Is it Still Cheating if it’s Not Done on Purpose?

Dr. Cheryl KierAthabasca University

2013 Hawaii International Conference on Education

Accidental Plagiarism in Higher Education.

Students Don’t Understand

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DenialHi Ms. Kier,This is __________ speaking. I’m calling in regards to my essay. Not only was the way that you phrased it entirely unprofessional on your part, it’s completely & totally not true. I would never plagiarize a paper. I’ve never plagiarized anything in my life. I managed to graduate with hounours from my undergrad university degree without ever being remotely accused of anything like that.  The application that you sent me is something that unfortunately my computer is not compatible with. So I can’t even open it to find out how you basically accused me of this. But believe me I intend to fight you on this ‘cause there’s absolutely no way that it’s true. I went out of my way to cite all of my sources. To have in my paper. And I worked very hard over a lengthy period of time on this. Believe me Ms. Kier, I intend to fight you 100% on this ‘cause there’s no way you can prove that I plagiarised because I didn’t. I think that’s pretty clear with my 25 footnotes. [sigh]Anyway, I guess I will speak to you at another time regarding this matter. If you’d like to give me a call to discuss it, my number is ______But if not, I intend to take it higher with someone else in the department. Thank you very much for taking so long to get back to me on every single matter I’ve contacted you about and for generally not being available to answer my questions. And for accusing me of plagiarism. Very very kind of you.

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Today’s Definition

“Copy and paste” plagiarism Copying of a few passages. NOT reproducing an entire article.• “Issues of pedagogy” vs. fraud (Howard, 2000)

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Evidence from Literature Questionnaires with scenarios

Is it “okay” to _______? Which of the following are acceptable?

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If acknowledge source, don’t need quotation marks

24% Ellery, 2008

Ok to use some sentences from original source with a couple of minor word changes

38% 40%

Marshall & Garry, 2005

Zimitat, 2008

Ok to change a few words from a quote

48% Ellery, 2008

Athabasca University

Evidence from Literature: Behaviour

Unable to describe what 29% Jackson, 2006was wrong with a plagiarized passage

Training helps Students randomly Dee & Jacob, assigned for training 2010showed less plagiarism Walker,than control group 2008

Unable to recognize Half Roig, 1997plagiarized passages Jones, 2011

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This Study 423 of 497 registrants (85%) in Adolescent

Psychology completed all 5 course quizzes August 8, 2007 to November 9, 2010

Generally 87% female Mean age = 30. 43% live in Alberta. 3.4% international students. 53.6% other province or territory.

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Athabasca University

Procedure Quizzes 1-4: 1 question to recognize plagiarism

Select 1 of 4 options that did or did not represent plagiarism of that passage

Quiz 5: “Write the above passage in your own words in a way that does NOT constitute plagiarism.”

Prediction: After feedback on 4 quizzes, should be able to write quiz 5 question (& future papers) without plagiarism

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Coding Quizzes 1-4: Frequency count of number of questions

correct (0-4)

Quiz 5: Based on Walker (2008, p.390) “1) word strings, that is lifting exact phrases consisting of five-to-

nine words from the original 2) substitutions, modifying the original text by using one to two

synonyms; 3) additions, including one-to- two new words to the original 4) deletions, eliminating one-to-four words from the original; 5) reversals, rearranging sentence order or interchanging phrases."

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Results: Students who Correctly Answered Multiple

Choice QuestionsNumber of Questions Correct

N Percent of Students

All 4 questions correct

215 50.8%

3 questions correct 119 28.0%2 questions correct 67 15.8%1 question correct 17 4.0%No questions correct

5 1.2%

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Did Students Get Better Over Time?

Quiz 1 93.8% correct Quiz 2 75.5% correct Quiz 3 71.5% correct Quiz 4 82.2% correct

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Open-Ended Question“Although nearly all Trukese males in their teens and twenties engage in these activities, their externalizing escapades are limited to the weekends, and they rarely drink or fight during the week.” (31 words)

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Open-Ended Plagiaristic Instances (420 students)

Substitutions: N=453

Word strings: N=376

Additions: N=58

Deletions: N=34

Reversals: N=18

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Are Higher Performing Students Engaging in Less Plagiarism?

4 Questions Right: F(1,392) = 77.3, p< .001 (87.7% vs. 93.5%).

Word Strings: Fisher's Exact Test (1) = .47, NS Deletions: Fisher's Exact Test (1) = .005, NS Reversals: Fisher's Exact Test (1) = .045, NS

Additions: Borderline; Fisher's Exact Test(1) = 3.23, p<.084

Substitutions: Opposite to expectation; Fisher's Exact Test (1) = 4.42, p<.03

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Examples Original passage: “Although nearly all Trukese males in their teens and twenties engage in these activities, their externalizing escapades are limited to the weekends, and they rarely drink or fight during the week.”

“their externalizing escapades” 8 (1.9%) “externalizing escapades” 35 (8%) “escapades” 57 (13.6%) TOTAL 100 (23.5%)

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Examples “Although nearly all Trukese males in their teens and

twenties engage in these activities, their externalizing escapades are limited to the weekends, and they rarely drink or fight during the week.” Think about the meaning of the following sentences.

Weekends are the typical times for Trukese males, in the teens to early twenties range, to drink or fight as a way of externalizing the activities.

Almost all male Trukese's adolescents and emerging adolescents externalize their drinking and fighting behaviors on weekends. It is rare for these escapades to occur on weekdays.

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Examples: Quotations & Citations It would appear as though these activities are

limited to the weekend. According to Arnett (2007) "their externalizing escapades are limited to weekends, and they rarely drink or fight during the week".

Most teenage and early twenties Trukese males engage in externalizing episodes such as drink and fight on the weekend but this type of behavior is quite rare during the week (Gilmore, 1990; as cited in Arnett, 2007).

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Discussion Large numbers of students don’t

understand what is plagiarism High performing students don’t

understand better than lower performing students

Simple exercise not sufficient to teach plagiarism

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Conclusions Evidence suggests much/most plagiarism is

inadvertent.

Students may be missing skills

Punitive measures (e.g., failing course) ineffective Prevent/remedy by modules/tutorials• how to read articles, summarize main points,

language of the discipline, etc.

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Thank You Dee, T. S., & Jacob, B. A. (2010). Rational ignorance in

education: A field experiment in student plagiarism. NBER Working Paper Series Working Paper 15672. Retrieved from http://www.nber.org/papers/w15672

Ellery, K. (2008). Undergraduate plagiarism: a pedagogical perspective. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 33(5), 507–516.

Howard, R. M. (2000). Sexuality, textuality: The cultural work of plagiarism. College English 62, 473-91.

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Cheryl Kier

References (cont.) Jackson, P. (2006). Plagiarism construction online:

Assessing undergraduate students' ability to avoid plagiarism, College & Research Libraries 67(5), 418-428.

Jones, D. L. R. (2011). Academic dishonesty: Are more students cheating? Business Communication Quarterly, 74(2), 141-150. DOI: 10.1177/1080569911404059

Marshall, S. & Garry, M. (2005). Dec. 3-6. How well do students really understand plagiarism? Paper presented at the annual ascilite conference, Brisbane, Australia.

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References (p.3) Roig, M. (1997). Can undergraduate students determine

whether text has been plagiarised? Psychological Record, 47(1), 113-122.

Walker, A. L. (2008). Preventing unintentional plagiarism: A method for strengthening paraphrasing skills. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 35(4), 387-395.

Zimitat, C. (2008). Student perspective of plagiarism. In T. S. Roberts (Ed.) Student plagiarism in an online world: Problems and solutions. Chapter II. pp.10-22. Hershey: Information Science Reference.

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