Three Steps for Preventing Plagiarism

John BrocatoBagley College of Engineering – Mississippi State University

ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

[1]

Presentation Overview

Delivery

1. Our Program

2. My Experience with This Subject

3. Motivation for This Work

4. The Three Steps

5. Data?

6. Limitations of This Work

ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

Shackouls Technical Communication Program

•Support for entire college

•Course required of all undergraduates

•All levels of students’ careers

from pre-engineering to senior design

ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

My Experience with This Subject

•B.A. and M.A. in English

•Three years in English teaching freshman composition 1 and 2, technical writing

•Nine years in engineering teaching technical communication to engineering majors

•Four years on academic-misconduct committee (90+% plagiarism)

ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

Motivation for This Work

•Plagiarism is a concern in any setting (academia and industry).

•Engineering schools have an obligation to ensure their students’ communication is legal and ethical.

•Non-technical-communication faculty may lack the time, expertise, or confidence to address this concern.

ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

1. Define plagiarism for your students.

• Theft of others’ work, purchase of papers online, grievous misuse of sources

• Accurate description of paraphrasing

• University policies and codes of conduct

ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

[2]

1. Define plagiarism (cont.).

IMPORTANT: Provide good and bad examples.

ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

Original passage: To create functional and marketable embedded automotive applications with GUIs that use dashboard displays, developers must be able to successfully address all those problems. Unacceptable paraphrase: To create functional and marketable embedded automotive applications with graphical user interfaces that use dashboard displays, developers must be able to address problems associated with the size and performance of the interface. (Too many of the same words appear in both passages; same general sentence structure in both; no citation) Acceptable paraphrase: According to [AUTHOR], engineers must solve a host of technical and commercial problems in order to create successful embedded automotive applications that use GUIs and dashboard displays [1].

2. Require one citation format.

• Focuses expectation and execution

• Allows for finite set of examples

• Provides practice with following instructions

ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

2. Require one format (cont.).

IMPORTANT: Provide plenty of examples.

ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

Sample Citations

Papers Published in Proceedings[4] J. Harden and B. Chapman. "Improving the Writing-Evaluation Abilities of Graduate Teaching Assistants in ECE Labs," in Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition. CD-ROM. (Portland, Oregon, Jun. 12-15, 2005).

Technical Reports[5] D. Hibbard. "Tensile-strength testing of fiberglass fixtures with a reformulated wetting agent: a summary of research results," Composite Mill, Rasche Fiberglass Factory, Torrance, California, Tech. Rep. MMFTT-TR-96-99, Jun. 1, 1996.

(…and enforce the guidelines!)

3. Use Plagiarism-Detection Tools.

• Excellent lines of defense in spotting potential problems

• Most beneficial with in-class tutorial (many false positives)

IMPORTANT: Require students to upload their own writing, and let them see their originality reports.

ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

NOTE: We use Turnitin.com.

Excerpt from an Originality Report

Data?

Two instances of plagiarism worthy of prosecution in the past five years

Nearly 1800 students through our required course in that time

Does not count minor problems (one sentence or less) or those found during the draft process

ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

Limitations of These Steps

•Requires additional time in class and in grading

•Plagiarism-detection software / websites require judgment – not a magic bullet

•Plagiarism detection can be expensive

•Can be a Pandora’s Box

ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

BUT…do some of this if you cannot do it all!

References

[1] “Drawing Illustrating Plagiarism,” in “Plagiarism,” April 6, 2008. [Online.] Not available: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/ marcuse/classes/plagiarism600pxw.jpg

[2] “Mississippi State University Honor Code,” in Dean of Students – Mississippi State University, April 4, 2008. [Online.] Available: http://students.msstate.edu/honorcode/

ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

Questions?

ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

brocato@engr.msstate.edu