Powerpoint on "Contract Cheating"

Interesting ppt from a recent conference, The New Challenges Of Contract Cheating by Thomas Lancaster and Robert Clarke (Birmingham City University). Contract cheating is putting up details about the assignment you want written for you, and people bid to do the work. The ppt explains the process and ways in which it might be detected. http://www.bcu.ac.uk/_media/docs/ContractCheatingSIG_220612_LancasterClarkeKeynote.pdf
Photo by Sheila Webber: Millennium sculpture and pontoon outside 02 dome on the Thames, from cable car, June 2012

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Plagiarism and attribution: an academic literacies approach?

Magyar, A.E. (2012) "Plagiarism and attribution: an academic literacies approach?" Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education, 4. "In many Higher Education courses in the UK the ability to write extended academic prose is central to assessment and therefore to student success. One aspect of academic writing which students struggle with is incorporating the work and ideas of others, using appropriate attribution conventions. This can lead them to fall foul of institutions’ plagiarism policies. Advice on plagiarism often consists of discussions around what is or is not plagiaristic behaviour while advice on attribution has tended to focus on referencing. This paper explores what an academic literacies approach to plagiarism might look like. It discusses and illustrates how an academic literacies approach was used in the design, analysis and application of a small-scale ethnographic research which set out to explore international postgraduate students' understandings of and questions about plagiarism across the disciplines in one UK university. The intention of the research was to use the findings in developing more culturally and context sensitive explanations of our attribution practices."
http://www.aldinhe.ac.uk/ojs/index.php?journal=jldhe&page=index
Photo by Sheila Webber: cherry blossom, 2012

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High profile plagiarism example!

"Hungary President Schmitt quits in plagiarism scandal" as it says in the BBC story of 2nd April 2012 (he was found to have copied chunks of material in his PhD) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17586128. Thanks to my colleague Peter Willett for drawing this to my attention.

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Info Skills website at UEL #delila

Another report from the Developing Educators Learning and Information Literacies for Accreditation (DELILA) project dissemination day in London, UK.
Ella Mitchell and Cathy Walsh (University of East London) gave an Introduction to InfoSkills. They talked about a resource they developed at their university, Info Skills: the website is at http://infoskills.uelconnect.org.uk/. An inspiration was UEL's Get that job website http://employability.uelconnect.org.uk/.
Info Skills is aimed at level one learners. The focus is information skills and academic integrity. To give an impact, they have included student voices, as videos, talking about why they thought it had been important to use the library or not plagiarise. Academics have also contributed. They used Captivate to create tutorials etc.
They were presenting at the DELILA seminar because the Info Skills website was open to everyone to use, and some individual resources are available (e.g. videos on Youtube, see http://www.youtube.com/user/UELconnect). Spinoff benefits have included that pre-entry students (in further education) and international students have found the site useful, so it aids transition into higher education. The initiative has fitted in with skills initiatives within the university, and the speakers also felt that the site could help "address the expectations gap for academic staff" (helping academics understand teh support that the students needed).
The website has four key sections "What information do you need", "What are the best tools and ways of searching" "How do you decide what to use" and "What are the rules on naming your sources". If you look at the website you can see they have used a good deal of carefully selected graphics (e.g. of other students), to draw people in.
One of the resources the speakers mentioned was an academic talking about using Wikipedia http://infoskills.uelconnect.org.uk/pages/videos/97/using_wikipedia.html
The speakers also talked about the planning and development process. They are aiming to improve the mobile aspect of the site (e.g. so quizzes work on phones).
Photo by Sheila Webber: A busy bee at the station this morning

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High profile plagiarism example

"German Defence Minister Guttenberg resigns over thesis": the headline says it all. My colleague Professor Peter Willett is going to be using this example with our Masters level research methods class, to show that plagiarism can be a time bomb even if you don't get detected at the time!
BBC. (2011) "German Defence Minister Guttenberg resigns over thesis." BBC News. 1st March http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12608083

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Goblin game

A plagiarism game from Lycoming College, USA, Goblin Threat, involves finding goblins and defeating them by answering plagiarism-related questions correctly. This is a nice idea that has been implemented well, so worth checking out. If you clear the goblins from all the rooms you get a certificate. My only little quibble would be that (as with most plagiarism quizzes) I think with a few of the questions the answer is not as black-and-white as is implied (it could also be to do with differences in national and institutional practices). http://www.lycoming.edu/library/instruction/plagiarismgame.html
I discovered this game because it was a Primo site of the month: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/about/sections/is/projpubs/primo/site/2010october.cfm. In this interview the game's creator explains how the game arose, how it was tested, and how it is used now, so it is also worth readng.
Photo by Sheila Webber: Winter branches, December 2010, photoshopped (neon glow)

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New issue of Journal of Information Literacy

Volume 4, Number 2 (2010) of the Journal of Information Literacy, open access at http://jil.lboro.ac.uk/ojs/index.php/JIL
There are book reviews plus the articles:
- Susie Andretta: Looking at the evidence: reflections on the need for, and impact of, Information Literacy Education (ILE)
- Consolata Angello: The awareness and use of electronic information sources among livestock researchers in Tanzania
- Jeanne M. Brown, Carrie Gaxiola. Why would they try: motivation and motivating in low-stakes information skills testing.
- Elizabeth Gadd, Andrew Baldwin, Michael Norris: The citation behaviour of Civil Engineering students
- Stephanie Rosenblatt: They can find it but they don't know what to do with it: describing the use of scholarly literature by undergraduate students
- Jodi Tyron, Emily Elizabeth Frigo, Mary Kathleen O'Kelly: Using faculty focus groups to assess information literacy core competencies at a university level
- Ned Fielden, Mira Foster: Crossing the Rubricon: evaluating the Information Literacy instructor
- Daniel Beck: The role of Information Literacy in the provision of virtual reference services at the enquiry desk.
Photo by Sheila Webber: trees around St Mary's church, Hailsham, November 2010.

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Combatting cheating

A book that was published later last year and I missed reporting:
Davis, S., Drinan, P. and Gallant, T. (2009) Cheating in School: What We Know and What We Can Do. Wiley. ISBN: 978-1-4051-7804-4
("School" here covers secondary and tertiary education, not just what we would call "school" in the UK) It discusses why students cheat and short and longer term ways of deterring cheating. There is more information at: http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1405178043.html

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Plagiarism items

The Plagiarism Advice Agency in the UK is at http://www.plagiarismadvice.org/ They provide advice, training and resources for those in the education sector, schools as well as further and higher education. The focus has been more on higher education, but apparently they will also be publishing guides for those in secondary schools (I couldn't see them there yet).
The 4th International Plagiarism Conference will be held at Northumbria University, 21-23 June 2010, papers to be submitted by 29 January 2010. http://www.plagiarismadvice.org/conference.html

Another useful site is Plagiarism today, http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/ , which is run by Jonathan Bailey (based in the USA) who says "am not a lawyer. I am just a legally-minded Webmaster/Writer frustrated with the plague of plagiarism online and doing something about it." However, he posts interesting commentary and news, though obviously with a US perspective on the legal situation.
Photo by Sheila Webber: metro, Milan, Italy, August 2009

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Cite Them Right & Plagiarism Conference

The guide to referencing and citation, Cite them Right is now available in an electronic format for institutional licensing: see http://www.nlearning.co.uk/wp/?page_id=430. The hard copy is advertised at http://www.citethemright.co.uk/ with discounts for bulk purchases by educational establishments.


Mentioned in the same email that announced this was the 4th International Plagiarism Conference, which will take place in Newcastle-upon-Tyne 21-23 June, 2010. No details at time of writing, but they will be posted at http://www.plagiarismadvice.org/. While checking this I noticed the useful proceedings of the last conference were online at http://www.plagiarismconference.org/pages/
conference-2008/conference-proceedings.php

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Academic Integrity & Plagiarism

I see that Michael Lorenzen has posted about his tutorial Academic Integrity & Plagiarism which "discusses academic integrity and plagiarism as defined at CMU [Central Michigan University], and provides tips for avoiding plagiarism." You need Javascript enabled http://www.lib.cmich.edu/tutorials/
plagiarism/plagiarism.html
Photo by Sheila Webber: Beech woods, Ashridge Management College, May 2009

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Another learning tool for staff about plagiarism etc

Thanks again to Vivienne Bernath. She emailed me about Acknowledgement: "a set of resources to support university staff to undertake continuing professional development about academic honesty and integrity issues, especially issues of originality and plagiarism" from Monash University, Australia.
http://calt.monash.edu.au/staff-teaching/
plagiarism/acknowledgement/about/index.html
Photo by Sheila Webber: Swans on the Yarra, Melbourne, Australia, 2005.

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High profile plagiarism

Thanks to my colleague Mark Sanderson for alerting me to this story today, which is a nice example of how plagiarism can threaten your career. The title of the BBC news story says it all:
BBC (2008) "Canada PM faces plagiarism claim." BBC News, 1 October. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/
world/americas/7645593.stm

It is not the Prime Minister, but rather the writer of this 2003 speech, who has now resigned.

Whilst searching for an Australian reaction to this, I came across a current plagiarism accusation: namely the Australian shadow Treasurer is accused of lifting direct quotes from the Wall Street Journal

Franklin, M. and Maiden, S. (2008) "Swan slams Bishop's 'plagiarism'" The Australian, 24 September.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/
story/0,25197,24393932-5013871,00.html

The accused seems to be asserting that she was using some direct quotes made within the article, and so she feels that was OK ... hmmmm .... this makes it even more relevant to tricky questions that you get with coursework! I'll be using these examples with my students.

Photo by Sheila Webber: Trees in Guelph, Canada, May 2005

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Harry Potter and fair use

This seems a thoughtful reflection on the verdict in the Harry Potter case - in which JK Rowling was seeking to prevent publication of a Harry Potter lexicography. The judge found in her favour. I'm mentioning it here since it is a topical (if complex) example of deciding how much you can and can't copy from one work in order to create a different kind of work - and it highlights the importance of synthesis! Thus it might be a useful example to use with learners.
Jones, P. (2008) The Harry Potter Decision, as text - Updated. 9 September. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080909014304275
Photo by Sheila Webber: of a quidditch arena build in Second Life

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Plagiarism and ethics

There were acouple of talks today at the Creating Knowledge conference on plagiarism and ethical issues concerning information. Susanne Holmlund presented on the situation at the Tritonia Academic Library (serving 3 universities in Vaasa, Finland). They provide information literacy education in 3 languages. Obviously there is a challenge in that there are 3 universities, with their different organisational cultures, curricula and approaches to dealing with information literacy - and plagiarism. In the specific library field, there are different licenses for e-journals and databases too!
They have tried to take a more standard approach to IL education, but inevitably they need to tailor them to specific university needs to a greater or lesser extent. With the University of Vaasa they have 2 credit bearing information literacy courses, plus a credit-bearing course for doctoral students on research ethics. On the IL course 1 there is a strong emphasis on ethical issues such as plagiarism and research ethics, as well as information evaluation. There is a pre-test and if people pass this they can be exempted fron attending the rest of the course. The second course concentrates more on putting the students' skills into practice.
One current discussion is whether the current emphasis on online teaching, especially in course two, is most effective: some feel that ethical issues are best discussed face to face. They are also debating whether teaching of research ethics could be done by student teaching assistants (teaching these courses takes up a lot of staff time). Use of wikis for learning and teaching is also being considered.
An interesting exercise she mentioned was a role play in which students had to take the part of different stakeholders e.g. publisher, students, and discuss plagiarism from that person's perspective. The Tritonia library site is at: http://www.tritonia.fi/etusivu_en.php and there is a relevant paper here .
Eystein Gulbeck (University of Oslo) gave an interesting talk about Discourses on plagiarism and the pedagogic sanctions. He identified that students might see a contradiction in being told to write in their own words and being told to use and cite the literature: an issue here is being socialised into the academic culture. He felt you could link various statements on these issues into different discourses - the formal one of regulations and punishments, and the one about becoming a scholar in the academic discipline. They also get messages and discussions from different places in the university, fomal and informal, written and oral.
He referred to a course Critical and Ethical use of sources. The intentions - what they wanted students to understand and be able to perform - were made clear to the students; Gulbeck, like a speaker I blogged about yesterday, referred to John Biggs idea of constructive alignment (of learning, teaching and assessment). Since a focus on regulations and checking for cheating was not felt to encourage critical thinking, the focus was on group based activities assessd on evidence of critical reading and academic reasoning. Students discussed ways of rewriting examples, learning how to express views in different styles and summarise. In commenting on the course students mentioned both developments in writing and critical reading, and also improvements in ability to cite and avoid plagiarism.
Photo by Sheila Webber: view from art museum, Turku, Finland, August 2008

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Student views on assessment and plagiarism

Through a link, in ICS subject centre news, I stumbled across the Higher Education Academy audio and video pages. As well as a few keynote talks (including Laurie Taylor, always good value, although the sound could be clearer!) there are some videos with clips of students, and sometimes staff, talking about their perspectives on: (separate videos) plagiarism; assessment; marking criteria. http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/videoandaudio

Photo by Sheila Webber: a less than informative map on Great Keppel Island, Australia, June 2008

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Blogging: and spam

Last Thursday I (as Sheila Yoshikawa) led a discussion in Second Life (the virtual world) about blogging in Second Life. The chatlog (transcript) is here: http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=316 and this is a picture of the discussion. Most of the people there were bloggers, including some with Second Life blogs. Some more general points came up e.g. about using blogs for projects, and a couple of people found their blogs to be useful evidence of what they were doing. I briefly discussed a tool that can be used to blog directly from SL (http://www.bloghud.com/ ).

On another blogging note: The number of spam comments submitted to this blog have increased lately (I think there would be a great deal more if I didn't moderate the comments: spammers generally go for the easier non-moderated targets). There are some "blogs" which consist entirely of spam, and I just draw attention to this one because it has evidently mangled one of my posts to create spam. Search Google for "Sheila Webber: Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen" (the photo I used in my posting) and you will find the original entry and the entry in the spam blog (I don't want to create a link to it directly!) There is no blog author name, so I suppose I should complain to Wordpress to get it and its semi-plagiarised content taken down. It may be that the author is misusing their digital or information literacy skills to create some sort of personal gain - though I'm not really clear what kind of gain....

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Plagiarism survey

Mandy Cumbridge, Learning & Research Support Co-ordinator (School of Arts), City University, has a survey on academic librarians involvement in teaching students about avoiding plagiarism: go to
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=2ik_
2bwPgG1oiVGU65Wj5_2fdg_3d_3d

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Plagiarism: workshop + reports on conference

1) A Plagiarism workshop: what is plagiarism and how can librarians help students avoid it? is led by Judy Reading, User Education Co-Ordinator, Oxford University Library Services for the Education Librarians Group (CILIP). It takes place on 11 September 2008 at the University of Cambridge, UK, book by emailing Libby Tilley eat21@cam.ac.uk

2) The 3rd International Plagiarism conference took place in June 2008. The conference website is at: http://www.plagiarismconference.co.uk/index.php - they say they will put up the proceedings but they aren't there yet. In the meantime there is a very useful conference report in the Plagiarism Today blog at http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2008/06/30/
recap-3rd-international-plagiarism-conference/ . There is another from Debora Weber-Wulff, here (both bloggers note the shift in emphasis from punishment/detection to plagiarism prevention), and she also runs a plagiarism portal in German, Portal Plagiat, at http://plagiat.fhtw-berlin.de/ Lastly, what Gerry McKiernan terms the "Director's cut" of his keynote at the conference is at http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2008/04/
disruptive-scholarship-idea-whose-time.html

Photo by Sheila Webber: Derwent river, Tasmania, July 2008

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Plagiarism video

I came across this video - evidently a project for students in the US. It made me smile ;-) "Why not to party and not to plagiarise" by Michael Mohamed, Sumit Patel and Matthew Elliott. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwZyCqo9DPI

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