavy reliance on original source language did frequently reoccur in student writing if in less clear-cut ways. Some helpful lessons were drawn from this study.     

Academic dishonesty in higher education—a nationwide study in Taiwan

Academic dishonesty has been an important issue. However, only few researches had been done in Asian countries, especially a nationwide study. A sample of 2,068 college students throughout Taiwan was selected and surveyed on four domains of academic dishonesty, including: cheating on test, cheating on assignment, plagiarism, and falsifying documents. The major findings of this study were: (1) the prevalence rate for all types of dishonesty behaviors among college students in Taiwan was 61.72%; (2) the top five most practiced academic dishonesty behaviors in Taiwan are provided paper or assignment for another student, gave prohibited help to others on their assignment, copied others’ assignments, passed answers to other students, and copied from other students; (3) students’ attitudes correlated with behaviors in all four domains of academic dishonesty; (4) females reported less acceptable to and behaved less academic dishonesty behaviors than males; and (5) freshmen had more dishonest practices than other class ranks.     

Taking Political Autonomy Seriously: a reply to Ian Gregory

This paper raises some questions about academic authorial honesty under the headings of Plagiarism (including self‐plagiarism), Theft, and Collusion. Compared with the medical sciences, the social sciences in general and education specifically, lag behind in terms of critical attention being paid to the problem of plagiarism, the peer review process and academic authorial ethics. The ubiquity of the Internet, the ever intensifying demand to publish or perish, and maybe, a general shift in perceptions of what constitutes ‘bad’ plagiarism and collusion which challenge traditional notions of what constitutes authorial honesty, mean that the time may be ripe for a consideration by academic writers and journal editors of how they regard and deal with the whole area. This paper makes an early contribution to the discussion.     

美国大学防剽窃教育的主要特点及其启示

剽窃是世界各国学界存在的一个共同问题.剽窃行为的整治是一项系统工程,需要政府、社会、学界、大学和学人们的共同努力.美国学界虽然也存在着剽窃问题,但一般能够做到有效控制.所以如此,一个重要原因是得益于美国大学普遍重视防剽窃教育.本文介绍、分析了美国大学防剽窃教育的主要特点及其给我国大学进行类似教育所提供的一些启示.     

The use of turnitin in the higher education sector: Decoding the myth

Plagiarism needs to be addressed to maintain academic standards and to safeguard the integrity of the academic project. With the evolving digital world, conventional methods of addressing plagiarism are gradually being dismissed in favour of new technologies. Unfortunately, there is a general misunderstanding about what such technologies do. This paper was written from a PhD study, and looks at how such misunderstandings emerge across the higher education sector of one country. Institutional policies and other documents related to plagiarism were analysed from public universities across South Africa, and this was then augmented with interviews with members of institutional plagiarism committees. The results of the study revealed that technology is a key facet in these universities’ attempts to reduce the incidents of plagiarism, and that Turnitin is the most favored text-matching tool. However, the software is misunderstood to be predominantly a plagiarism detection tool for policing purposes, ignoring its educational potential for student development. The implication is that, if Turnitin is primarily used as a policing tool, students are not only denied access to nuanced pedagogical interventions that might develop their academic writing, but its misuse could also change students’ behavior in undesirable ways.     

Comparative Analysis of Institutional Policy Definitions of Plagiarism: A Pan-Canadian University Study

This article shares the findings of a study investigating institutional policy definitions of plagiarism at twenty English-speaking Canadian universities. The types of primary sources consulted for this study included: (1) university academic calendars for 2016–2017, (2) institutional policies on academic misconduct, and (3) student academic codes of conduct. Sources were analyzed in comparative tabular and narrative form. Results show wide variation in institutional definitions of plagiarism as a specific subset of academic misconduct. The conclusions call for a coordinated effort among Canadian universities to develop a common framework of academic integrity that includes clear and explicit definitions for plagiarism, as well as other forms of academic dishonesty, that are consistent across provinces.     

Back translation: an emerging sophisticated cyber strategy to subvert advances in ‘digital age’ plagiarism detection and prevention

Advances have been made in detecting and deterring the student plagiarism that has accompanied the uptake and development of the internet. Many authors from the late 1990s onwards grappled with plagiarism in the digital age, presenting articles that were provoking and established the foundation for strategies to address cyber plagiarism, including software such as Turnitin^TM. In the spirit of its predecessors, this article presents a new, less-detectable method of cyber-facilitated plagiarism known as ‘back translation’, where students are running text through language translation software to disguise the original source. This paper discusses how this plagiarism strategy attempts to subvert academic attempts to detect plagiarism and maintain academic integrity in the digital age, before presenting useful detection tools and then critiquing three classroom plagiarism management approaches for their usefulness in the current digital and educational context.     

Ensuring Effective Student Support in Higher Education Alleged Plagiarism Cases

Plagiarism and other forms of academic misconduct are matters of great concern at all levels of study worldwide. This is especially so for students in higher education institutions, where higher degrees and publications are key focus activities. Ready access to internet based resources assist academic writing practices. However, the unintentional, or sometimes deliberate, lack of acknowledgment of intellectual property ownership by some students results in plagiarism allegations. In this article we explain how the Business School at Curtin University, Western Australia, currently handles plagiarism accusations; and we propose a model for making the University’s approach more transparent, supportive, and educative for students. We recommend this model to others.     

Using collaboration to foster academic integrity

Abstract

For students new to higher education, the task of developing their academic writing skills, and particularly the principles and practices of source-referencing, can be daunting. Although institutions and teachers can and do provide positive guidance on this score, all too often students veer into inadvertent plagiarism through lack of confidence and confusion. This case study identifies opportunities through collaborative work to help students approach referencing with greater clarity and confidence. A project with first-year Arts students engaged in collaborative writing encouraged them to attend to their recording and writing-up of source references using individual ‘reading and referencing’ logs and then passing on completed references to their group’s designated bibliographer. Checks on later, solo, assignments by these students indicated that they were less likely to stray into inadvertent plagiarism, whilst feedback from the students themselves pointed towards improved confidence in their academic writing skills and development of study habits conducive to effective self-monitoring.     

浅析大学生剽窃行为：基于国内外的文献

大学生剽窃行为是高等教育管理中的一个非常现实的问题,已经引起广大教育工作者和学术人员的广泛关注。大学生剽窃行为可以分为故意剽窃和无意剽窃。对于大学生如何看待剽窃问题上存在一些共性。大学生剽窃行为主要受道德能力、对剽窃的意识、学术融合和压力等9个因素的影响。与国外的大学生剽窃行为研究相比,我国的研究还有很长的路要走。     

In their own words: a qualitative study of the reasons Australian university students plagiarize

The ways in which universities and individual academics attempt to deter and respond to student plagiarism may be based on untested assumptions about particular or primary reasons for this behaviour. Using a series of group interviews, this qualitative study gathered the views of 56 Australian university students on the possible reasons for plagiarism within their institution. The results indicate a wide and disparate range of possible contributing reasons for plagiarism, including: institutional admission criteria; student understanding of plagiarism; poor academic skills; a range of teaching and learning factors; personality factors; and external pressures. These findings are compared with other findings about reasons for student plagiarism in Australasia. The implications of these findings are considered for universities and individual academics seeking to better engage with their students to minimize or marginalize plagiarism.     

‘It’s not fair’: policy discourses and students’ understandings of plagiarism in a New Zealand university

Plagiarism is a concept that is difficult to define. Although most higher education institutions have policies aimed at minimising and addressing student plagiarism, little research has examined the ways in which plagiarism is discursively constructed in university policy documents, or the connections and disconnections between institutional and student understandings of plagiarism in higher education. This article reports on a study that explored students’ understandings of plagiarism in relation to institutional plagiarism discourses at a New Zealand university. The qualitative study involved interviews with 21 undergraduate students, and analysis of University plagiarism policy documents. The University policy documents revealed moral and regulatory discourses. In the interviews, students predominantly drew on ethico-legal discourses, which reflected the discourses in the policy documents. However, the students also drew on (un)fairness discourses, confusion discourses, and, to a lesser extent, learning discourses. Notably, learning discourses were absent in the University policy. Our findings revealed tensions between the ways plagiarism was framed in institutional policy documents, and students’ understandings of plagiarism and academic writing. We suggest that, in order to support students’ acquisition of academic writing skills, plagiarism should be framed in relation to ‘learning to write’, rather than as a moral issue.