IDC Presented by: Jessica Hand, Mile End, EMSB Sabine Cossette, EMSB RECIT A special thank you to Alex Roberts, a teacher with the Halifax Regional School Board, for allowing us to use parts of his power point presentation.

Click, Click, Cut, Paste… Student Plagiarism in an Online World Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

Plagiarism is an issue that will arise given the access to the WWW But the WWW has value and many resourcesWWW Students need to learn to respect intellectual property

Quotable… “Recent studies indicate that approximately 30 percent of all students may be plagiarizing on every written assignment they complete.” - Turnitin.comTurnitin.com Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

Game Plan…  Awareness  Prevention Strategies. Detection Strategies. Resources Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

Graphic Evidence … In a recent survey (Who’s Who Among American High School Students) 80 percent of high achieving high schoolers admitted to having cheated at least once Half said they did not believe cheating was necessarily wrong Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

95% of cheaters said they had never been caught. Three in four admitted to plagiarizing at least some parts of term papers. Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

P lagiarism n. act of taking ideas, passages etc. from an author and presenting them as one’s own - plagiarize or -ise v. - Standard dictionary definition Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

Model referencing: Students have to learn about citation E.g. keep an Internet log (finished product)Internet logfinished product

Some students feel their writing skills are inadequate Some students try to rationalize copying or buying material from the Web as a form of “research” Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

Quotable… “When you take stuff from one writer it’s plagiarism. When you take it from many writers it’s called research.” -Wilson Mizner Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

Tip… “Junior high and high school students are more likely to crib copy from CD-ROM encyclopedias or take pieces of research whole cloth off a Web page rather than buy a term paper.” - Jane Healey, educational psychologist Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

Suggestion: On a ped day take 2 hours Look at the resources online as well as CDsresources

Common forms of online plagiarism Downloading a free research paper Buying a paper from a commercial “paper mill” e.g. Termpapers.com Copying an article from the Web (e.g. an online database) Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

Most common: Outline sites Anything not to read the book The “Coles Notes” approach

“Cutting and pasting” to create a paper from several sites or sources – AKA the “assembly-kit” approach. Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

Faking a “citation” or making up quotations Quoting less than all the words copied. (i.e missing quotation marks or premature end quotation marks.) Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

TIP… Do spot checks on quotations.

Research shows that cheaters : tend to be better students, since they were often under the most academic pressure to succeed were more likely to have access to the Internet at home Tip… Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

Quotable… “Prevention is the most important element in the fight against plagiarism.” - Plagiarizeddot.comPlagiarizeddot.com Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board Prevention

Strategies for Prevention / Establish a “digital code of ethics” at the beginning of the year / Make the penalties clear / Educate your students about plagiarism Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

/ Provide a list of specific topics (the narrower the better) Example: ClassicNotesClassicNotes / Run background checks on major topics / Visit some of the favourite reference sites e.g. Microsoft’s Encarta Encyclopedia Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

/ Require oral reports of student papers / Require specific components in the paper / Have students include an annotated bibliography Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

TIP… Start small - Have students: Use Image logsImage logs Learn about NetcitationNetcitation

Tip… Requirements that will strongly inhibit plagiarism, include: Use of one or more sources written within the past year Use of one or more articles or books that YOU provide Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

Incorporation of some information or data YOU provide A personal interview with an expert or authority Require a meta-learning essay Not allowing students to pick their “own” topic. (See Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

TIP… Keep it student centered by having students come up with a focused research question. The final draft should not be the first time you see the paper! Try WebQuestsWebQuests

TIP… Request hardcopies and/or electronic copies of the project at different stages in the research For example: Outlines Plans Drafts

Strategies for Detecting Plagiarized Work 4 Writing style and level i.e. is the student’s work consistent with the student’s previous work? 4 Size matters 4 Lack of references or quotations Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

4 Signs of datedness 4 Off the topic 4 Anachronisms 4 Anomalies of diction Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

4 Smoking guns AKA “blunders of the clueless” e.g. URL’s, “graphic omitted,” whiteout, etc. 4 Anomalies of style e.g. a mixture of British and American spelling Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

Tip… If possible, require students to pass in projects and essays backed up on disk. Acts as a deterrent and makes detection easier. Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

4 Strange/poor layout (the “print right away brigade”) 4 The ultimate in naiveté – printed right from the Internet Browser – Oh my! Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

Tip… To find an exact match for a specific phrase (string), conduct a “string search” by putting quotation marks around the phrase. Use a “string search site” such as Altavista, Lycos or Metacrawler. Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

Yet Another Tip… Use illogical combinations. Eg. “globalism” and “free trade” returned 6,789 hits on Altavista.com To catch a plagiarist make your searches illogical by combining a rare word from the essay with an operative word e.g. “globalism” and “beanie babies” returned 3 hits. Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

For difficult to detect plagiarism…  Use Findsame. It will return a list of matching pages, ranked by percent of sameness.  Or try a large-database, full- text search engine like Google, Northern Light or FastsearchGoogle Northern Light Fastsearch Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board

"Since I began using Turnitin.com in my classes, the incidence of plagiarism has dropped to almost zero. The level of trust in my classroom has gone up 100 percent, not only between teacher and student but also among my students themselves." David Presti, Professor of Neurobiology, UC Berkeley Taken from Turnitin.com, November 15, 2001, USERNAME: PASSWORD: scy694bzq

o Visit the the term paper sites o Use a commercial plagiarism detector such as Alex Roberts – Halifax Regional School Board