Plagiarism

Mohammed and Scott have each submitted the draft of their first assignment. The assignment submission process incorporated submission of their file to Turnitin. Mohammed viewed his Originality Report and found a Similarity Index of 25% which was colour coded yellow. Scott’s Similarity Index was 2% and colour coded green. Before class, students were talking about how to interpret the Turnitin report. Scott thought since his was green and such a small number that he would be safe and thus he didn’t plan to revise his document before the final submission. Mohammed was quite worried as he was sure his higher index number meant he was going to be receive an allegation of plagiarism, he was planning to discuss his work with the tutor. Is this plagiarism?

• Yes

• It depends on the content

• No

Harry sometimes has difficulty writing so he was grateful when his tutor agreed to give him some feedback on a draft of his assignment. The feedback included this comment: “Your essay is poorly constructed and consists of a series of mostly unconnected paragraphs. This is what happens when you copy too much material from other sources without summarising and interconnecting the ideas and presenting them in your own words. Although you have included many quotations with in-text citations, some sentences are obviously copied without any acknowledgement at all. Finally, your references at the end have not been formatted strictly according to the guidelines provided. You have put commas and full stops in all the wrong places.” Harry has completed one semester as a full time student (100 credits). Will Harry get an academic integrity warning?

• Yes, if he submits it like this

• It depends on the tutor's judgement

• No, because he is a first year student

Kellie, Lu and Mary (third- years) formed a group that was required to undertake a research project and submit a report on the project. The students were also required to estimate the relative contribution of each to the final report. They were given a process for doing this. Mary had done almost no work on the project because of illness, but was close friends with Lu who did a lot of extra work. Lu wanted the group to claim ‘equal’ contribution because Mary could not help being sick, and knew that she would have done the work if she was well. Kellie was not happy about this but felt pressured to agree to it. They completed and each signed the form to claim equal contribution but later, Kellie complained to the lecturer about being coerced into it. Is this collusion?

• Yes, because the work is misrepresented

• It depends on the tutor's judgement

• No, because the student was sick

A PhD candidate, Vince, was worried about his English language proficiency so he employed an editor to check his draft research proposal and correct his use of English. Vince provided the editor with an electronic copy of his proposal and the editor used ‘track changes’ in Microsoft Word to indicate issues that needed to be addressed. The editor worked through the proposal, correcting all the non-standard grammar and incorrect vocabulary, in some sentences the word order was also changed. The editor emailed Vince the electronic file including the tracked changes. Vince opened the document in Microsoft Word and used the function ‘Accept all changes in document’, he then saved the file and submitted the document as part of his application for candidacy. Is this ghost writing?

• Yes

• It depends on the nature of the edits

• No

Romy handed in a laboratory report in which she had included four illustrative graphics, none of which were cited or referenced. She did not use the original graphics, but had carefully re-drawn each one. As the graphics were not original, Romy did not think that she had to cite or reference them. Is this plagiarism?

• Yes

• It depends on their likeness to the original artwork

• It depends on the ubiquity of the original artwork

• No, because she redrew them

Two second-year students, Amy and Carin, handed in substantial assignments (worth 30%) that were practically identical. When the tutor questioned them, she found that Amy had finished the assignment early and had then given it to Carin to help her get started. Unbeknown to Amy, Carin then copied most of it and submitted the assignment under her own name. Did they both collude?

• Yes

• No, only Amy colluded.

• No, only Carin colluded.

• No, neither student colluded.

Students in a second year unit were required to write up specific details of eight visits to different work sites in a formal assessed journal. When marking their work, a tutor noticed that for four of the visits, two students, Tran and Paul, had identical journal entries. On questioning them, Tran and Paul complained that they had heavy workload commitments and were having difficulty attending all visits. After four visits, they decided that Tran would visit the next two sites and produce reports, and then Paul would visit the last two sites and produce reports. They then copied each other’s reports for their respective journals. Did both students collude?

• Yes

• No, only Tran colluded

• No, only Paul colluded

• No, neither student colluded