IEM & Sustainability

Sunday, June 25, 2006

ADDRESSING STUDENT PLAGIARISM

All Email originating from UWC is covered by disclaimer http://www.uwc.ac.za/portal/uwc2006/content/mail_disclaimer/index.htm

Hi

I received this email from our Director of ICS Prof. Derek Keats on the 06/20/06 07:50AM so I thought you should all review the article referred to.



Please note that I plagiarized this word for word....thought it might be of interest....



"Sally Brown, pro vice chancellor for assessment, learning, and teaching at Leeds Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom, believes that the age of technology has not only made cheating easy but has also engendered a sense among today's students that there is nothing wrong with copying and pasting someone else's work into your own. Many students today, she said, simply do not understand what plagiarism is and why it is wrong. Of the several approaches Brown suggested for fixing the problem, the one she thinks the best is designing coursework around plagiarism. By giving assignments that require personal knowledge or that compel students to provide regular accounts of their studies, an instructor can largely avoid the issue of plagiarism, according to Brown. Other strategies include education, punishments, and changing the culture among students so that cheaters are looked down on by everyone."
 
 
 
Derek Keats
 

 
I will be putting links up on the finalized documents from the Science Faculty for your attention. 
 

Cheers
 
Rich
 
Dr Richard Knight
Co-ordinator: National Information Society Learnerships - Ecological Informatics
Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology
University of the Western Cape
Private Bag X17
Bellville 7535
 
Phone 27 + 21 + 959 3940
Fax 27 + 21 + 959 1237
 
 
 
Dr Richard Knight
Co-ordinator: National Information Society Learnerships - Ecological Informatics
Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology
University of the Western Cape
Private Bag X17
Bellville 7535
 
Phone 27 + 21 + 959 3940
Fax 27 + 21 + 959 1237
 
 
 
 

posted by Rich Knight at 6/25/2006 12:23:00 PM | 0 comments

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

PLAGIARISM PREVENTION, GRADING AND PEER-REVIEW: THE WAY FORWARD

All Email originating from UWC is covered by disclaimer http://www.uwc.ac.za/portal/uwc2006/content/mail_disclaimer/index.htm

Hi Everyone 

I am finalizing the contract with Turnitin so that future assignments for me  (viz the NISL-EI2 courses) will require submitting to this electronic scanning service.  This is not actually to scare you, rather to help you with your writing skills and get away from a dependency for lifting text from the Internet, printed text and even previous student assignments submitted (your assignments are entered into an electronic database that is used for future scanning).  It works in the following way...
 
  • There will be a link on each course Blog page to Turnitin for submitting of the assignments.  
  • You will be issued Turnitin accounts (usernames and logins) for the NISL-EI courses. 
  • I will setup the assignment details for your submission. 
  • In the beginning you will be required to create your student profile that will include your ClassID and Password, which I will provide you via email.  You will then need to fill in your email address, provide your personal Turnitin password (a minimum of 6 letters and numbers but no special characters and at least one character must be a number), you will then be presented with a secrete password retrieval question and answer and finally to complete your profile you will provide your names (first and last name) and your Country. 
  • The creation of your student profile is completed when you accept the user profile agreement form. 
  • You will then get logged in and will navigate to the correct BCB course and assignment. 
  • You will upload your assignment and you will see that it has been uploaded (you can check that it is the right document via the on screen system) and once confirmed you will get a digital receipt and a confirmation email message that the assignment was submitted and time stamped. 
  • Late assignments will not be accepted via the electronic system. 
  • If you are confused do not worry online training videos will be provided just prior to initiation of this process. 
 
I have elected to go for an electronic marking as well, so your assignment will be analysed first for Plagiarism and if too high will be returned to you with a full report of where there is plagiarism and close paraphrasing.  I do not know how strictly this system will apply the rules but certainly just changing a word or two in place will not fool the system and it is based on a very comprehensive database.  I will then use my discretion as to whether you get zero marks or a chance to re-submit.  Unfortunately the cost of the scanning service is rather expensive and we pay for both an annual subscription and a per document cost, so chances to re-submit will be restricted (each assignment will cost me about R10 to process).  An electronic grading will be done and you will be sent back your marked-up scripts with the grade electronically.  This system will work much better than the old way of emailing them to my gmail account which I can only access after hours. Finally some assignments will also be peer marked by yourselves using the Turnitin Peer Review system.
 
Hopefully this will level the playing field and be fair to everyone and was a decision not taken lightly.  Until I know when our payments have been made and the Turnitin accounts been set up please hold back from submitting any assignments such as the Biodiversity due at the end of this week.  The first assignment that you will be submitting will be your cumulative Biodiversity reports (all of your answers combined into one report to save scanning costs and processing time). Since you have had extensive feedback on these assignments previously it will give us the perfect opportunity to know precisely how the implementation of the system will work. 
 
Can you please confirm that you have read and understood this posting by attaching a comment and your name.  This is also an opportunity to air any issues that you have or to finally clear up any misunderstandings, I promise to respond to all of your concerns if expressed. 
 
Good Luck
 
Rich
 
 
 

 
 
 
Dr Richard Knight
Co-ordinator: National Information Society Learnerships - Ecological Informatics
Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology
University of the Western Cape
Private Bag X17
Bellville 7535
 
Phone 27 + 21 + 959 3940
Fax 27 + 21 + 959 1237
 
 
 
 

posted by Rich Knight at 6/07/2006 02:04:00 AM | 0 comments

Thursday, May 25, 2006

PLAGIARISM DECLARATION

Hi Folks

At a recent BCB departmental meeting (May 2006) it was agreed that all students will need to sign an undertaking that their assignments have not been plagiarised and are correctly referenced. At an earlier meeting in 2006 the department agreed to using the CSE/CBE style for all referencing in student assignments. It was also recommended that all electronic courses also carry such a declaration. To this end you will note that a plagiarism declaration has been added to the right hand side of the Weblog ensuring compliance and understanding of the issues of plagiarism and correct citation, quotation and referencing.

It is important that you understand these issues and to this end Gwen and Nick have put a lot of effort in helping your identify and not to commit plagiarism while undertaking the Biodiversity course. I trust that this message is now fairly comprehensively understood, nevertheless you may submit certain assignments to Nick who has agreed to check them as per the revised schedule put up by Gwen in an earlier posting on the Biodiversity Blog (See http://bcb705.blogspot.com/2006/05/correction-editing-times.html )
 
How to avoid plagiarism?
  • Make your own notes when revising material and keep a record of all the references you have consulted.
  • Organise your notes into a mind map of the assignment.
  • Use your notes and mind map to prepared the final assignment.
  • Get a classmate to look through your assignment before submitting, for both plagiarism and proper referencing.
  • For submitting on the Weblog and when preparing Power Point presentations, I would recommend using a number in brackets after the text. The number should be hyperlinked to the article if it is available electronically available. The numbers must be organized in ascending order and placed within square brackets [1].
  • Do a few checks of phrases of five words or more using a Google Search
  • Finally  quickly read through your more important references to check that you subconsciously have not slipped in a near verbatim phrase.


Some important references to Plagiarism on the NISL Weblogs that you have participated in

PLAGIARISM: OFFICIAL RULING AND DEFINITION - SENATE UWC

DEFINING PLAGIARISM
 
 

Plagiarism and Referencing: Hopefully the last word

http://bcb705.blogspot.com/2006/05/plagiarism-and-referencing-hopefully.html


Cheers

Rich, Gwen and Nick
 
Team: National Information Society Learnerships - Ecological Informatics
Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology
University of the Western Cape
Private Bag X17
Bellville 7535
 
Phone 27 + 21 + 959 3940
Fax 27 + 21 + 959 1237
 




 
 
Dr Richard Knight
Co-ordinator: National Information Society Learnerships - Ecological Informatics
Department of Biodiversity and Conservation Biology
University of the Western Cape
Private Bag X17
Bellville 7535
 
Phone 27 + 21 + 959 3940
Fax 27 + 21 + 959 1237
 
 
 
 

posted by Rich Knight at 5/25/2006 02:41:00 PM | 0 comments