Skip to main content
Our journal logo
Search

Vol. 2 No. 3 (2005)

Published: 1 November 2005

Articles

  • Editorial 2.3

    J. Carroll

    The overarching theme for this special edition is academic integrity. The theme prompted papers which ranged widely in stance, purpose and methodology from authors in Australia and New Zealand. Many authors began by defining words (i.e. 'integrity', 'plagiarism' or 'original') and I propose doing the same in these opening remarks. The word that struck me in the JUTLP title was 'practice' and I kept that word in mind when selecting papers. I was asking myself: 'How might the special edition address the needs of practitioners themselves? What can the authors contribute to issues effecting teachers, students, university administrators and/or other researchers concerned with actions and interventions designed to encourage academic integrity? The result was accepting more papers than could be accommodated in a single issue. It may be that the volume of submissions just reflects academics' need to publish but more positively, it could also indicate how much energy and thought is being expended by practitioners in universities on this issue. These papers all offer something useful, I believe, to one or more of the practitioner groups.

    Read article: Editorial 2.3

  • Proper Acknowledgment?

    J. East

    The concern in Australian universities about the prevalence of plagiarism has led to the development of policies about academic integrity and in turn focused attention on the need to inform students about how to avoid plagiarism and how to properly acknowledge. Teaching students how to avoid plagiarism can appear to be straightforward if based on the notion that plagiarism is copying without proper acknowledgment. This paper reviews the term ‘proper acknowledgment’ in the academic context and argues that proper acknowledgement can be a matter of context and perception. In this paper forms of plagiarism are reviewed, reasons for student plagiarism are considered and different contexts for acknowledgement and how these fit in with concepts of attribution and originality are discussed. Comments from international students new to Australian academic culture provide insights and reveal that students in trying to master the rules of acknowledgment can be perplexed and concerned about when and why they should acknowledge.

    Read article: Proper Acknowledgment?

  • Scaffolding Academic Integrity: Creating a Learning Context for Teaching Referencing Skills

    L. Emerson, M. T. Rees, B. MacKay

    Methods of detecting plagiarism and teaching skills relating to the use of secondary sources are matters of increasing contention within academia. The project presented in this paper melds the use of a detection tool (Turnitin) with a multi-strategy educational programme. The results show that using percentage of secondary sources usage as an indicator of plagiarism is unreliable, that a one-on-one tutor clinic may be an useful part of any educational programme, and that students’ inability to reference correctly may be based on an inadequate understanding of the process of academic writing, rather than a misunderstanding of the conventions. This suggests that students would benefit from interactive teaching or teaching materials which focus on the process of using secondary sources, rather than teaching which focuses solely on definition of terms and conventions of secondary source usage.

    Read article: Scaffolding Academic Integrity: Creating a Learning Context for Teaching Referencing Skills

  • Student Perceptions of a Trial of Electronic Text Matching Software: A Preliminary Investigation

    D. Green, I. Lindemann, K. Marshall, G. Wilkinson

    It is accepted that using electronic detection methods has benefits within an overall strategy to promote academic integrity in an institution. Little attention has been paid to obtaining student perceptions to evaluate the cost/benefit of using such methods. This study reports on the evaluation of a trial of Turnitin software. 728 students responded to a survey about their thoughts on plagiarism and being involved in the trial. This study found that students were generally unsure about the benefits and whether the university should use the software. In particular, two groups of students showed significant differences to the rest of the students sampled. While Non English Speaking Background (NESB) students reported higher levels of perceived usefulness of the software, they also reported higher levels of anxiety about the impact on them. Law students reported lower levels of perceived usefulness of the software and higher levels of concern and mistrust. The impact of such perceptions on the learning environment needs to be investigated. Special attention may be needed in introducing such software to different groups of students in order to limit possible deleterious effects and enhance potential benefits.

    Read article: Student Perceptions of a Trial of Electronic Text Matching Software: A Preliminary Investigation

  • A Rheme of One’s Own: How ‘Original’ do we Expect Students to be?

    A. Johnson, R. Clerehan

    Current discussions of plagiarism in the university have taken something of a criminological turn. At the same time, there is a tendency to focus on technological solutions. Against these trends, we argue that plagiarism remains, fundamentally, a philosophical and pedagogical issue for universities, related to understanding the meaning of originality and using sources for different disciplines. Toward this goal we place the notion of originality in its historical and disciplinary contexts, and question the view that it is a natural and universal quality of good writing. The practice of assessing undergraduate students on their ability to produce ‘original’ texts depends on a notion of originality that is unstable and uncertain. We examine a sample of statements about originality given to students and explore the nature of the demands placed on student writers in the internationalised university.

    Read article: A Rheme of One’s Own: How ‘Original’ do we Expect Students to be?

  • Academic Integrity: An Awareness and Development Issue for Students and Staff

    U. McGowan

    University plagiarism policies aimed at assuring academic integrity provide for increased vigilance and disciplinary procedures to deal with transgressions. Many policies also include guidelines to teaching staff to ensure that students are adequately informed about the meaning of plagiarism and its consequences, and about methods of citing within the particular referencing system in use. However, the experience of academic advising has indicated that receiving such information is insufficient for students who, for a variety of reasons, inadvertently lapse into plagiarism. This is particularly the case for international students for whom English is a second or additional language. A simple and not excessively timeconsuming strategy is proposed for academics to ensure that students have the opportunity to learn not only the mechanics of what they are required to do, but also the reasons for the requirements and assistance in learning the language for fulfilling these requirements. The strategy involves, firstly, the induction of students into the concept of evidence-based learning as the essential characteristic of university learning, teaching and research, and secondly, the application of a tool such as genre analysis for mastering the language of their discipline. This is an awareness and development issue that is particularly important for international students whose time within the English-speaking Australian university environment may be limited to three or four years. The proposed strategy has the potential of becoming a powerful mechanism for reducing the incidence of inadvertent plagiarism, as well as raising the overall standard of written work for an increasing range of students.

    Read article: Academic Integrity: An Awareness and Development Issue for Students and Staff

  • Using an Electronic Text-Matching Tool (Turnitin) to Detect Plagiarism in a New Zealand University

    R. Goddard, R. Rudzki

    This paper is concerned with reporting the experience and findings of staff using a commercially-available textmatching tool (Turnitin) to detect plagiarism in a university setting in New Zealand. The use of actual instances of plagiarism revealed through Turnitin in a teaching department is a departure from the more usual selfreporting methodology used in many plagiarism research papers. The paper concludes by asking questions of the implications for institutions, teaching staff and students.

    Read article: Using an Electronic Text-Matching Tool (Turnitin) to Detect Plagiarism in a New Zealand University

  • Land and Discover! A Case Study Investigating the Cultural Context of Plagiarism

    N. Handa, C. Power

    Despite a growing body of evidence, the common causal factors of plagiarism among international students are still widely seen to be poor language skills or a lack of academic integrity on the part of the students. This research uses the experiences of a particular cohort of students to explore these assumptions. It investigates and compares the notion of academic integrity and the understanding of plagiarism of both Indian postgraduate students who are currently studying in Australia and students currently studying at Indian universities. Postgraduate international students from India have studied in English at an undergraduate level in India and have a clear understanding of academic integrity in their own context. However their undergraduate experience occurs in a culturally different context to that of the Australian university system and they face the challenge of learning new academic conventions. This paper argues that students coming from different educational cultures require proper and explicit induction into the principles and philosophy behind many western academic conventions as different conventions of scholarship in the Australian education system can create unique difficulties for them. To accuse international students in general of a lack of integrity because they plagiarise or to blame only their lack of language skills for plagiarising seems to be arguable. Rather, the impact of transition from a different university culture without explicit academic skills orientation and instruction needs to be addressed. The paper also points towards the paradox of punishment in western universities where international students have to prove their integrity and innocence regarding the ethical principles of a new and foreign culture.

    Read article: Land and Discover! A Case Study Investigating the Cultural Context of Plagiarism

  • The Concept of Integrity in Teaching and Learning

    R. Nillsen

    In this paper it is argued that the concept of integrity in a person, or an activity, or an institution, is intimately connected with notions of wholeness and completeness, and that the creation of integrity consists in developing an awareness of the possibility of greater wholeness and completeness, and in creating environments in which they may occur. In a manner analogous to ethical integrity, integrity in inquiry, knowledge learning and teaching is seen as arising from a preparedness to submit oneself to a larger intellectual whole, in which one might say that individual preference is secondary to a “transcending state of affairs”. Some suggestions are made to help towards progressing the ideals of integrity in teaching and learning, with some discussion in relation to specific disciplines.

    Read article: The Concept of Integrity in Teaching and Learning

  • Turnitin.com: Teachers’ Perspectives of Anti-Plagiarism Software in Raising Issues of Educational Integrity

    W. Sutherland-Smith, R. Carr

    Issues of academic plagiarism in educational institutions are often played out in the public arena. Media reports that ‘scandals’ occur in universities where plagiarism has gone undetected, or unpunished can undermine public faith in the academic integrity of higher education. Antiplagiarism software has been successfully marketed to universities as a means through which to detect and deter plagiarism. One commercially available product, Turnitin, has been embraced and implemented in many educational settings around the globe. Although Turnitin has been heralded as an effective measure to combat plagiarism, little empirical research has been undertaken to examine user perceptions of its effectiveness. This paper details a site-specific case study which explores the perspectives of seven teachers across five faculties at South-Coast University¹ about the effectiveness and usability of Turnitin. The findings indicate that Turnitin assists in detecting passages where text matches other sources. However, the software does not indicate whether plagiarism has occurred or not. That remains the decision of the teacher. Additionally, such software should not be considered a panacea for plagiarism. Students still require explicit teaching of the concept of textual attribution, often with subject-specific examples to understand acknowledgement conventions within academia.

    Read article: Turnitin.com: Teachers’ Perspectives of Anti-Plagiarism Software in Raising Issues of Educational Integrity