My thoughts on plagiarism in VET classrooms
Over the years, I’ve noticed that audit reports have begun to increasingly include non-compliances relating to student plagiarism. In fact, even in the last few weeks, I’ve worked on several audit rectifications that all included issues around student plagiarism. This new focus has led to me run short training sessions for RTO trainers and assessors that help them to identify and resolve plagiarism issues. I find these sessions extremely valuable, because they keep me in touch with diverse, qualified and experienced RTO team members – many of whom have very interesting perspectives on plagiarism.
How much “plagiarism” is acceptable?
Yesterday, during one of these training sessions, a participant in the group asked for my view on what level of plagiarism I thought was acceptable in a VET context. This really caused me to reflect on the nature of what “plagiarism” really is and how much of it we should tolerate (if any at all).
One member of the session explained that, at the University where she worked, 30-40% of a piece of assessment being plagiarised was considered defensible. However, I think that it’s rather hard to define what “level of plagiarism” we in the education industry should accept.
The answer… it depends
It’s my view that what truly constitutes plagiarism and how much of it is okay should really be viewed in the context of the specific assessment task.
For example, say there is a question in an assessment that asks that student:
“What is the purpose of the Fair Work Act 2009?”
There are only so many ways that a student can answer this question, and much of their response is likely to come from the Act itself. If they Google search “Fair Work Act” and reproduce what the Act says about itself (which is the best source of that information), is that plagiarism?
I would argue not, but I feel that this represents a larger problem that revolves around the question itself.
Reframing your questions
To contrast, consider if the question instead tasked the student to:
“Discuss the role of the Fair Work Act 2009 in the modern Australian workplace”
If the student then copied large amounts of text from a source on the Internet, I would argue that their response is now plagiarism. This question requires more input; it is now a “discussion” rather than a “definition”, but by copying text from the Internet, the student hasn’t contributed their own thoughts or perspectives.
Even with this topic, if the student has reproduced information from another source – but either referenced it or thoroughly restructured the sentences – is that still acceptable?
I’m not sure that there’s a clear-cut answer.
Relying on plagiarism software and knowing your students
Education providers are increasingly using plagiarism software to tackle this issue, but to me, this isn’t a catch-all solution.
Based on feedback from providers, I’ve heard that the software can sometimes give false results – for example, flagging particular words as “plagiarised” (even though individual words can’t be plagiarised) or even giving differing results depending on the time of day!
Cutting and pasting a student’s answer (or part of their answer) into Google and seeing what comes up can be a simple and effective investigative tool.
I also think that most trainers and assessors know their students well enough to be able to spot differences between the way that they write or speak in class and their assessment work.
There’s no easy answer to the topic of plagiarism, especially when it often occurs because a student has been enrolled in course that isn’t really appropriate for their English language level.
Strategies to prevent plagiarism
- Give guidance to students in their orientation about plagiarism, collusion and cheating.
- Reinforce this guidance in classes, using visual tools – such as posters.
- Ensure that students understand your expectations and how to properly reference work.
- Make sure that trainers understand:
- the importance of detecting plagiarism,
- the RTOs procedures, and
- how important it is to carefully review student work to detect plagiarism.
5. Complete regular student file checks to pick up any instances of plagiarism.
6. Rework assessment questions to encourage more independent and situational thinking.
- For example, change “What is outsourcing?” to “Assume that your boss has asked you to ‘outsource’ your business’ bookkeeping. What might he mean by this request?”
What are your thoughts on plagiarism and its effect on RTOs and students? I’d love to discuss this further and go into greater depth for new insights on this topic!
Financial Services Education
3 年We have had several plagiarism issues at both VET and Higher Ed levels. We run several sessions on plagiarism in higher Ed and support for rewording is available. I don’t think it will go away. It will be a constant battle and our role as educators is to keep educating our students about academic integrity regardless of AQF level. I like the idea of reframing the question. Use of Blooms provides more clarity for the type of answer required and I agree Sally - most texts which the students will access will be useful but as a copy and paste will not answer the question and that’s how we often pick up the plagiarism.
Workplace, People and Culture Specialist at CTS
4 年I once had four students hand in exactly the same work for their RPL evidence., now that's plagiarism,. This is a really great article and discussion platform, from which we will all learn a little more about this complex subject.
Children’s Services Coordinator, Trainer and Assessor at Macarthur Community College
4 年When I completed my Bachelor in Early Childhood, I had no previous experience in writing essays. I relied on Google to teach myself. I was terrible at referencing and the University used a tool called Turnitin. I found that if I submitted close to midnight, it detected less plagiarism. I agree that asking for a definition opens the door to plagiarism. Asking for an opinion on something will provoke the students ideas rather than a definition using Google and a thesaurus. I find that when students use this technique to combat plagiarism, they often change key words and the thesaurus gives a word that actually means something else! Wording is the key to combating plagiarism and developing a culture that the students ideas are important. Making the student feel like their ideas or opinion are so valuable that they wouldn’t even want to copy from the internet.
Gentleman of leisure
4 年A better question would be to discuss the relevance of the Fair Work Act to the individual's workplace. This will ensure that any answer is based on the individual student's understanding of the Act and how it applies in the context of their situation. No workplace? Well, in such a situation the training and assessment cannot be called competency-based. The outcome can only be that the individual is competent at applying skills and knowledge in simulated environment.