Policy for dealing with plagiarism, collusion and the fabrication of data

Policy for dealing with plagiarism and collusion of data

1) Above what percentage match would you open a Turnitin report to investigate further?
From the Instructor Handbook the following information was noted, “for short submissions (DQ, HA, AA) once a turnitin report turns yellow, open it and have a look at it. For longer submissions (e.g.module projects or dissertations) then any return of more than about 10% should be checked (it’s the number of words copied, not the percentage, which is relevant).”
The last sentence in critical for guidance in looking and evaluating the number of words copied not the percentage.
2) Under what circumstances can a student legitimately resubmit work from a previous class?

Students may ask to resubmit materials if they are repeating a class or have had a similar assignment in another class.  Students are required to inform their Instructors if they are doing this. If a student asks to resubmit materials, they must provide you with details of where the material has been used in the past and what modifications to it have been made for your assignment. The work must not be resubmitted in whole or in part when repeating a module for whatever reason, and the elements that are borrowed from previous submissions must be properly referenced, the same as any third party reference. The student must research each question independently of the first attempt, including using new references.  A student may be found to be plagiarising if there are substantial similarities to the original work, in particular if the previous work is not identified as such.

If the student is redoing work involving the study of a company, they are not allowed to use the same company as their subject.  However, if it is the company the student works for or there is some other strong reason the student wishes to use that company, you may give the student permission to use the same company. Whether the same company is used or not, the student must adhere to the conditions for resubmitting work as stated above.

3) You've already warned a student for an instance of plagiarism in your current class. In the following week the student appears to reoffend. What steps do you take?
From the Instructor Handbook the following information was noted from the instructor checklist:
“If you suspect that a student has committed Major plagiarism you should

·      write to the student indicating your concerns and identifying specific  part(s) of their work which you suspect have been plagiarized using the template letters

·      warn them that this is a breach of policy and that you must report this to the DOS

·      write to the DOS detailing your concerns and attaching the software matching report

·      you will need to give the student ID, their name, the class ID and the assessment you are concerned about

·      tell the DOS if you have previously warned the student about plagiarism including details of the assessment, the date you notified the student of this and the action you took.   They will then take this up with the student.”

4) How would you find out if a student has plagiarized in another module?

·      The following information was noted from the University of Liverpool Policy Handbook regarding Plagiarism:

·      3.2 If no previous case has been recorded then the normal course of action is for the examiner to issue a written warning to the student (see attachment for proposed wording); a note should be placed in the student’s records, including their records in SPIDER3, and the Assessment Officer4 in the department which ‘owns’ the module concerned should be informed.

·      3.3 If the student’s record shows that two previous warnings for minor plagiarism/embellishment of data have been issued, the examiner should initiate the procedure for dealing with major plagiarism, collusion and fabrication of data (see 3.5, below).

5) How many warnings does a student need to receive before they risk being removed from the programme?

The following information was noted from the University of Liverpool Policy Handbook regarding Plagiarism:

·      4.5 In a postgraduate programme, if major plagiarism is detected, the Board may decide to terminate a student's studies.

·      4.6 If a student is found to have committed major plagiarism, collusion or fabrication of data on a third occasion, namely three offences of the same type or any combination of major plagiarism, collusion and fabrication of data, the Board of Examiners shall determine that the student has failed to satisfy the requirements of the programme.

6) Does the intention of a student make a difference to how you respond to an instance of plagiarism?
Instructors must use academic judgment to determine if plagiarism was intentional or simply a matter of ignorance of the need to apply proper referencing. If you are in doubt consult the DOS; it if comes to a decision, give the benefit to the student.

7) Name the circumstances in which an occurrence of plagiarism should be treated as major.

Major Plagiarism: defined as:
• extensive paraphrasing or quoting without proper citation of the source (two or more sentences);
• lifting directly from a text or other academic source without reference; (Where material is taken directly from a text or other source the cited material should be demarcated with quotation marks or in some other accepted way and the source should be cited.)
• the use of essays (or parts thereof) from essay banks, either downloaded from the internet or obtained from other sources;
• presenting another’s designs or concepts as one’s own;
• continued instances of what was initially regarded as minor plagiarism despite two warnings having been given to the student concerned.

8) In what ways does the fact that the student is early in his or her first module make a difference in how we treat plagiarism?

The student may not fully understand the definition of plagiarism. Therefore from the Plagiarism Checklist in the Faculty Handbook the following information was noted:
• remind them that they should make sure they fully understand the university definition of plagiarism and the rules the students must follow. If in doubt, they can seek guidance from their Student Support Manager or the Academic Quality Assurance department in Amsterdam

9) What grade action do you take for a minor offence?

If a student is found to have committed minor plagiarism or embellishment of data, and has no record of a previous case, the student will be issued with a written warning but no penalty will be applied. The examiner may, however, use academic judgment in determining an appropriate mark for the assessment, in accordance with the relevant marking criteria and taking into account, as appropriate, matters such as the quality/accuracy of the referencing and citations, the quality of data presented, etc.

10) What grade action do you take for a major offence?

Enter an “I” (Incomplete) grade for the assignment.

11) Describe the substantive difference, for you, between a minor and major instance of plagiarism.

Minor plagiarism is a small amount of paraphrasing, quotation or use of diagrams, charts etc. without adequate citation.
Major plagiarism is:
• extensive paraphrasing or quoting without proper citation of the source;
• lifting directly from a text or other academic source without reference; (Where material is taken directly from a text or other source the cited material should be demarcated with quotation marks or in some other accepted way and the source should be cited.)
• the use of essays (or parts thereof) from essay banks, either downloaded from the internet or obtained from other sources;
• presenting another’s designs or concepts as one’s own;
• continued instances of what was initially regarded as minor plagiarism despite two warnings having been given to the student concerned.

12) What action would you take if you discover that the student's submission to Turnitin is different from the submission to the discussion thread?

Contact the student, explain your findings and ask for an explanation.

13) What do you do if you suspect a student has colluded with another student?

Determine if this is a major or minor case of plagiarism. Once decided take the appropriate action as outlined in the Faculty Handbook.

14) What is the penalty for collusion?                            

If it is determined that the student has committed collusion and therefore classified as major plagiarism then the grade awarded will be a zero.

15) What authority do you have as an instructor for dealing with plagiarism?

Instructor can determine if the assignment is either minor or major plagiarism. Once that determination is made, the instructor can take appropriate action as described in the Instructor Handbook.

16) What would you do if you found that a group submission has been plagiarised, and the students tell you that only one of them is responsible for the plagiarised work?

If one or more students are found to have copied the work of another student without the knowledge of that respective student, then this action should be treated as either minor or major plagiarism and any resulting warning or penalty (as applicable) should apply only to the student(s) that copied the work.

17) What happens if a monitor or one of the academic team discovers instances of plagiarism once the class has finished?

There still would be ramifications for the student even though the class had finished including not being awarded their respective degree.

The following information is from the University of Liverpool policy regarding plagiarism:

4.7 Students should be aware that committing plagiarism, fabrication of data or collusion may have serious consequences and that the University may choose not to award a Degree or other award to those students who have committed one or more of these acts.

Also from the Policy:

6.1 For some vocational and/or professional programmes there may be requirements for students to meet specified standards in respect of their fitness to practise in the relevant vocation or profession. Where a finding of plagiarism, collusion and/or fabrication of data against a student may call into question the student’s fitness to practise, this must be clearly stated in the programme information provided to students.

18) Are there any circumstances when you would excuse a clear instance of plagiarism?

No, there are no circumstances when plagiarism would be excused – From the Plagiarism Checklist in the Faculty Handbook the following information was noted:

For the online programmes we insist that students submit all work for assessment through an online matching tool such as SafeAssign or TurnItIn which produces a report on how closely or not the work matches with published sources, including previously submitted work from students, in its database. As an Instructor with us, it is your responsibility to check that the work submitted by students for grading is authentic. 

19) A student has just submitted a second instance of plagiarised work having done so the previous week, but the warning for the first instance has not yet been given to the student. What do you do about the second instance?

3.5 A second warning for minor plagiarism/embellishment of data cannot be counted as such and should be disregarded if a student has not yet received the first warning, as the student will not have had an opportunity to take heed of the warning and improve their work. Similarly a third warning, (which would lead to the procedures used for major plagiarism, collusion and fabrication of data) would not count as a third warning and should be disregarded if the student had not received the second warning; again the student will not have had the opportunity to improve their work. This is intended to cover situations where assessments are completed and marked within a short period of time. For this section to apply it needs to be clear that the student has not received the earlier warning.

22) Are there circumstances when you would clear a student's turnitin submission, and ask them to resubmit their work?

From the Instructor Handbook, “do not allow students to submit assignments more than once through turnitin.”

23) What actions would you take, if a student submits work that is correctly cited and referenced, but contains over 50% of copied text.

The instructor would first need to determine if this is minor or major plagiarism and address the plagiarism according to the information in the Instructor Handbook. The only situation where I could think this is minor plagiarism is a new student who is not familiar with the plagisrism policy. Therefore, the following per the Instructor Handbook would apply:

If a minor case (and the following also applies to embellishment of data cases): warn the student yourself using letter template 1, making sure that:

·      You have copied the warning letter to aacorrespondencef.

·      You have recorded it as a minor incident in VC.

·      You grade the work normally (there is no grade penalty for minor plagiarism).

·      If a major case (and the following also applies in cases of collusion and fabrication of data):

·      Enter the incident as ‘I’ (Investigate) in the VC

·      Send a letter to the student copied to the DOS saying you are referring the case letter template 2.

·      Copy all your correspondence to aacorrespondencef.

·      Enter an “I” (Incomplete) grade for the assignment.

                                                                      Reference

University of Liverpool (2012). Policy for dealing with plagiarism, collusion and the fabrication of data, [Online], Available: http://www.uol.ohecampus.com/instructorhandbook/teaching/docs/Plagiarism%20Collusion%20and%20Fabrication%20of%20Data%20-%20Policy%20-%20Senate%20summer%202009%20CA%20v%201%20.pdf