EDC Lunchtime Session
30 March 2001
Strategies for Preventing
Student Plagiarism
Kam-Por Kwan, EDC
x6287
etkpkwan@polyu.edu.hk
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Plan for this session
 Meaning and forms of plagiarism: why is it a
concern
 Reasons for students to plagiarize
 Sharing of experience and practice in
combating plagiarism
 Ideas about good practices in preventing
student plagiarism
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A cheating game?
 Advances in IT make plagiarism much easier
than ever
 downloading/purchase of online papers
 cut-and-paste plagiarism of electronic materials
 U.S. News (1999):
 80% of high-achieving high school students
admitted to having cheated at least once
 75% of college students confessed to cheating at
least once
 90% believed that cheaters never pay the price
 No comparable data for Hong Kong or PolyU
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What is plagiarism?
 Consider the following cases:
 a student copies the entire/a substantive part of
another student’s essay or work
 a student copies and pastes large chunks of
materials from various sources (e.g. the Internet)
without thinking or integration
 a student utilizes materials directly from textbooks
and notes without citing the sources
 a student quotes other people’s work without
providing proper citation/referencing
 a group of students discuss ideas and produce work
that are similar in many aspects
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Why does it matter?
 Brainstorming
For each of the cases above,
explain:
 whether they should be
considered plagiarism, and

whether those practices should be
discouraged, and why or why not.
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Plagiarism: A definition
 “… to steal from the writings or ideas of
another” (Chambers English Dictionary, 1988)
 “… to take and use as one’s own the thoughts,
writings, or inventions of another” (Oxford
English Dictionary, 1987)
 “… using another’s work without giving credit”
(UC Davis: http://sja.ucdavis.edu/sja/plagiarism.html )
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Why students plagiarize?
 Plain laziness
 Low chance of being caught
 To save time and effort, especially when overloaded
 Poor time management and planning skills
 Perceiving the task as trivial/unimportant/not useful
 Fear of failure/lack of confidence in own writing
 Unclear about the permissible level of collaboration
 Lack of guidance on proper way of quoting and citing
other people’s work
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Intentional versus
unintentional plagiarism
 Intentional
 direct copying of
past or present
students’ work
 direct copying of
other people’s work
from various sources
 downloading the
workload: obtaining
term papers from the
Internet
 …
 Unintentional
 unaware of the need
/proper way of citing
or quoting other
people’s work
 poor writing style
 collaborative effort in
dealing with
assessment tasks
 …
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How do you prevent plagiarism?
 Sharing of experience
 How often do your students
plagiarize in their submitted work?
What are the most common forms?
 Do you or your department have a
clear policy about plagiarism? How
do you make it known to students
 What actions do you/your dept take
to educate students about
plagiarism?
 What strategies have you used to
prevent student plagiarism?
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Preventing plagiarism
 Make the penalties clear
 Make it more difficult for students to plagiarize
 Reduce the incentive for students to plagiarize
 Help students avoid unintentional plagiarism
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Make the penalties clear
 Set clear policy on:
 what constitutes plagiarism
 the penalties for plagiarism and other forms of
academic dishonesty
 Make clear to students the policy
 Stress the severe sanctions for plagiarism
 Make visible your efforts to detect plagiarism
and confront students who are suspected of
having plagiarized
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Make plagiarism more difficult
 Set assessments that require students to apply
ideas or relate to their personal experience/ a
particular (local) example
 Require specific components for the
assessment
 e.g. most recent references, personal interviews
or surveys, case studies, personal reflections, etc.
 Require process steps for the assessment task:
 e.g. outline, drafts, annotated bibliography
 Require oral reports of student work
 Keep copies of past paper/student work
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Reduce incentives to plagiarize
 Make the assessment relevant/meaningful/
useful to learning
 Ensure that students are not overloaded
 Make clear the requirements and expectations
of the assessment tasks
 Explain the assessment criteria
 Structure the assessment by setting a series of
deadlines for various intermediate tasks
 Assure/inform students of help available
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Help students avoid plagiarism
 Educate students about plagiarism:
 discuss with students what plagiarism is and why
it is an unacceptable practice in education
 clarify the permissible level of collaboration in
assessment
 explain the proper way of citing and quoting other
people’s work
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Useful resources for staff
 Examples of anti-plagiarism policy

Northwestern University
http://www.nwu.edu/uacc/uniprin.html

University of Kentucky
http://www.chem.uky.edu/courses/common/plagiarism.
html
 Strategies for preventing plagiarism:
 Preventing Academic Dishonesty (University of
California, Berkeley)
http://www.uga.berkeley.edu/sled/bgd/prevent.html

Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers
(Vanguard University of South California)
http://www.vanguard.edu/rharris/antiplag.html
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Useful resources for staff (2)
 Preventing and Detection Websites:
 Downloadable term papers: What’s a Prof. to Do
http://www.uiowa.edu/~centeach/newsletter/online/te
rm-paper-download.shtml

Cut-and-Paste Plagiarism: Preventing, Detecting and
Tracking Online Plagiarism
http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/~janicke/plagiary.htm

Plagiarism.org
http://www.uga.berkeley.edu/sled/bgd/prevent.html

MOSS: A System for Detecting Software Plagiarism
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~aiken/moss.html

EVE (Essay Verification Engine)
http://www.canexus.com/eve/index3.shtml
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Resources for students
 How not to plagiarize
 Plagiarism and how to avoid it (Gardner, HKU, 2001)
http://ec.hku.hk/plagiarism/introduction.htm

Avoiding Plagiarism: Mastering the art of scholarship
(UC Davis)
http://sja.ucdavis.edu/sja/plagiarism.html
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