c. van noortwijk - plagiarism & fraud 1 plagiarism and fraud in education kees van noortwijk...

C. van Noortwijk - Plagiarism & Fraud 1

Plagiarism and Fraud in Education

Kees van Noortwijk

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Centre for Computers and Law


Overview

• Description of the problem• Importance of the problem• Possible measures against it

– Organisational– Technical

• Some specific tools– Fraud Finder software / services– Portfolio-based solutions


The problem of Plagiarism & Fraud

• Plagiarism: use of other people’s words or ideas without giving proper credit

• Fraud (in education): plagiarism and other forms of copying in situations where this is expressly forbidden (examination, individual assignment)


How important is this problem?

• Plagiarism– students are unaware they should acknowledge

properly – happens very often

• Fraud– First year students share assignments– Recent experience: 600 assignments, 50 ‘suspect

pairs’ (= 100 students); 20 marked as Fraud – Thesis: several examples of complete copies


Why all the recent attention?

• Information technology– has made it easier (Copy and Paste 100 pages at

the touch of a button)– has changed the scale (internet as a global

source)– can even provide tools to mask fraudulent actions

• Education– renewed attention for individual, written work– more essays, less multiple choice questions– information retrieval skills are encouraged


Non-technical counter measures

• Make subject explicit• Give guidelines for proper

acknowledgment• Exercise an ‘honour code’• Design exams & assignments carefully

Etc.


Technical counter measures

Three main categories:

1. Check student work ‘externally’ against every available electronic source (internet)

2. Check student work ‘internally’ against that of other students (i.e. compare exams / assignments)

3. Check the consistency of all productions by every single student


1. External checking

• By handfind a characteristic phrase and try to find this using Google

• By means of a (usually commercial) serviceupload one or more documents, receive a report on suspicious elements– Safe Assignments– Turnitin– Urkund– Ephorus

Etc.


2. Internal checking

• Closed set of documents• Finding and displaying similar pairs/sets• Let the teacher decide if a similarity

constitutes fraud/plagiarism• Especially useful for assignments• Software:

– Wcopyfind– CopyCatch– Codas Fraud Finder


The ‘Fraud Finder’ Programme

• Document pairs compared

• Similarity score 0..10000

• Document pairs ranked according to score

• Used to detect plagiarism / fraud


Results of ‘Fraud Finder’

• Ordered list of pairs• Indication of re-occurrence of assignments• Fraud score• Possibility to open both documents and

inspect them


3. Consistency checking

• Verify authorship by comparison• Has been performed (mostly by hand) by

linguists and statisticians for over 50 years

• Characteristics: word use, syntax elements, etc.

• Needed:– ‘Portfolio’ of all written work of a student– ‘Background database’ with work by others


Tool for consistency checking

• Examples / Counter examples• Earlier work by this student: +• Work by other students: -• New essay / thesis: unmarked• Calculate document scores, evaluate

position of the new essay


Conclusion

• Plagiarism & Fraud have become a serious problem

• IT can play a role in the ‘invocation’• IT can also play a role in fighting it• Technical means can be effective, but

need to be embedded in the educational policy of the institution

• Conventional means are still important as well

c. van noortwijk - plagiarism & fraud 1 plagiarism and fraud in education kees van noortwijk...

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