Update: June 2003. Plagiarism detection software made freely available to HE. See Plagiarism SIG pages for further details.
Eighteen people gathered at the Network Centre to discuss various issues
relating to plagiarism. After the welcome and brief talk on LTSN Bioscience's
latest activities by Dr Stephen Maw the following took place
Overview of Plagiarism and the
Special Interest Group
Prof Robert Slater, University of Hertfordshire
As co-ordinator for the Plagiarism SIG Robert gave his views and experience
of plagiarism. He highlighted the objectives and achievements of the SIG
as well as raising some of the biology-specific problems - excellent readable
textbooks, plethora of web sites etc.
View
Robert's presentation
Scenarios
Attendees split into groups and were asked to discuss at least one of
the scenarios handed to them. The scenarios were fictitious, but plausible,
examples of different plagiarism incidents. After 40 minutes of discussion
a speaker from each group was asked to report back on their conclusions
View
the scenarios as: Word
file or pdf
Workshop delegates discussing the plagiarism
scenarios
View
feedback posters from the discussions
Undergraduate
plagiarism – How much do they know?
Dr Shiva Sivasubramaniam, Nottingham Trent University
Shiva reported on some of the work he has done with students at Nottingham
Trent University. While most students (94%) can identify obvious plagiarism
less than half thought that using data from others without acknowledgement
was wrong. Shiva also presented interesting data on how many students
admitted to plagiarising and whether they were doing it knowingly or unwittingly.
View
Shiva's presentation
Plagiarism
Prevention and Detection
Dr Fiona Duggan, JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service
Fiona introduced the JISC Plagiarism Advisory Service and the procedure
for joining and using the service. Fiona also described the essay banks
web sites which are available to students and through a group exercise
delegates were able to experience these sites for themselves.
Fiona guides senior academics through
the many sources for internet plagiarism. A fascinating experience!
View
Fiona's presentation
Within-group
student collusion
Dr Paul Gent, University of Leeds
Paul's talk covered another major aspect
of plagiarism - students copying from students. Paul described his (and
his colleagues') experiences with different software in trying to detect
and prevent student collusion rather than simple copying. Paul demonstrated
the advantages of forensic linguistics, using CopyCatch
software. It was noted that many bioscience lab reports are likely to
have similar content in certain sections (e.g. Methods, Results) but would
be expected to differ widely in others. This system also provided a scoring
mechanism to identify reports with paraphrased content.
View
a paper on using different software packages to detect student collusion
