academic misconduct in
the final year project!
In previous years a number of final year
students were refused degrees and left the
University with a lesser award after it was
concluded that they had cheated in their final
year project.
Fintan Culwin 2011 version
http://www.scism.lsbu.ac.uk/inmandw/projects/acinteg.htm
• meet with your project tutor regularly and have your logbook signed.
• meet with your 2nd supervisor when required and have your logbook signed.
• complete the on-line progress forms when required, giving clear notes
about your work.
• clearly identify any non-original material you include in the body of
your report.
• limit the amount of non-original material in the body of the report.
• extensive use of non-original material if needed should be in an appendix.
• all projects will be subject to automated investigation.
• if in doubt consult with your project tutor, 2nd supervisor,
Dave Inman or Fintan Culwin.
if you do not have a record of the
development of your project it will be failed!!
In the research aspects it is appropriate to include extracts
from other people's work. These extracts should be
relatively brief, more factual that argumental, included in
quotation marks or indented in some way to make them
distinct and the exact source of the material clearly stated.
(It is not really appropriate to put a figure on this. However, if
10% of a chapter were cited material you should not be
worried but if 20% were you should be!)
In the event of an academic misconduct investigation
this paragraph will be shown to you and you will be
asked again if you understand it!
You will be allowed access to the
Turnitin system before you submit
your final report in order that you can
reassure yourself that you have not
committed ‘accidental plagiarism’.
!!!!!WARNING!!!!!
Turnitin can only show you where it has found nonoriginal content. This does not mean that any content
not shown as non-original is acceptable.
Students have had some content not shown as nonoriginal when they used Turnitin. This content has
later been shown as non-original by Turnitin & other
tools.
This is not an acceptable reason to appeal a decision
of academic misconduct.
!!!!!WARNING!!!!!
Two reports at about 15%
Investigation in depth
3% as reported by the JISC service.
8 1/2% following tutor manual Google search.
9% following OrCheck on Ch4.
?
~11% following full
OrCheck
investigation???
“The overall conclusion from this study is that, despite
problems in interpreting the data from successive
cohorts, the adoption of a proactive academic
misconduct policy by a department can result in a
quantitative reduction in plagiarism. Moreover, the
policy can also be shown to make a change in the
behavioural attitudes of students as evidenced by their
increased use of referencing, suggesting that they
have been more effectively acculturalised into
Learning
runand
regular
courses
academic
cultureServices
and values,
hence
they have
on exactly
how to reference
been better
educated.”
Fintan Culwin, A Longitudinal Study of Nonoriginal Content in Final-Year
Computing Undergraduate Projects IEEE Trans Ed, 51(2) pp189-94, 2008
!!!!!WARNING!!!!!
Self Plagiarism
If you write something (sentence, paragraph, essay) for one
assignment and want to reuse it in a different assignment
(including your project) you must treat it as non-original
material.
That means that it must be included in quotation marks and the
exact source indicated. (e.g. A Student, Assignment 2 submission for CSD-M-XYZ,
Dec2010.)
The reason for this is that you have already gained academic
credit for that work and cannot have more credit for it.
!!!!!WARNING!!!!!
When does disguise become paraphrase?
original :
contraction :
The cat sat on the mat.
Cat sat mat.
expansion :
The black cat sat on the red mat.
separation :
The cat who had . . . sat . . . on the mat.
rearrangement :
distraction:
weird :
affectation :
On the mat sat the cat.
The dog lay on the rug.
The frog croaked on the lily pad.
The feline domestic animal reclined upon
the throwable floor covering.
Maintain Integrity by . . .
• Learn how to reference (library services)
• Reference every use of non-original material.
• Keep accurate records of references.
• Share ideas, but not drafts of assignments.
• Rewrite rather than paraphrase.
• Plan your time carefully.
• Keep your work secure.
• If in doubt – ask your tutor!
• If still in doubt - ask your course director!
• If still in doubt - ask me!
It is possible
by chance alone?
It is possible by chance alone.
“it” is reported by Google to appear in about 850,000,000 documents.
“it is”
in about 265,000,000 documents.
“it is possible”
in about 72,000,000 documents.
“it is possible by”
in about 235,000 documents.
“it is possible by chance”
in about 142,000 documents.
“it is possible by chance alone”
in 3 documents.
Searches for ‘a’ and ‘the’ give about 25,000,000,000 documents.
Therefore the chance of any document containing the sentence is 1 in
8,000,000,000.Or a probability of .0000000001.
Hence the probability of the phrase occurring twice in a corpus of
student submissions?
A six word phrase is effectively unique
Consolidated Results
1E+10
1E+09
100000000
No. Hits (log scale)
10000000
1000000
Average Hits
100000
Best Hits
10000
1000
100
10
1
6
5
4
3
2
1
No. Words
Optimising and Automating the Choice of Search Strings when
Investigating Possible Plagiarism, Fintan Culwin & Mike Child, 4th
International Plagiarism Conference, 2010
Copying & pasting & possibly disguising from the Web is
wrong!
Borrowing or stealing & possibly disguising someone else’s
work is wrong!
Paying someone to do your work for you is wrong!
Working as a group when you have been asked to work as
an individual is wrong!
Not contributing to a groupwork, but gaining some marks
from it is wrong!
Assisting anyone in any way to do wrong, is wrong!
Doing anything else not mentioned here that is wrong , is
wrong! Catch 22 (Joseph Heller 1961)
If you are tempted to cheat – in any unit:
You've got to ask yourself one
question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya,
punk?
(Dirty Harry, Warner, 1971)
There is a good chance that you will
get caught!
When caught, you could lose your
award (and have no valid grounds
to appeal against this decision)!!
Wanted Java Programmer
For a final year project supervised by Fintan.
Reverse engineering, refactoring, documenting &
improving some hacked together programs.
Area of concern is textual analysis (plagiarism).