From my observations of some student presentations I invigilated recently I know there are clearly issues with students knowing and understanding what is legal and what is not when you use and re-use content or images you find on the Internet.

Many of us already know about Creative Commons content and how it works, but I found this presentation, with audio slidecast, that I have also made available to staff and students alike, in the vain hope it’ll make a difference. It is well worth listening to the 20 minute slidecast that accompanies this presentation, it brings the static pages to life.

If you want some background on what Creative Commons is, please see my previous post and video on “What is creative Commons?“.

Creative Commons: What every Educator needs to know. View more webinars from Rodd Lucier.

Related posts:

1. WordPress Plugin #4: Creative Commons Licence
2. Video: What is Creative Commons?
3. Be a better online educator by thinking like an online student

I have been an advocate of the use of plagiarism detection / deterrent software ever since I was shown the benefit. The first time I saw TurnItIn in action was when I had to demonstrate it to a group of undergraduate students almost three years ago now, as part of a pilot study in the Business School.

Don’t forget my previous, recent, post on plagiarism: Video – A Plagiarism Carol

For various reasons we stopped using TurnItIn, but we are now getting ready for it’s re-introduction to our Blackboard installation, and I have started to see blog posts and various other links about an imminent upgrade to TurnItIn … TurnItIn 2.

Planned for an August launch (I wonder when we will be able to make use of upgrades?) it is looking like TurnItIn is upping the game in the plagiarism detection and deterrence industry, and are making the changes to help both students detect and the Institution to deter plagiarism.

Changes coming to Turnitin summer 2010? – This link came to me from JoBadge on Twitter;

“The biggest change is that student work will be shown with full formatting, including diagrams and figures. The matching text is highlighted in situ, a little like using a highlighter pen on real paper. This will give a far more intuitive feel to the analysis of originality reports and include a huge amount of context in a very visual way. The current system of highlighting matches using boxing out, tends to over emphasize their importance and makes it difficult to judge the amount and severity of the non-original text. Including figures will help us to judge whether the figures have been properly used and referenced.”

By all accounts the changes are only going to make TurnItIn an easier and clearer system to use, and hopefully encourage staff and students to make use of it’s facilities to ensure good honest work.

There is one downside for any Institution that relies on anything like plagiarism software; it will only look for the originality of the work. It does not, and cannot, replace the tutor’s knowledge of the individual who is supposed to have written the piece. There are many websites out there where, for a measly £75 or more you can buy a totally original assignment. Only the tutors knowledge of the student and their writing style will enable them to determine whether the student actually wrote the piece they submitted.

So, do you use any system for plagiarism detection (or deterrence), do you allow students to upload themselves to check for correct referencing, are your staff happy or comfortable using something like TurnItIn? What kind of emphasis do you put on the use of TurnItIn, is it for detection or is it as a deterrence?

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I found this really funny, and quite well put together, video outlining the pitfalls of plagiarising text this morning. You’ll need to press the button (shown here) to get the captions/translation (unless your Norwegian is better than mine, which I’m sure it is!).

YouTube: Plagiarism Video

There are many ways an Institution can raise the student awareness of plagiarism and this is one of the best I’ve seen. If you’ve come across something similar, better, or even worse (document, video, guide, etc) then please leave your comment below with links if possible.

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I came across this article last week, posted by Robyn (@serendipitynz) on Twitter … “Students say using tech to cheat isn’t cheating“.

“According to the poll, more than a third of teens with cell phones (35 percent) admit to cheating at least once with them, and two-thirds of all teens (65 percent) say others in their school cheat with them … (and) just over half of students polled (52 percent) admitted to some form of cheating involving the Internet.”

The piece finished with this …

“Students who cheat using the Internet generally view plagiarism as more serious an offense than other types of cheating, yet more than a third of teens (36 percent) said downloading a paper from the Internet was not a serious offense, and 42 percent said coping text from web sites was a either a minor offense or not cheating at all.”

If the students here (aged 11-17) think it’s OK to cheat, then they will turn up at University and get a really huge shock. Plagiarism is taken very seriously here, and I presume at other institutions too, and students can expect to be grilled if copying or plagiarising is suspected.

This also raises another point; not all cultures have the same opinion on copying. In the report “Cultural Attitudes Towards Plagiarism” the authors explore the increase in the number of overseas students, in the UK HE Institutions, who are copying/plagiarising content as “in some cultures it is acceptable, even flattering, to copy the work of ‘masters’.”

In the Business School, and BU, we put the following phrase on all our online submission boxes:

Note: PLAGIARISM or COPYING is a serious academic offence and may incur severe penalties beyond a Fail Grade. Bournemouth University reserves the right to use electronic means to identify plagiarism.

We use SafeAssign (integrated into myBU; our Blackboard installation) at the moment, but have had TurnItIn in the past. While we don’t create submission boxes in SafeAssign every time, we have the digital files submitted to us so we can, if need be, pass through to detect any plagiarism.

This then brings me to another bigger question … which is better, SafeAssign or TurnItIn? I have my own opinion on this, born mainly from experience rather than from a detailed examination, but I’d be happy to hear your views on the two tools as well please … answers on a postcard below!

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