Eighth Biennial National Conference of the Association for Academic Language and Learning (AALL) 29 - 30 November 2007
Abstract
Plagiarism prevention or detection? The contribution of text-matching software to education about academic integrity.
Dominic Keuskamp and Regina Sliuzas
Student Learning Centre, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
regina.sliuzas@flinders.edu.au
Developing an understanding of academic integrity within students is one of the core objectives of many academic skills advisers, and the perceived rise of plagiarism (Larkham & Manns 2002) suggests that this will continue to demand our attention. Text-matching software has been routinely promoted on the basis of its capabilities for ‘plagiarism detection’. More importantly, it also offers students educative opportunities which ironically, yet appropriately, are web-based, given the increasing ‘web-dependency’ of students. This paper examines how text-matching software can contribute to the role academic advisers play in developing students’ understanding of academic integrity. Students from across one university were invited to submit their assignments to a text-matching software program called SafeAssignment as part of the Student Learning Centre’s contribution towards education about academic integrity. Text-matching reports generated from more than 100 students were analysed to identify the extent and nature of identifiable plagiarism, and how the software communicated this to students. Overall percentages of text-matching were low, with many students’ texts matching purely on information that was bibliographical, appropriately quoted, generic or technical. However, those texts that exhibited an overall matching score of more than 10% usually indicated identifiable plagiarism, with most consisting of verbatim copying without acknowledgment of a source. The implications of the findings will be discussed.
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