Cheat
There was a case that summarises what plagiarism is about as well as point out the ramification of plagiarism that goes beyond what happens to you at university but the impact it can have on your friends. I had 3 students who had been friends from the time they had arrived at university in their first year – before they were in a group together and I was supervising that group. They went through their 3 years of university together, were very good friends, always worked together and productively. I didn’t anticipate that any of them were having any difficulty in relation to their studies – when they got to their 3rd year – the 3 of them were participating in a module together. One of them, I was supervising as a dissertation tutor and that student was regularly talking to me about their progress in relation to how they were doing with their work – letting me know how they were getting on. I was then approached after the students had submitted all their work by another member of staff who had been marking papers on behalf of that course. And that staff member said that she had read an excellent paper and was considering giving it a 1st. Absolutely fabulous, great approach to the question. About 1/2 hour later she was reading another paper, excellent paper, reading sentences, reading paragraphs and thinking ‘this sounds familiar’ and put it to one side. Reads another paper – this sounds familiar. Like I’m reading the same thing. Now staff are aware of this as the students are asked to answer the same question – to get similar answers. But this went beyond that – in the way that it was put together. The way the examples were used. Some of the references were unique – very different which was what was giving it a very high grade. So she put these papers to one side, finished marking and then sat down with those 3 papers. And it was very clear and very quickly realised that those 3 papers were done collaboratively. Students don’t understand what it means to work collectively together in relation to learning material within the university. We very much ask students to work in subject groups – encourage them to share their ideas in seminars and take advantage of the ‘Learning Centre’ and the rooms to engage in discussion. But what we don’t encouragae is for them to sit down and do their assessment and share their assessment to the point where they do a similar assessment paper. In this instance we had 3 individuals. One paper was better than the other 2. And there was a question about who copied from who. Did they work on it together? How did that come about? But we knew there was something wrong with these 3 papers. So all of them were given no grade and advised they would be brought in for plagiarism. Each student came in and gave their story in relation to the paper. And I think the biggest lesson in the entire situation was unfortunately from my perspective as a tutor – and this is only my perspective is that the students were trying – after recognising that they had been caught how they could effectively get away with it. As a criminologist we are very much experienced – that is how the criminal justice system works – innocent until proven guilty. These students came with a case put forward – on how they could justify papers that were very similar and then it wasn’t plagiarism. And of course we came as the prosecution with the evidence to say here is the evidence and you try to put that together. It was a very difficult situation because it was quite clear that 2 of the 3 students copied from a 3rd person. And the person who had the exceptional paper actually made an error. She had friends. They came to see her. A week before the due date said we are really struggling and we can’t get access to books – we can’t get access to materials. Would you mind giving us your notes? She handed them her notes. She handed them her texts. And she said go ahead and use them. And wrongfully she said “and if you want I’ll let you look at my paper so that it might help you structure yours”. And those 2 students copied her paper and handed it in. And she was not aware of that until she came to that plagiarism meeting. So that friendship was completely severed after all those years. The 2 that copied were found to have cheated – failed the assessment and had to re-do it. One of them did not graduate. The student who made her paper available was given a warning and advised that if she ever did it again she would lose that mark which was a 72 and she would have got zero and capped at 40. For me the issue around the story is that students need to be aware that staff do look for plagiarism – do look for students working together – recognise that students can produce similar types of work using similar examples and similar readings in the lectures that we deliver. But the minute students get to work together on assessment and work collaboratively they are doing plagiarism and putting themselves at risk.