Plagiarism prevention and detection, presented at Arba Minch University, Ethiopia, March 2020

1. Plagiarism
prevention & detection
Prof. dr. Frederik Questier - Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Presented at: Arba Minch University, Ethiopia, 03/2020

3. Werken met portfolio's
04/10/05 | pag. 3

4. IUC (Institutional University Cooperation)
Project 1 = Transversal project
Improvement of education & research
at AMU
by enhancing ICT & library services

6. "Plagiarism is the use
of another’s work, words, or ideas
without attribution."
Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning
https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/writing/using-sources/understanding-and-avoiding-plagiarism/what-plagiarism

7. Plagiarism is not a crime in most countries
Not all plagiarism is a copyright violation.
Plagiarism is an academic offense

8. Factors contributing to plagiarism
Husain, F. M., Al-Shaibani, G. K. S., & Mahfoodh, O. H. A. (2017). Perceptions of and Attitudes toward
Plagiarism and Factors Contributing to Plagiarism: a Review of Studies. Journal of Academic Ethics,
15(2), 167–195. doi:10.1007/s10805-017-9274-1

9. plagiarism prevention
is better than
plagiarism detection
My vision
and core message

10. plagiarism detection approaches
➢
extrinsic plagiarism detection
➢
similarity with other content
➢
Internet publications
➢
other student works
➢
intrinsic plagiarism detection
➢
style breach detection
Tomáš Foltýnek, Norman Meuschke, and Bela Gipp. 2019. Academic Plagiarism Detection: A
Systematic Literature Review. ACM Comput. Surv. 52, 6, Article 112 (October 2019), 42 pages.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3345317

11. Unicheck Plagiarism Checker Plugin for Moodle https://moodle.org/plugins/plagiarism_unicheck

12. Why detection tools do not work well
➢
Once students know how the tools work,
they can easily avoid detection.
➢
Not (easily) detected
➢
Copying of offline sources
➢
Paraphrases
➢
Translations
➢
Appropriation of ideas or concepts
➢
Ghostwriting

13. MrScrip, 2011, CC-By-SA 3.0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PD_Methods_Detection_Performance.png

14. "There is consensus in the literature
that the inability
of plagiarism detection systems
to identify obfuscated plagiarism
is currently their most severe limitation"
Tomáš Foltýnek, Norman Meuschke, and Bela Gipp. 2019. Academic Plagiarism Detection: A Systematic
Literature Review. ACM Comput. Surv. 52, 6, Article 112 (October 2019), 42 pages.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3345317

15. "students can use
online paraphrasing tools
or article spinners
in ways that avoid detection
by originality checking software
such as Turnitin"
Rogerson, A.M., McCarthy, G. Using Internet based paraphrasing tools: Original work, patchwriting or facilitated
plagiarism? International Journal for Educational Integrity 13, 2 (2017).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-016-0013-y

16. Not only false negatives,
but also false positives!
High similarities with
(draft) publications of same student

17. Presumption of innocence?
Presumption of guilt?
relationship / communication
between teachers and students
Promote students' ownership
of their own learning
and their own education
Avoid the sense that this
belongs to a teacher who’s going to grade it
Sean Michael Morris, in Nick Roll, New Salvo Against Turnitin, Inside Higher Ed, June 19, 2017,
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/06/19/anti-turnitin-manifesto-calls-resistance-some-technology-digital-age

18. Fundamental issues
➢
Plagiarism detection services
➢
“undermine students’ authority” over their own work
➢
place students in a role of needing to be “policed”
➢
“create a hostile environment”
➢
supplant good teaching with the use of inferior technology
➢
violate student privacy
CCCC Intellectual Property Caucus - Recommendations regarding Academic Integrity and the use
of plagiarism detection systems
As summarized in Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel, 2017, A Guide for Resisting Edtech:
the Case against Turnitin, Hybrid Pedagogy, https://hybridpedagogy.org/resisting-edtech/

19. Fundamental issues
“While students who use Turnitin
are discouraged from copying other work,
the company itself can
strip mine and sell student work for profit.”
Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel, 2017, A Guide for Resisting Edtech: the Case against
Turnitin, Hybrid Pedagogy, https://hybridpedagogy.org/resisting-edtech/

20. Some workflows
are worse than others
➢
Workflow 1
➢
Teacher uploads student work to an online tool. The
student work and meta data remains in the proprietary
database of the company. The company is showing
(matching parts of) that student work to paying
customers.
➢
Workflow 2
➢
University has a policy that requests students to upload
their works to the online tool...
➢
Workflow 3
➢
Students upload their works in the university e-learning
server and all similarity checks happen locally.
➢
Extremely rare...

21. Trial students against Turnitin
Judge decision
➢
Students have no case against the company
because they accepted the clickwrapped agreement,
shielding the company from liability. The company is
not forcing students to use the service, and thus not
forcing them to accept the agreement.
➢
Students have a case against against their university
forcing them to use this service.

22. Many universities decided not to use
Turnitin (or similar dubious services),
including Mount Saint Vincent University,
Princeton, Harvard, Yale and Stanford.
Amarnath, Ravi (2006-03-15). "Mount St. Vincent bans Turnitin.com". The Gazette.
Osellame, Julia (2006-04-04). "University opts not to 'Turnitin'". The Daily Princetonian.

23. Free Open Source tools?
➢
Costly to provide as it is not only a matter of software
➢
Storage and processing of copies of student works,
copies of internet content and queries
➢
Rather SaaS = Software as a Service.
➢
"We have 13 seven-foot computer racks to
determine if a student has lifted one line in an essay
from the Internet."
➢
John Barrie, founder of Turnitin, In Emanuella Grinberg, Student wins battle against
plagiarism-detection requirement, Court TV, January 21, 2004
https://edition.cnn.com/2004/LAW/01/21/ctv.plagiarism/

24. 18 Moodle plagiarism plugins
https://moodle.org/plugins/browse.php?list=category&id=35
https://docs.moodle.org/38/en/Managing_plagiarism_prevention

25. What’s the best you can do?
➢
Institutional policy about academic integrity
➢
Teach students
➢
Course about
➢
Scientific methodologies
➢
Academic integrity
➢
Academic writing, including
➢
why to cite
➢
when to cite
➢
how to cite
➢
how to quote or paraphrase in a fair way
➢
Define original writing tasks
➢
Ask a literature review
➢
Give a score on references
➢
Be an example and use references in your course material!

26. ➢
Define and discuss plagiarism thoroughly.
➢
Discuss hypothetical cases.
➢
Revise plagiarized passages.
➢
Review the conventions of quoting and documenting material.
➢
Require multi-drafts of essays.
➢
Require students to submit copies of documented material
➢
Provide proper proofreading guidelines
➢
Offer proper collaboration guidelines
➢
Offer response appropriate to the type of error.
➢
Have patience.
Stephen Wilhoit (1994) Helping Students Avoid Plagiarism, College Teaching, 42:4, 161-164,
DOI:10.1080/87567555.1994.9926849
What’s the best you can do?

27. Human detection
➢
First step
➢
(intrinsic plagiarism detection)
➢
Try to detect style breaches
➢
Second step
➢
(extrinsic plagiarism detection)
➢
Search for the exceptional sentences in a Web Search
Engine.

28. Additional credits
➢
Question mark CC-by by Stefan Baudy
➢
GNU Head Joseph W. Reiss Free Art License or the GNU GPLv2

29. This presentation was made with 100% Free Software
No animals were harmed
Questier.com
Frederik AT Questier.com
www.linkedin.com/in/fquestie
www.diigo.com/user/frederikquestier
www.slideshare.net/Frederik_Questier
T
hank
you!
Q
uestions?