C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud 1 Plagiarism and Fraud in Education Kees van Noortwijk Erasmus University Rotterdam Centre for Computers and Law

C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud 2 Overview Description of the problem Importance of the problem Possible measures against it –Organisational –Technical Some specific tools –Fraud Finder software / services –Portfolio-based solutions

C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud 3 The problem of Plagiarism & Fraud Plagiarism: use of other people’s words or ideas without giving proper credit Fraud (in education): plagiarism and other forms of copying in situations where this is expressly forbidden (examination, individual assignment)

C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud 4 How important is this problem? Plagiarism –students are unaware they should acknowledge properly – happens very often Fraud –First year students share assignments –Recent experience: 600 assignments, 50 ‘suspect pairs’ (= 100 students); 20 marked as Fraud –Thesis: several examples of complete copies

C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud 5 Why all the recent attention? Information technology –has made it easier (Copy and Paste 100 pages at the touch of a button) –has changed the scale (internet as a global source) –can even provide tools to mask fraudulent actions Education –renewed attention for individual, written work –more essays, less multiple choice questions –information retrieval skills are encouraged

C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud 6 Non-technical counter measures Make subject explicit Give guidelines for proper acknowledgment Exercise an ‘honour code’ Design exams & assignments carefully Etc.

C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud 7 Technical counter measures Three main categories: 1.Check student work ‘externally’ against every available electronic source (internet) 2.Check student work ‘internally’ against that of other students (i.e. compare exams / assignments) 3.Check the consistency of all productions by every single student

C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud 8 1. External checking By hand find a characteristic phrase and try to find this using Google By means of a (usually commercial) service upload one or more documents, receive a report on suspicious elements –Safe Assignments –Turnitin –Urkund –Ephorus Etc.

C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud 9 2. Internal checking Closed set of documents Finding and displaying similar pairs/sets Let the teacher decide if a similarity constitutes fraud/plagiarism Especially useful for assignments Software: –Wcopyfind –CopyCatch –Codas Fraud Finder

C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud 10 The ‘Fraud Finder’ Programme Document pairs compared Similarity score Document pairs ranked according to score Used to detect plagiarism / fraud

C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud 11 Results of ‘Fraud Finder’ Ordered list of pairs Indication of re-occurrence of assignments Fraud score Possibility to open both documents and inspect them

C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud Consistency checking Verify authorship by comparison Has been performed (mostly by hand) by linguists and statisticians for over 50 years Characteristics: word use, syntax elements, etc. Needed: –‘Portfolio’ of all written work of a student –‘Background database’ with work by others

C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud 13 Tool for consistency checking Examples / Counter examples Earlier work by this student: + Work by other students: - New essay / thesis: unmarked Calculate document scores, evaluate position of the new essay

C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud 14 Conclusion Plagiarism & Fraud have become a serious problem IT can play a role in the ‘invocation’ IT can also play a role in fighting it Technical means can be effective, but need to be embedded in the educational policy of the institution Conventional means are still important as well