Plagiarism and Academic Misconduct

Assessing cases of Plagiarism and other forms of Academic Misconduct

This page is designed to help you know what to do when you have a suspected case of Plagiarism or other form of Academic Misconduct. See Preventing Plagiarism below for tips on how to spot when plagiarism may be occurring. This page is not designed to describe the process of conducting a formal investigation as that process is described in the MITU Student Regulations and MITU Student Misconduct Procedures and elsewhere.

What is Academic Integrity?

Academic integrity encompasses intellectual honesty with regard to the use of information and in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. It implies a commitment to the core values of:

Honesty: An Academic Community of Integrity advances the quest for truth and knowledge by requiring intellectual and personal honesty in learning, teaching, research and service.

Trust: An Academic Community of Integrity fosters a climate of mutual trust, encourages the free exchange of ideas, and enables all to reach their highest potential.

Fairness: An Academic Community of Integrity establishes clear standards, practices and procedures and expects fairness in the interactions of students, teachers and administrators.

Respect: An Academic Community of Integrity recognises the participatory nature of the learning process and honours and respects a wide range of opinions and ideas.

Responsibility: An Academic Community of Integrity upholds personal accountability and depends upon action in the face of wrongdoing.

Academic Dishonesty

Means any behaviours, including Cheating and Plagiarism and any other Academic Misconduct, that constitute dishonest academic practices. Staff should refer to the Academic Integrity Procedure for more information.

Suspected Academic Misconduct – Staff actions

Where a Staff Member identifies an incident of Academic Misconduct they must consider whether the incident actually amounts to measure of Prohibited Conduct as described in the MITU Student Misconduct Procedures. If the Staff Member believes that the incident does meet the measure, they must submit a report with the allegation of Prohibited Conduct against the Student/s in writing to the relevant Head of School (HoS) or Academic Programme Manager (APM), or other relevant manager.

In considering whether the incident amounts to Prohibited Conduct the Staff Member should take all relevant circumstance of the alleged incident into account e.g. the nature, intent, impact, context and seriousness of the conduct. For the avoidance of doubt, Academic Misconduct does not include honest errors or honest differences in the interpretation of data or conclusions drawn.

Actions to be taken by the Grade Approval Committee

If an investigation of Academic Misconduct is active at the time of Grade Approval, the student will be given a DEF grade until a final decision is made with regard to the outcome of the investigation.

There are specific requirements for formal Examinations. Post-graduate Programme Regulations also contain some specific requirements regarding academic misconduct.

Preventing Plagiarism

 Actively detecting and exploring suspicions

Detection should be carried out as a matter of course – active detection alerts teachers that students might have cheated. Teachers should not rely entirely on familiarity with students to arouse suspicions. If teachers do have suspicions, they need techniques to help them take a closer look.

Detailed advice for teachers is available on Moodle, and is supported by policy and procedure:

• Academic Integrity Policy
• MITU Student Misconduct Procedures

 Tips for Teachers to detect and minimise Academic Dishonesty

• Ideally teachers should know each student so well that they immediately notice any changes/irregularities in individual student responses/performance. This is a primary detection tool. This ‘pedagogical approach’ ensures teachers know about each student’s understanding of concepts, writing style, ability to organise ideas, etc. Teaching is about helping students to make progress – teachers cannot do that if they do not know what level students are at. Look for “grade shifts” – unexplained discrepancies between levels of performance in different assessments could indicate dishonest behaviour.
• Attendance issues and participation in class discussion and activities can be key indicators – a student who shows little engagement but submits quality work could arouse suspicions.
  • Use content matching software to validate the authorship of written assignments. Unitec employs Turnitin. Some teachers enter sections of text into a general internet search engine or use websites such as http://smallseotools.com/plagiarismchecker/.
• Note the limitations of content matching programmes. Most software programmes can help identify plagiarism from public sources, but not plagiarism from other students or other forms of cheating, such as “ghostwriting”.
• Turnitin is integrated into Moodle . Ask TPA for help if you have questions about Turnitin

In practical assessments, especially on short courses, assess each student in isolation where possible. This is especially relevant if students have been preparing or practising in groups or observing the teacher. Set assessment tasks that are not exactly the same as those demonstrated by the teacher. If students simply need to repeat the assessor’s methods they can superficially adjust their performance to suit. (This is more like mimicry than cheating, but it does mean that students can perform in ways that are not entirely authentic.)

Make the most of evidence from formative assessments. Some of these should be completed under supervised conditions so teachers have samples of each student’s work they know is authentic.

• Keep a file of student work from formative assessments and/or the teacher’s notes/marks. Relatively informal formative assessments can be properly conducted and results documented. Any evidence, even informally collected, can be helpful if there are later suspicions of cheating.
• Conduct brief ‘spot tests’. Teachers use tests and quizzes to reinforce and recap learning but this practice will be more useful later for comparing/contrasting the improvement of students. Spontaneous spot testing (e.g. an informal quiz) could be more appropriate with some programmes/groups but even in these cases information about individual students could be noted.

Written assignments completed in students’ own time. See suggestions on setting assessment tasks in Preventing (above). Additional strategies include requiring students to submit planning notes, worksheets, raw data records, drafts and study/research notes with final assignments, or ask to see them from time to time as assignments are being completed. These can include:

• Requiring students to keep a journal, recording their activities and their thinking as they work toward a finished assignment.
• Interviewing each student after assignments have been submitted – teachers can compare the student’s oral responses with work produced in uncontrolled situations.
• Using content matching software (as above).

Marking (making assessment decisions):

• Be familiar with sources students use. If teachers/markers know about websites and other resources students are likely to refer to, they can spot cheating, especially plagiarism.
• Ideally, have all work marked by teachers who are familiar with students. Where large numbers are involved, some providers have each question/item marked by only one marker.
• Make sure all work is marked by the same teacher. Even if they do not know the students well, markers will be able to notice suspicious patterns and repetition. This should also apply to on-job assessments, assignment and group work.
• Be suspicious if student work does not align with the topic set (questions asked). If students seem to be focusing on a different topic, either across the whole assignment or within sections, they could be using work from other students, engaging a ‘ghostwriter’ or plagiarising sections of work.
• Be alert to signs of ‘ghostwriting’. Indicators include breadth of research, writing style, used of generic terms not specifically related to the topic, spelling or terminology not normally used in New Zealand, referencing, formatting or essay construction a student has not demonstrated previously.
• Keep a central file of all electronically-submitted work – markers will be able to compare work from later assessments. does this.
• Ensure that on-job evidence of performance is attested by a responsible senior person – emphasise the importance of the information they are signing off. There may be a tension between getting attestation from a senior person and making sure that person is absolutely sure of the student’s performance. The person attesting might need to confirm from coworkers that data collection was authentic.

Set up a system for ‘whistle-blowers’. Students who become aware that other students are cheating are likely to disapprove or have a sense of injustice. Emails to teachers, course co-ordinators and APMs can provide a confidential channel for student complaints about dishonesty.

Useful Resources

Moodle Support

Course: TCD – Teaching Competencies Home Page (unitec.ac.nz)

Relevant Policies and Procedure

MITU Student Regulations

MITU Student Misconduct Procedures

Academic Integrity Procedure

Examination Regulations

NZQA Guidance

Effective practice in preventing and detecting academic fraud