Dealing with plagiarism in assessment

• What are plagiarism and collusion?
• Types of plagiarism
• University policy

Test your knowledge of ways to manage plagiarism and collusion
(click on the Quiz button to access the quiz)

Plagiarism and collusion are widespread in Australian universities, and Deakin is no exception. In the interests of fairness and developing students' academic integrity, teaching staff are obliged to take the issue seriously.

The temptations for students to plagiarise and collude have increased in recent years:

• The Internet has made it easy to copy and paste text, images, programming, etc. published on the Web - and also to buy custom-written essays (eg: http://www.oppapers.com/).
• Many students need to work to support themselves, pay rent and pay fees, leaving less time for sound research.
• More and more group work assignments are being set, without good management strategies to control unauthorised collusion.

Not all plagiarism is intentional, and for a novice, plagiarism and collusion are not easy concepts to understand. For students to avoid the pitfalls, they need some expertise in note-taking, writing and critical thinking, as well as knowledge of the conventions of academic writing and referencing. Many students with poor language abilities find developing these skills takes considerable effort.

For a teacher, a three-part approach is needed to address plagiarism and collusion effectively:

• Educate
• Detect
• Design

In this case study a Deakin University teacher shares her experiences and perspectives related to plagiarism, and talks of how her teaching was adapted accordingly.

What are plagiarism and collusion?

Plagiarism: plagiarism occurs when a student passes off as the student's own work, or copies without acknowledgement of its authorship, the work of any other person.

Collusion: collusion occurs when a student obtains the agreement of another person for a fraudulent purpose with the intent of obtaining an advantage in submitting an assignment or other work.

(Definitions from the Deakin University Plagiarism and Collusion Operational Policy.)

Types of plagiarism

• Fraud:
  • submitting work that was written by, or stolen or purchased from another author
  • collusion
  • deliberate unacknowledged self-plagiarism
• Copying:
  • copying from a source without acknowledgement
  • patch-writing - partial copying and word-switching
  • failure to quote - copying from a source with acknowledgement of the source, but failing to indicate it is a direct quote. This common student error may indicate poor referencing skills rather than intentional plagiarism.
• Plagiarism of ideas:
  • failure to cite another author's idea
  • plagiarism of reasoning style or organisation
• Plagiarism of sources:
  • using another author's citations without acknowledgement - this is a more serious issue if the writer has not him/herself read the secondary sources.

University policy

The University has published an operational policy and a procedure on plagiarism and collusion. Both are available from The Guide.