Detection Issues and Strategies

• Discussion of Turnitin.com and interpretation of Turnitin reports
  
  One feature Turnitin offers is the ability to exclude quoted material and bibliography from the scan to focus report results on material copied without citation.
  
  Although Turnitin.com is a useful tool, it is not precise and care should be taken when interpreting the reports as there is no quantitative “magic” statistic that definitely says whether or not the paper contains plagiarized material. Professional judgment remains essential in evaluating student writing. In some cases, the content of material that matches other sources might not be considered plagiarism (e.g., some material may be common usage in the discipline or standard language from a case study, even though it creates a string match). On the other hand, Turnitin does not include un-digitized books and some pay-for sites.
  
  Professional judgment about the quality of individual student writing and depth of knowledge may raise flags about problematic submissions that might not appear in a Turnitin report. Multiple small writing assignments allow an instructor to become familiar with a student’s writing style and level of knowledge. Significant departures from past submissions should be examined carefully to ensure that the student actually wrote these passages.

• Google string searches as an alternative or supplement to a Turnitin review
  
  Because Turnitin does not pick up some electronic media (e.g., material in protected areas of commercial sites, material in print-only media), other tools such as a Google string search might identify sources not identified with a Turnitin evaluation.

• Detecting plagiarism from print resources
  
  In some cases, you might identify a passage copied from a print source because of your familiarity with the literature in your discipline. Documenting these infractions can be more time-consuming (especially if the print source is not readily available locally), but should be followed up on. If the student could locate this print source, you should also be able to locate it.

• Cloze test
  
  If you suspect a passage has been plagiarized but cannot identify the source, copy the passage and eliminate unusual words or phrases at intervals throughout the passage by marking over these with a black marker. Ask the student to review the passage and tell you which words he/she used in the blacked-out spaces. If the student in fact authored this passage, he/she should be able to supply the missing language. If the passage is copied and the vocabulary is not familiar to the student, he/she will be unable to complete the missing material.
  
  A related strategy is to ask the student to explain passages from the suspected paper in an oral examination. Students who have merely copied and pasted may be unable to explain what these passages mean.

Prevention Issues and Strategies

• Why do students plagiarize?
  
  It is important to keep in mind some of the reasons students plagiarize in order to prevent it.  Reasons for plagiarizing include:

• Procrastination
• Lack of comprehension
• They think they can get away with it
• Cultural differences

• Publicize your plagiarism policy
  
  Publicizing your plagiarism policy directly on the syllabus lets students know that plagiarism is serious and will not be tolerated.  Talking about the policy will reiterate what the penalties are for plagiarizing.  It may also be helpful to have students sign a statement or send an email stating that they have read the academic integrity/plagiarism policy for the course and understand its penalties.  This strategy also safeguards against the student excuse of ignorance if plagiarism is detected later in the semester.

• Use Turnitin as a prevention tool
  
  If you are planning to use Turnitin.com for papers, you will deter plagiarism by making that known when assignments are made.  One instructor reported far fewer instances of plagiarism when he told his students beforehand that he planned to use this software to review all student papers.
  
  It may be helpful to encourage students to run their own papers through Turnitin before submitting their completed assignment.  If they discover that they have unintentionally plagiarized, they can benefit from seeing their mistakes in the Turnitin report and will have an opportunity to correct these problems.

• Educate students about good authorship practices
  
  Educate students about the definition of plagiarism and other forms of academic misconduct.

• Library Plagiarism Tutorial

The library hosts an online tutorial on plagiarism and academic misconduct at http://libguides.uwf.edu/plagiarism

This tutorial can be assigned as a class exercise and includes a quiz at the end. Students will receive an email of their quiz results which instructors may ask to be forwarded to them.  Instructors may also obtain a list of students who complete the tutorial and their scores on the quizzes associated with the tutorial from the library upon request.

If you would like to customize this tutorial to include discipline-specific material, reference librarians can assist you with modifying the tutorial to meet your needs.
Tutorials can be linked to a D2L class for ease of student access.

• Teach the importance of using correct citations
  
  Teach students about appropriate citation practices, including determination of what “counts” as a credible source. Discuss the importance of using evidence to increase the credibility of arguments and assertions students make in their writing.
  
  Teach students about the importance of citation of ideas as well as specific passages of verbatim text. Students need to learn the scholarly practices of the discipline. Be mindful that scholarly practices in history are not identical to scholarly practices in the sciences or English literature or other disciplines. Because students are taking courses and writing for instructors in a variety of disciplines, clear instructions about expectations in your discipline can help students avoid practices that are acceptable elsewhere but unacceptable in your discipline.
  
  Because of cultural differences, some international or non-native to the U.S. students may view the copying of another’s work as a form of praise or a compliment.  It is important to explain the expectations of academic writing in this country, in your discipline, to these students to ensure plagiarism does not occur from a misunderstanding.
  
  An example of an assignment to teach paraphrasing skill and citation of paraphrased ideas is available on Claudia Stanny’s faculty page. 

• Teach students to evaluate sources
  
  Teach students to evaluate the quality of sources. Create an assignment in which students evaluate materials from a variety of sources of different levels of credibility. Ask students to rank these materials in terms of their credibility and then discuss these rankings as a class. Contact the subject area specialist for your discipline among the reference librarians, who can help you identify suitable materials for this assignment.
  
  Subject Specialist Contacts:

• Train Teaching Assistants who will assist you with grading written work
  
  Train Teaching Assistants to check for plagiarism before they begin evaluating student work. Show your TA examples of plagiarized material and material that uses appropriate paraphrasing and use of citations.  Possibly expand Writing Lab to teach TAs.
  
  Consider hiring TAs for the Writing Lab who have expertise in writing in STEM disciplines. Scientific writing and citation practices present challenges that TAs from the humanities might not be able to address.
  
  A specific workshop for TAs assigned to laboratory courses on how to give feedback about student writing and how to detect plagiarism would be helpful.

• Be a model for good authorship practices
  
  Model appropriate authorship practices in your work. Provide full citations using disciplinary formats in your syllabus and on student handouts. Provide citations for works (including images) used in PowerPoint presentations. Practice appropriate authorship practices when using copyrighted materials in class presentations and when posting these materials to your web site. Educate students about which uses of copyrighted materials fall under the category of “fair use” and explain why these materials might not be made available in other forms because of copyright protections.

• Create milestone assignments for large projects
  
  Milestone assignments reduce student procrastination, which is a frequent motivator for shortcuts that entail plagiarizing work to meet a deadline. Care must be taken to work out how these assignments will be weighted for the final grade on the project and/or the course.
  
  Typical milestone assignments:
  
  • Annotated bibliography for a literature review
  • Research question or overarching theme for a paper
  • Description of the proposed methodology (research papers)
  • Rough draft
  • Specific components of a multi-component paper (if these can be written separately – e.g., review of literature for a paper that includes a description and analysis of related research data)
  • Near-final draft used for a peer review exercise
  
  Considerations when using milestone assignments:
• Milestone assignments must be given enough weight to ensure that students complete the assignments.
• Assignments can be a component of the final grade for the project or they can be counted toward a general homework or participation grade (e.g., 10% or 15% of final course grade).
• Students with prior experience with milestone assignments learn to value their role in structuring the management of the large project and will be intrinsically motivated to complete milestone assignments, even when they do not earn significant amounts of credit toward the final grade (in the course or on the final project). Inexperienced students may require clear incentives for completing each milestone assignment. Experienced students who understand the benefits of milestone assignments begin to create milestones for themselves to manage large projects if the instructor does not provide this structure.

• Use peer review
  
  Peer review assignments help improve student writing and editing skills and can deter plagiarism because students are compelled to revise work based on feedback from the peer review process.
  
  Structuring peer review
  
  • Provide students with a clear set of guidelines or a rubric to use during peer reviews
  • Explain the need for formative feedback as well as encouragement
  • Require students to justify any evaluation given (either positive or negative) with evidence based on a specific example of the reviewed work to promote high-quality feedback
  • Have each student paper reviewed by two peer reviewers. Have students in the top third of the class distribution (based on work completed to date) review the work of another top student and the work of the student from the bottom third. Similarly, have students in the bottom third of the class distribution review the work of a student in the top of the class distribution and another student. Top students can be relied on to give useful feedback; weaker students will get useful feedback and a “wake-up” call by seeing an example of high-quality student work.
  • Make this activity count toward the grade based on completion. Students have no control over the amount of feedback they can and cannot give. Make this a S/U assignment.

• Establish a culture of integrity
  
  Students are tempted to engage in academic dishonesty because they believe that other students can get away with these behaviors. Although we may not be able to publicize specific ongoing cases or publicly identify students currently under investigation or prosecution for academic misconduct, we can describe historical cases (as anonymous cases) that we have prosecuted and describe the outcomes of those cases as cautionary tales delivered early in the term.
  
  Hold a class discussion early in the term to clearly describe the relevance of academic integrity for students and their “real life” experiences. Kasja Flathau described a case study of a medical student who cheated her way through medical school examinations and was then unable to practice medicine safely in the real world. The real world consequence of this student’s academic misconduct was the loss of life during surgery for several patients. Ask students to imagine how they will be able to function in a real life setting that relies on their attaining competence with skills in courses after they obtained high grades in these courses only by cheating. Students need to understand that they are taking courses to learn skills, not just obtain a credential.

• Address weaknesses in student skill with language, reading comprehension, or writing
  
  Students are sometimes motivated to use material verbatim because they do not understand the material well enough to state it in a paraphrase. They are concerned that any change in wording will create a change in meaning. In this case, plagiarism is motivated by problems with comprehension (Roig, 1999). Address these problems directly. Students may have difficulties reading the materials either because they have problems with reading or because the material presents discipline-specific challenges to comprehension. Students with basic reading comprehension problems can be referred to university services for remedial instruction. Students experiencing difficulty understanding course material may require a tutor or referral to material that will help bridge their disciplinary knowledge and bring them “up to speed” to read and understand more advanced texts.
  
  Students who are reading and writing in their second language (e.g., international students) may experience difficulties because of a limited vocabulary in English. In some cases, students might need to obtain a disciplinary dictionary that provides definitions in their first language for technical terms they encounter in their English reading materials. These resources may not be readily available in the U.S. but students can obtain these materials in their home country.

• Best Practices recommended by the Council of Writing Program Administrators
  
  The Council of Writing Program Administrators has an excellent resource page on defining and preventing plagiarism, which describes best practices for teaching and promoting good authorship practices in students.