Hello Ginny and Burkard,
I just ran a JISC PDS pilot with 5 schools (18 members of staff/178 OR returned) )from October to February and based on the survey results we have recommended the institution subscribe to the service, which it now officially has. I purposely introduced the service as an educative tool and recommended access to students as well as staff. Students were informed of the availability. Staff used the tool in a number of ways which included collusion checks, standard checks and within an educational framework in which assignment drafts were submitted in order to address referencing practice with the student. The recommendation to subscribe to the service centred around four issues.
1) Staff agreed it saved them a great deal of time during marking when a paper seemed "suspicious", despite googling sometimes finding a source missed by JISC PDS. Here I think it is important to point out that JISC PDS does not spot plagiarism, but rather only matching text and that "catching cheats" was not the emphasis of the pilot. In the end, however, yes more were spotted than reported before.
2) It's educational potential for teaching good referencing practice was emphasised especially for dissertations (revision tool)
3) Collusion checking
4) Quality of Originality Reports
There was a misconception early on of the service being a magic bullet, which it is not. I have reemphasized that it is one tool in the plagiarism toolbox and that the main responsibility still lies with the tutor to educate the student and revamp assessment strategies, and with the university to support tutor efforts. Running the pilot opened a can of worms as more and more staff have started realising that colourless summative 5000 word essays is asking for trouble. This and many other issues are now being addressed in order to support a holistic approach to the problem, which I perceive as the greatest success of the JISC PDS pilot.
Christina
Christina Mainka,Ph.D.
Online Learning Adviser
Educational Development
Napier University
Craighouse Campus
Edinburgh EH10 5LG
T: (0131) 455 6110
E: [log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Plagiarism [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Burkard
Schafer
Sent: 03 May 2005 12:57
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Institutional take-up and use of the Service
Dear Ginny
I and two colleagues trialled the system for my school. We ultimately
recommended against taking it up, essentially for a mix of reasons.
First, there are resource implications. In particular (also from the
other thread) we don't think moving to an "electronic submission only"
system would be wise, and if we have paper and e-submission, someone
must check that the two submitted versions are identical. Any payment
would be on top if this.
This means it is not a question of "it can't do any harm" - there had to
be real advantages.
The problems we encountered may be law specific (or a reflection on our
technology skills), but we had a very high number of false positive, and
false negatives.
- false positives:
almost every essay was highlighted as plagiarised. Indeed, those not
"plagiarised" according to JISC were mostly clear fails: it is integral
part of most law essays to have extensive quotes from statutes, court
decisions and international treatises(all with non-standard
referencing). Almost all of them are internet available, and JISC
promptly told us that there was massive plagiarising going on from the
UN website. Correct use of direct quotes was also abundant. As a
result, the marker had to go through almost all essays again to check
that these were not cases of plagiarism
- false negatives:
A)JICS did not spot the most typical acts of plagiarism, which are
based on online subscription journals. I understand that some
subscription material is included? For our purpose, Lexis Nexis and
Westlaw are two commercial datasets of court decisions, newspapers and
academic articles. Especially the "poor study skill" variety of
plagiarism are regularly based on them. Often, students come from
jurisdictions that don't have an equivalent system, use (quite
correctly) cut and paste for "information harvesting" and then fail to
reference it properly, or to integrate it otherwise in the essay. (quite
often, the same students correctly reference off line journals) Almost
all cases of plagiarism that we detected over the past three years or so
were cut and pasts from these sources. Any system that does not have
access to Westlaw and Lexis is of very limited usefulness to law
schools. I don't know if JISc uses this by now, if so , it should be
made very clear to users.
B) The group for which plagiarism is the biggest concern are Master
students (as we use essays for undergraduates only sparingly, and
always in conjunction with other forms of assesment) Most of them are
from overseas and non-native English speakers. As a consequence, they
have access to material which is not accessible to markers or JISC. I
for instance spotted essays that were extensively based on an Italian
and a German article (the last one got extra penalties for stupidity -
its not as if my accent weren't noticeable ;o))
C) the possible "replacement" of plagiarism by tailor made essays
For the last two groups, JISC isn't worse than human markers, so this
would possibly be less of an issue.
Burkhard
Burkhard Schafer
School of Law
Edinburgh University
Old College
Edinburgh
EH8 9YL
[log in to unmask]
0044-(0)131-6502035
http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/staff/view.asp?ref=69
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Plagiarism [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
> Of Ginny Saich
> Sent: 26 April 2005 18:03
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Institutional take-up and use of the Service
>
>
> Given the forthcoming charge to be levied for use of the JISC
> plagiarism detection service from next academic year I
> wondered whether it might be possible (and timely) to
> ascertain information on potential future uptake through the list?
>
> We've piloted the service but had only limited uptake over
> the last two years - and thus have only limited evidence to
> support any continued use (and payment for) the service. The
> annual fee appears quite daunting in this context.
>
> The main reasons for limited uptake appear to be:
> - the perception that obtaining individual student's consent
> would be arduous (although in future this would no longer be
> required following an amendment to our regulations) and
> participation would have to be voluntary during the pilot;
> - the perception that the process could be time-consuming,
> yet no more effective than google searches;
> - the use of electronic submission not being common (except
> for courses offered through our VLE ie. WebCT)
> - no current (or envisaged) linkage to the version of WebCT
> in use at the institution
> - during the pilot it was deemed inappropriate to penalise
> cases of plagiarism detected only through the service since
> participation was voluntary and hence students would be
> effectively 'punished' for volunteering to participate
>
> Have others had similar or differing experiences that would
> helpfully inform institutional debate on future use of the Service?
>
> If anyone has evaluated their institutional use of the
> Service I would be very grateful for any information that
> they might be able to provide (either on or off the list) to
> inform our own deliberations. Such information would (of
> course) remain confidential.
>
> Perhaps it would be possible through the list to ascertain:
>
> - institutions who have already paid or are planning to
> continue use of the service once a fee is charged (or have
> decided against continuation);
>
> - the level of take-up of the service within institutions eg.
> number of staff/departments and/or students making use of the service;
>
> - the primary use(s) being made of the service eg.
> 'policing', pedagogic/learning support
>
> - the perceived/reported effectiveness of the service (with
> respect to its primary usage)
>
>
> Many thanks,
> Ginny
>
> **************************************************************
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>
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