Manchester Metropolitan University

Adrian Slater, University of Leeds, UK is our legal expert with guidance on what happens once plagiarism has been discovered and how complex cases can dealt with fairly.

Details and registration

Randa Al-Chidiac, Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK), Lebanon will talk about the complicated issue of using digital media sources appropriately.

Details and registration

Radhika Iyer-O’Sullivan of the British University in Dubai, UAE, is the key speaker on how to reference properly and will highlight the need for citation in student work. She has a wealth of experience to share.

Details and registration

Dr Mike Reddy, University of South Wales, UK, will be discussing the issue of how instructors can help to reduce plagiarism through innovative approaches to assessment.

Details and booking

Wendy Sutherland-Smith from Deakin University in Australia is presenting the session on how to identify plagiarism in student’s work including noticing subtle changes in writing style

Further details and registration

Jude Carroll, an independent consultant based in the UK, will share her thoughts on why students plagiarise. Is it due to bad time management, a poor learning environment or an inability to reference appropriately?

Details and registration

See our Plagiarism site for  links to further information and training.

The LearnHigher & Write Now CETLs have jointly sponsored research on student perceptions of the roles of referencing in academic writing, and the problems they have encounted with referencing. The study reports the views of 278 UK students from 14 UK institutions of higher education. The report is now available.

From the plagiarism mailing list: 

“Plagiarism: A Cut and Paste Generation”, which was broadcast on Teachers TV this week and is now available to view at: http://www.teachers.tv/video/30749 It features a Netskills workshop for secondary schools, funded as part of the Eduserv Information Literacy Initiative, along with case studies at Ripon Grammar School, Hemsworth Arts and Community College and the University of Leeds.

Although aimed at schools I think it will be useful for anyone interested in plagiarism in education.”

It makes a good opening line for a newspaper article...”Degree standards in many British universities are in danger of collapsing because lecturers are under pressure to “mark positively” and turn a blind eye to plagiarism, the man who was in charge of safeguarding standards at Britain’s largest university will say today.”, especially when you also find that he “warns that “league table culture” has led to an explosion in the number of firsts awarded.”

There may have been a cultural shift about what constitutes a first class undergraduate degree: that doesn’t mean that academic staff are all dumbing down, being lenient and/or ignoring cheating. Getting a first means that you have consistently performed to an excellent standard in achieving the stated learning outcomes across a range of units. Maybe in the past it meant something different (have produced something publishable?) but at least we are usually now able to articulate what these grades actually mean.

The article is a bit casual- eg “Professor Alderman’s comments on plagiarism appear to be backed by research which shows that – despite 9,229 recorded cases of plagiarism in a year – only 143 students were expelled.” – they aren’t going to be expelled unless that’s the penalty, which is unlikely for a first offence. The AMBeR project, which is the source of this data, says that 99% of regulations allowed for expulsion. So this suggests that only 143 students offended seriously enough to be expelled. There is also use of the expression ‘raking in’ applied to student fees.

By all means think about your assessment strategies, but don’t take this kind of thing too seriously…