Rooting out student cheats

5. Universities are today being urged to take the growing menace of plagiarism by students more seriously. Cheats are a minority, but their actions anger and discourage other students and devalue the status of British qualifications, says a report going out to UK universities and higher education colleges.

The guidelines, called Deterring, Detecting and Dealing with Student Plagiarism, published online by the universities' joint information systems committee (JISC), say universities need to nominate specific members of staff to deal with cases of plagiarism, but that the whole institution, from the vice-chancellor downwards, must coordinate policy to deal with a problem that has grown with the spread of the internet.

The report notes that an increasing number of UK institutions have specialist officers located within the school or department who deal with all cases of plagiarism. Markers who detect unacceptable behaviour pass the case to the specialist who decides whether plagiarism is demonstrated and allocates a punishment from a limited range of options. Oxford Brookes University, where the system has been in place for five years, has 14 "academic conduct officers" and Sheffield Hallam has a panel of specialist officers.

The majority of plagiarism cases occur when students misunderstand or misuse academic conventions and attribution rules, but it is the deliberate cheats who cause the most concern, argues the guidelines document. "Students who deliberately cheat or engage in fraudulent behaviour are characterised as threatening the values and beliefs that underpin academic work, angering and discouraging other students who do not use such tactics, devaluing the integrity of UK awards and qualifications, and distorting the efforts of lecturers who wish to teach rather than police others' actions."

Increasing pressures on students arising from undertaking paid work, heavier coursework load, or lack of personal organisation skills are contributing to the rise of plagiarism, argues the document.

It notes that concerns have been raised about "top-up" final-year programmes in which international students do the first two years in their home country and then finish the degree in the UK. The scheme meant students were often submitting a dissertation after eight months of UK study.

"Others worry it is more frequent in distance-learning programmes where authorship of coursework cannot be easily authenticated. It may be more common in very large classes. If these students enter programmes where the 'rules of the game' are unclear, they might continue to use tried and tested approaches and thereby, inadvertently, plagiarise," says the report, adding that the number of students falling into this category will grow as student cohorts become more diverse due to widening participation, increasing numbers of international students and greater use of different teaching modes (egdistance learning, work-based learning). (The Guardian, by Donald MacLeod, February 10, 2005)

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