Plagiarism: Are FE Students Getting Away With Words

1
Plagiarism Are FE Students Getting Away With
Words?
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Training Presentation Guidelines
2
Introduction

• Dudley College applied to take part in this
  programme to support the curriculum staff, in
  determining the effectiveness of electronic
  plagiarism detection software in identifying
  plagiarism in student assignments.
• .

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Additional Benefits

• Allowed the College to Demonstrate Academic Rigor
  for QAA Inspection Purposes.
• Enabled the College to Assess the use of such
  software, for use alongside our current ILT
  provision.
• Opportunity to Develop Research as an Activity
  Within the College.

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Methodology

• In this exercise, Students handed their work to
  their Tutor on Disk, and these Disks were then
  sent to the ILT manager who uploaded them onto
  the Software. If we were to operate this system
  live across the whole College, then we would
  probably train students to upload to their tutor
  automatically.

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Results.

• 40 Disks returned. Extensive Web Use on Two HND
  Students. No Use by NVQ/GNVQ Intermediate
  Engineers.
• No evidence of extensive Plagiarism.

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Conclusions

• Evidence Might be Flawed Due to Legal Requirement
  of Project Disclosure.
• Students who used Web Based Material referenced
  it- Surprise, Surprise.
• Software was difficult to use due to cut and
  Paste Upload Technique.
• Students and Staff appeared to express no
  Hostility to Software.

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Conclusions Continued

• Software needs to cover Books and Journals, which
  are the Main Sources of Plagiarism used by
  Students (according to Staff) within FE.
• Software must be able to Catch Graphics (which
  formed the main part of the Engineering Students
  Work).

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presentation with technicalsupport data in hard
copy or on disc, e-mail, internet
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Should FE Be Interested In This?

• Yes, as Electronic Submission Will Reduce Paper,
  and Claims that Staff have Lost Work.
• Yes, as more of our Students become ILT Trained,
  to Maintain Academic Standards.
• Yes, if a College Intends to Develop ILT Courses,
  to Supervise Material Submitted by Distance
  Students for Assessment.