20 Case Analysis: University Students and Plagiarism

Topic: university students and plagiarism in a Year 1 Writing course

Characters: Dr. David Cohen, course instructor; and 25 multilingual students who are taking the Writing course.

Writing 1002 is a half course taken by international students at Erewhon University in Ontario, Canada. The course’s goal is to help students who use English as a second language, mainly for academic purposes, master two sets of skills key to university success in the Canadian context:

Paraphrasing, quoting, summarizing and citing skills that are not only useful for the Writing course, but also for other courses the students are taking.

Writing skills, which include narrowing a topic, choosing reliable research sources, making research notes, creating a strong argument, drafting a well-structured essay, using matter from the research sources to provide support for the main idea, and revising, editing, formatting, and submitting the essay on time.

There are multiple sections of the course. The common course outline given to students in these sections includes a Statement on Academic Offenses (see below). This statement gives students a link to a site that can help them understand what plagiarism means, and what penalties are applied, at Erewhon University, to students who “cheat.”

Professors in all courses expect students to know how to cite and reference sources in such a way as to avoid committing academic offenses. To learn to do this properly, the Writing students use a writing handbook that explains how to do research, how to cite sources in APA style, how to edit and format essays, and so on. Not only are students expected to bring this handbook to class every week, and refer to it when they write their assignments for Writing 1002, but they are also meant to use it for all their other courses.

Dr. David Cohen is teaching a section of Writing 1002. He is a seasoned instructor who has been teaching classes with multilingual students for over fifteen years. In the third class of the term, he discusses plagiarism and Canadian expectations for original student writing, and gives a lecture on correct citation practices. He makes several references to the handbook. In the second half of the class, he asks students to practice citation, using the handbook. As the students are answering their practice questions, Dr. Cohen realizes that several students have not brought the handbook and are trying to find information on their phones or by talking to each other.

A week later, Dr. Cohen reads the first set of graded assignments that the students submitted—a short research essay. He realizes that only four students have cited their sources correctly. Many others have made several mistakes in paraphrasing (the words are too close to the author’s words), quoting (they have not used quotation marks or have forgotten to give the author’s last name), and citation. Some students have not added a References page. Five students have cut and pasted large parts of their essay from Web sources, and two students’ essays seem so different from their in-class writing that Dr. Cohen suspects the essays have been “bought” from an essay mill. Three students have written off-topic essays that are grammatically correct, but don’t reflect the students’ voices or earlier writing. Dr. Cohen looks up their citations, and finds the sources have been made up; they don’t exist. He feels these students have used an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool like Chat GPT. Dr. Cohen is especially angry with the last three groups of students; he feels they have really cheated, and he wonders if he should punish them by giving them a zero on the assignment and reporting them, to deter future plagiarism. Many of the other students have lost between 10 and 35% of the assignment grade for their poor citation practices.

Dr. Cohen asks the students individually why they either cited with care and accuracy or why they didn’t take the trouble to cite properly or even to write their own essays. They respond as follows:

• “The course is too hard; I don’t know how to answer the assignment question, so I cut and pasted.”
• “I think the handbook is useful for this course and for citation in my other courses.”
• “I am not getting much sleep, and am stressed out. I didn’t have time to think about my essay.”
• “I had no time to do research. It takes me a long time to read in English.”
• “I did not think anyone would know that I had copied.”
• “I don’t think I have cheated. I think I did it correctly.”
• “I wish I had English words for what I want to say. In Hindi, I can say it well.”
• “I don’t think I need to know how to write an essay. I just want a good mark to get an essay credit.”
• “I am addicted to video games. There was a gaming contest last week, and I had no time to do research.”
• “I want to read, but my friends keep visiting me, and I don’t have time.”
• “I thought it would be okay to use ChatGPT–I am not copying from any article or person.”

The problem: What should Dr. Cohen do to remedy this situation? He really wants his students to succeed in the Writing course and understand Canadian university norms for academic integrity.

There is no “correct” answer to this question. You have to show how you developed your solutions, and why you think they will work. Your response can discuss measures to change student attitudes, or measures to change the course, or both.

Resource for theory:

Chien, S. (2014). Cultural constructions of plagiarism in student writing: Teachers’ perceptions and responses. Research in the Teaching of English, 49(2), 120-140. https://doi.org/10.58680/rte201426160

Course Outline Statement on Academic Offenses

Erewhon University is committed to Academic Integrity. Scholastic offenses are taken seriously and students are directed to read the appropriate policy, specifically, the definition of what constitutes an Academic Offense, at the following Web site: Erewhonpolicies.ca. All required papers may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to the commercial plagiarism detection software under license to the University for the detection of plagiarism.

Summary of the research in Chien (2014), along with common responses to plagiarism:

Writing research shows that there are at least five factors that affect decision-making about plagiarism at the university level:

Definition: “Plagiarism” is understood differently in different cultures. The idea of “stealing other people’s words” is used mainly in countries that place a high value on individualism and private property. It is difficult for students from non-Western contexts to fully understand what “plagiarism” means unless it is clearly defined.

Prevention: The best way to prevent plagiarism is to educate students, so they recognize what it means, and develop the skills to avoid it. The conditions that support academic dishonesty, such as poorly designed questions or student overload, should also be addressed.

Detection: To address plagiarism effectively, the teacher has to be able to detect when it has taken place. Similarity checking software (like Turnitin) is used by some teachers, but other teachers dislike using it.

Remediation: Once plagiarism has been detected, the teacher has to decide whether to punish or to educate the student further. Reporting of the student and punishment have been a common response, since a strict response is believed to deter other plagiarists. Recent writings on the subject promote teaching over punishment.

Intention: In deciding whether or not to punish, teachers tend to look at the student’s intention. Did the student deliberately plagiarize or did they just make a mistake?

 

Case Analysis: Deterring Plagiarism among University Students

In Writing 1002, a first-year course for multilingual students at Erewhon University in Ontario, twenty-one of twenty-five students made citation errors in a short research essay—the course’s first assignment. The instructor, Dr. David Cohen, had tried to prevent plagiarism in three ways: first, by including the university’s Statement on Academic Offenses on the course outline, second, by making students use a citation handbook, and third, by lecturing and giving an in-class exercise on Canadian citation practices. In spite of Dr. Cohen’s efforts, the students’ errors ranged from poorly-paraphrased passages, to large amounts of text copied and pasted from sources without citation, to the submission of AI-generated essays or of entire essays probably bought online.

Plagiarism: A Problem for Both Students and the University

As a result of the citation errors, some assignment grades were reduced by 10-35%. The students who bought essays or submitted AI-generated essays could receive a grade of zero and be reported to the university. 84% of the class made errors that could be considered forms of plagiarism in the Canadian academic context, and 40% of the class showed little to no knowledge of the skill sets that the course aims to teach: Canadian citation practices and writing a carefully-researched and well-argued essay. Keeping in mind the students’ newness to Canadian academic culture, Dr. Cohen could help all students achieve the course learning outcomes by avoiding reporting students. He could ask students to submit their first drafts to similarity checking software, a strategy that helps in detection (Chien, 2014). He could offer further in-class sessions on research methods and Canadian academic writing conventions, which Chien (2014) would describe as prevention. Finally, he could allow all students to rewrite the assignment to earn higher grades (remediation, in Chien’s research). The combined responses of prevention through resubmission and remediation through more teaching could be the most effective solution, as it would address students’ difficulties with research and citation, and give them more practice in the essay skills that ensure academic success.

Detection of Plagiarism

Plagiarism detection software would be beneficial, addressing the following response from one of Dr. Cohen’s students: “I did not think anyone would know that I had copied.” Dr. Cohen should not only use the software but also explain to students how it works. Chien (2014) indicated that students can learn from this software. If revising essay drafts for resubmission, students would see exactly what they need to correct for the second draft. Chien (2014) also noted, however, that some instructors do not want to use the software due to its limitations in detecting plagiarism. Furthermore, plagiarism detection software still has limited effectiveness in detecting AI-generated text (Chaudhry et al, 2023).

Remediation and Prevention of Plagiarism

Remediation and prevention through more in-class sessions on Canadian academic culture could effectively attend to both unintentional cases of plagiarism in Dr. Cohen’s class, indicated by the response, “I think I did it correctly,” and intentional cases: “I don’t think I need to know how to write an essay.” Through more frequent practice, students can gradually acquire citation skills (Chien, 2014); thus, Dr. Cohen should expand on the topic of the third lecture through citation exercises that could be linked to specific research tasks. Dr. Cohen’s instruction should also include explaining academic practices by showing how skill sets will benefit students both in the course and beyond. According to Chien (2014), “If students are able to understand what is valued and how different academic communities construct their own meanings from intellectual inquiry,” then they can put in practice the rules of a previously unfamiliar academic culture (p. 137). They may thus stop thinking that essay writing is unimportant.

Recommended Solutions

Dr. Cohen’s focus should be on remediation combined with prevention, because the majority of responses from the students indicated a struggle to understand Canadian academic conventions and how to apply them. Therefore, even if students knew where they made errors, through the similarity checking software, they would still require more instructor support to apply citation style models to fix these errors. Some would require guidance with finding good sources to support their arguments.

Conclusion: Some Notes about Implementation

In order to implement the solution effectively, Dr. Cohen should allow his students to rewrite the assignment in order to build skills that will help them to excel in their other courses. Dr. Cohen should collaborate with a research librarian from Erewhon University to conduct a session on research strategies. The session could provide step-by-step guidance, along with in-class practice, for reading and paraphrasing a research article that students would find during the library session. They could use this article for either the resubmitted essay or a future assignment. Modelling how to use the course’s writing handbook to cite the research would also help students learn the academic conventions. These methods could make the essay more manageable for students, four of whom stated that they lacked time for research. Dr. Cohen should also specify course regulations about the use of AI in the course outline and assignment instructions, explaining to students that submitting their own essays, instead of having AI write essays for them, can help them build skills valued in their other university courses (Chaudhry et al., 2023). By understanding research and Canadian citation practices as valuable and achievable within their Writing courses, multilingual students can acquire research and citation skills that they can then transfer to other university courses and to their careers.

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References

Chaudhry, I. S., Sarwary, S. A. M., El Refae, G. A., & Chabchoub, H. (2023). Time to revisit existing student’s performance evaluation approach in higher education sector in a new era of ChatGPT – A case study. Cogent Education, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2023.2210461

Chien, S. (2014). Cultural constructions of plagiarism in student writing: Teachers’ perceptions and responses. Research in the Teaching of English, 49(2), 120-140. https://doi.org/10.58680/rte201426160