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A U S T R A L I A N U N I V E R S I T I E S R E V I E W
Managing Student
Plagiarism in Large
Academic Departments
JUSTIN ZOBEL &
MARGARET HAMILTON
Plagiarism is too often treated arbitrarily, or with benign neglect. It’s time departments developed some proper professional
processes to track it down and punish it. Here’s the story of one department that did.
INTRODUCTION
Some students cheat. They take material from the web, pay for
assignment solutions, steal oppy disks, copy over shoulders,
transcribe passages of text from library books, barter essays,
or simply work too closely with their friends. Cheating, and
particularly plagiarism - in this context, the inclusion of some-
one else’s work in an assignment without acknowledgement
- is hardly a new phenomenon, but in modern universities it
is exceedingly common. (Marsden 2001) The forms of cheat-
ing vary between disciplines, and are changing rapidly with
the growth of the internet. In the humanities, the web’s vast
quantities of text on virtually any topic make it a simple task
for a student to stitch together an essay from borrowed mate-
rial. In our discipline, computer science, the web is a ready
source of programs for solving virtually any undergraduate
task. In addition, facilities such as email, le copying, and edi-
tors can be used by students to share work.
Our school, RMIT University, is large and there is plenty
of evidence that plagiarism was widespread. One disturbing
aspect of the issue is that staff were well aware that some stu-
dents were plagiarising but many felt that the problem was
insuperable while others felt that discipline was inappropri-
ate. Another issue is the occasional feedback from capable stu-
dents, in particular mature students, that they are embittered
by an apparent acceptance of the culture of cheating. With
the possibility - arguably, certainty - that some students were
completing their degrees with little competence in the sub-
ject material, we decided to act decisively and take all reason-
able steps to eliminate plagiarism.
In taking action, several factors were considered. First, as
attractive as it might be to make an example of the next batch
of students we caught, it would be unreasonable to dramat-
ically escalate the consequences of plagiarism without full
warning. Many of the students, notably those from other cul-
tures (around half of our students are international), do not
share our denition of plagiarism. Second, the problem may
have grown at least partly because of higher academic loads
and simply imposing further expectations on busy teaching
staff would not succeed. Third, discussions with staff revealed
that in important respects they were inadequately prepared to
manage plagiarism detection, so the development of workable
processes became an important aspect of the project. Indeed,
a central lesson is that detecting the instances of plagiarism is
only one aspect of the problem.
Introducing rigorous systems for detecting and penalising
plagiarism had the immediate effect that a large number of
cheating students were identied and interviewed. These
interviews, together with information from student advisors
and rights ofcers, allowed us to draw a range of observa-
tions on the causes of plagiarism, and helped us to rene our
approaches to reducing its incidence.
One longer-term consequence of our actions has been a sig-
nicant reduction in the number of students caught cheat-
ing. Another has been positive feedback from students who
were at university to study and learn and were competing for
marks with dishonest peers, and felt impotent in the presence
of conspicuous abuse of the system. While it is not pleasant
to investigate students, gather evidence, and institute discipli-
nary proceedings, overall the project has been benecial.
STAFF PERSPECTIVES
Over the last several years we became convinced that pla-
giarism in student assignments is widespread, one example
being the number of duplicate assignments that were found
by chance. We have also been aware that, unless we take spe-
cial measures, these incidents are difcult to detect in our
classes, which are relatively large. To deal with plagiarism,
there must be clear consensus among staff on what action is
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appropriate. In practice individual staff members have used
highly inconsistent procedures for dealing with plagiarism.
Some used their authority to extract confessions, while others
were content to simply issue warnings and did not pursue pla-
giarism at all. Yet other staff set out to deal with plagiarism
but would rely on a single mechanism – one or another form
of ‘magic bullet’. Individual staff were left to grapple with dif-
cult decisions concerning students’ futures.
There were few subjects in which a signicant number of
students were disciplined, regardless of the level of plagiarism.
Instituting disciplinary action against large numbers of stu-
dents is not practical, and many staff would be highly unwill-
ing to do so. There was an established (but not consensus)
view that copying is a petty crime deserving of mild penalties
which staff have the freedom to impose, such as loss of marks
for a specic assignment. Many staff had concerns that if large
numbers of students were indeed cheating, then it was argu-
ably the school and not the students who were at fault, and
that therefore it might be a symptom of understafng or
some other failure of educational facilities. While, in our view,
such concerns cannot be used to justify inaction, they cer-
tainly must be considered in deciding what actions to pursue
and what penalties might be invoked. Interestingly, however,
we saw little grounds for these concerns amongst the issues
raised in student interviews.
Other staff have been daunted by the likely burden of
having to manage the plagiarists and inexible or burden-
some procedures are a potential additional obstacle to per-
suading staff to police plagiarism. There is also a range of
other arguments that staff have used to justify inaction: that
plagiarists cannot possibly prosper in the long-term; that they
are being asked to act as ‘judge, jury, and executioner’; or that
detection of plagiarism simply isn’t part of the job descrip-
tion. While these arguments are dubious, their force for staff
who are uncomfortable with a policing role needs to be rec-
ognised.
Management of plagiarism at the school level has also had
shortcomings. Where incidents have been detected, they have
been dealt with but no central record kept, so that repeat
offenders were not identied.
1
Lack of central records meant
that a plausible student could cheat in a series of subjects and
in each case get away with it altogether or escape with a mini-
mal penalty; the longer-term pattern of dishonest behaviour
was not observed. Students begging to be forgiven for ‘just
one offence’ are often taken at face value. Indeed, persuading
staff to provide information for such records remains an issue.
In more than one case, someone who has stated discomfort
with the perceived role of ‘judge, jury, and executioner’ has
acted as judge, jury, executioner and governor – penalising stu-
dents and then issuing pardons and promises of secrecy. In
contrast, in no case was the evidence used to identify plagia-
rism placed on the student’s le.
Another issue for staff has been with the full-fee local and
international students. As noted by Tierney (2001) in the case
of a student at Curtin University who supposedly had plagia-
rised her essay three times: ‘she had been caught each time,
but she was still not punished and received her degree. The
newspaper reports suggested that she received her degree
because she was paying a full fee.’ Many staff have felt that
a warning, rather than failure is sufcient penalty since fail-
ure would cause the need to pay a high fee again. Inter-
national students may also then face problems in extending
their visa and funding living expenses for a further six or
twelve months. Some of our students have escaped discipline,
not because of a policy of ‘soft marking’, but for the reasons
above.
Thus some staff have not been willing to pursue plagiarism.
Others have pursued it, but inconsistently, and in some cases
with a poor understanding of the problem they were trying
to solve. Creating staff consensus was one of the rst issues
we had to address in our aim to reduce the incidence of pla-
giarism.
CAUSES OF PLAGIARISM
As our school has grown, and cheating has become increas-
ingly difcult to detect with manual methods, it appears that
there has been a simple feedback mechanism: with a belief
that cheats get away with it and that cheating is acceptable,
many students cheat. Thus a major cause of cheating has been
lack of effective deterrence. In the few subjects where there
had been thorough investigation, up to one third of the stu-
dents have been found to be involved in some form of pla-
giarism. Such cheating is a major source of disquiet among
students who do their own work.
While cheating via the web is a problem in some disci-
plines, it is less of an issue in computer science because each
programming assignment tends to require a unique solution.
What is more of a problem is students copying amongst them-
selves – very easy to do when all assignment materials are
online – and making use of editing tools to disguise super-
cial similarities so that sometimes only the program’s logic
remains unaltered. Such changes can be made with little
understanding of what the code does, how it works, or indeed
of the fundamentals of how to program at all.
There is, moreover, a culture amongst some students in com-
puting that copying is acceptable, reinforced by the wider
culture that it is acceptable to copy software, download copy-
right material from the internet, and so on. A surprise to us
– although perhaps it shouldn’t have been – was how much
information students share. For example, some subjects were
widely believed to be soft on plagiarism, and addresses of web
sites where solutions are available spread remarkably quickly.
We are aware of several kinds of situations that give rise
to plagiarism. These include, for example, students who have
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worked together a little too closely, and submit work that is
not sufciently independent; students who form cooperative
groups to share around the work, and systematically plagiarise
the bulk of their work; and students who purchase solutions
from outside sources. A major cause of plagiarism is students
overcommitting to other activities (such as socialising, sports,
earning income, or in some cases additional study) and cheat-
ing in desperation when the workload becomes unmanage-
able. In addition, we have occasionally uncovered other issues
such as deliberate entrapment as part of an attempt at coer-
cion. Perhaps most seriously, a small number of students have
completed subjects without undertaking any work or even
attending the exam.
In our interviews, we uncovered a range of issues contribut-
ing to students’ decisions to commit plagiarism. Some issues
were particularly acute for international students, who were
a clear majority of the individuals identied as plagiarists by
our software. Cultural issues appear to be a signicant ele-
ment in why students plagiarise. A simple one is that the
word ‘plagiarism’ may not mean much to a student from a
country where, in contrast to Australia, a low social value
is placed on individual work. Also, students who may have
been rewarded for rote-learning in their country of origin may
genuinely believe they have done what is expected of them
by adapting work done by someone else. As Xueqin (2002)
writes in the case of Wang Mingming from Peking University in
China, who was accused of plagiarising the work of an Amer-
ican academic, ‘plagiarism among professors and cheating
among students have been acceptable practices in a society
that has shown little awareness of intellectual property-rights
protection - almost anything can be copied or counterfeited if
the price is right.’ Another simple issue is that it is easy and
often tempting to plagiarise when living in shared accommo-
dation, remote from the family and community that might oth-
erwise act as a brake on risk-taking behaviour.
A more complex issue is the high value placed on family
and community relationships in the country of origin of many
of our students. A high-achieving student can come under
great pressure to help a fellow student who is in difculty.
For example, one student gave away his work because, as his
friend would have failed without his help, he felt he had no
choice but to assist him to cheat. Other issues arise around
the unchaperoned circumstances in which the students nd
themselves.
A common issue was the students’ perception of authority
gures as threatening, or in some cases the related issue of stu-
dents not wishing to be perceived as weak or in difculty. A
signicant number of instances of plagiarism occurred when
students found themselves for one reason or another in prob-
lematic or even desperate circumstances, but instead of seek-
ing help from the university turned to their friends. Despite
promotion of support services, and despite lecturers remind-
ing students to seek advice if personal difculties were impact-
ing on their studies, some students chose to plagiarise rather
than seek an extension. An example was an international stu-
dent who had heard from a relative that his father had col-
lapsed and was in a coma: he took a friend’s solution rather
than seek an extension or special consideration. This student,
and others in similar situations, reported their fear of becom-
ing conspicuous or of being perceived as troublemakers. A
consistent element in these cases was the students’ lack of
awareness that personal issues and visits to counsellors would
be kept in condence. Indeed, some students assume that all
information provided to any authority gure will be shared.
Financial problems are almost certainly the commonest
reason for our students to commit plagiarism. Many students
expect to be able to partially support themselves by employ-
ment, then nd themselves in difcult circumstances when
the combined stress of work and study is too high. The cost
of study and accommodation can place great demands on stu-
dents’ families, especially those of international students from
countries where incomes are considerably lower than ours.
These students are under pressure to support themselves and
under pressure to pass.
For these reasons, when handling plagiarism, we discovered
that it is crucial to recognise that each case is individual, with
varying possible causes that should be identied - whether,
for example, the student has cheated for one-off reasons in
relation to personal difculties, or is part of a network of sys-
tematic plagiarism and is essentially ignorant of the course
materials. While knowing the cause of the plagiarism may not
affect the penalty imposed, it should affect how the student
is subsequently handled. The latter case should lead to dis-
cipline; the former is likely to involve some penalty, but also
requires ensuring that the student gets counselling and sup-
port.
MANAGEMENT OF PLAGIARISM
We set out to develop thorough, effective procedures for man-
agement of plagiarism. Our aim was to greatly reduce the inci-
dence of plagiarism, primarily through effective deterrence
and promotion of appropriate study practices. The major ele-
ments, discussed in detail below, were:
Deterring plagiarism, through publicising the conse-
quences and our intention to thoroughly police it.
Presenting staff with a range of options for prevent-
ing and detecting plagiarism.
Introducing consistent processes and penalties, with
centralised record-keeping, and ensuring that all parties
were aware of student rights and appeal processes.
Instituting school discipline hearings for serious
cases.
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Appointing a discipline coordinator to provide
advice, hear appeals, manage record-keeping, and monitor
outcomes.
Plagiarism detection
We made copy-detection software available for staff to either
apply to the electronic submissions themselves or to have
applied by a technical ofcer. Such software identies candi-
date cases of plagiarism by comparing each submission against
the rest and providing a metric of similarity. For instance,
comparing two assignments might give the result of 65% simi-
larity, and the sections of code that have the same logical struc-
ture would be highlighted. The software packages we installed
took as input a set of submissions, and returned a package of
web pages that could be inspected in a standard browser.
2
The
main page is an ordered ranking, by decreasing similarity, of
pairs of submissions. Each pair has a link to a page that shows
the two submissions side by side, with the similar code seg-
ments highlighted in the same colour. When pairs of submis-
sions are viewed in this manner, the evidence is difcult to
refute and the extent of the plagiarism is apparent.
In establishing clear documentation that plagiarism has
taken place in a programming assignment, there are a range
of kinds of evidence that can be sought. The software we use
relies on logical similarity of programs, independent of naming
of variables and wording of documentation. If blocks of iden-
tical structure are found in two programs, they are reported as
candidate copies. However, in establishing evidence that can
be used in a hearing it is also useful to look for further mark-
ers, such as unusual spellings, commonality between com-
ments, or whether the same programming style conventions
have been used. Similar software is available for essays.
3
Staff workshops
The next stage was to persuade the staff to give more of
their time to plagiarism detection and to ensure that consist-
ent processes were used. Rather than dictate policy, we drew
up a template policy for discussion, and suggested options for
many of the details, such as the severity of penalties. We then
ran a series of staff workshops, and some extensive debates by
email, to get broad agreement and understanding of the issues
across our 50 academic staff.
These workshops proved to be an excellent opportunity for
staff to air their concerns on the issue. Two or three staff, who
primarily taught subjects with smaller numbers of students,
simply did not believe that there was a signicant problem.
Others made strong distinctions between, on the one hand,
students who did the work and gave it to friends, and, on the
other hand, the friends who took it; they limited penalties
to the friends only. While this remains a difcult issue, on
weight of argument we decided that the distinction should
be ignored. This change was made easier by evidence that
the friends were in some cases paying for the work. Other
staff were under a range of misapprehensions. A signicant
one was the incorrect belief that a student caught plagiarising
would have an entry made on their academic transcript.
Student rights and appeal processes were another topic that
had to be thoroughly considered. There is a tension between
creating fair avenues of appeal and keeping students informed
of their rights, and the risk of overloading staff with inter-
views and hearings. We had to distinguish between the need
to impose consistent penalties, our personal sympathy for stu-
dents, and the occasional need for mitigation. Rather than
encourage staff to decide individually whether to pursue dis-
cipline, reduction in penalties was managed via the standard
special-consideration process. Brandt (2002) writes about
a teacher who ‘failed 28 students for plagiarising and then
resigned when the school board insisted she reverse her deci-
sion’, and concludes it is essential to dene and widely discuss
plagiarism and its consequences, with the same vigour that
librarians champion copyright.
Preventing plagiarism
An outcome of the workshops was the drawing-up of a list
of mechanisms for preventing plagiarism. We have not sys-
tematically investigated the effect of these, but anecdotally all
seem to have had some impact.
Design of assignments. Some assignments lend them-
selves well to plagiarism detection: each solution should be
unique, and students should have plenty of opportunity to dis-
play individual choices from low-level issues such as spelling
and formatting to high-level issues such as ability to design an
efcient program and make appropriate decisions about docu-
mentation. In such cases, it is straightforward to demonstrate
that copying has taken place.
In some assignments, however, there is less scope for indi-
viduality. For example, many database queries can only be
expressed in a limited number of ways. In such cases, it can
be helpful to require additional material, such as explanatory
documentation of non-trivial length.
If students’ solutions are built on supplied material, the
effectiveness of plagiarism detection systems is reduced. In
cases where the assignment only requires that existing code
be amended in minor ways, plagiarism may not be found, if
only because the range of possible amendments may be small.
In these situations, Harris (2001) recommends students supply
sources, attaching printouts and photocopies and book pages
used, and highlight what they have quoted or cited or bor-
rowed.
Veriable submission. Where possible, assignments
should be designed for electronic submission. Only in rare
cases is this difcult, most typically when elaborate diagrams
are required (as in some documentation) or there is a larger
assembly of material (as in a portfolio). Electronic submission
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has the obvious benet of making the material available for
automatic processing, but also provides a date-stamp and user-
name.
If the assignment consists of programs or other materials
that are developed online, students should be required to keep
copies of it in their account so that le details can be veri-
ed. To verify information presented by students as evidence
of their innocence, we have made use of other information
gathered by our operating system: daily dumps of all amended
les and hourly snapshots of the contents of each directory.
Fresh assignments. An obvious issue is that assignments
should be varied as much as is reasonable each year. Less obvi-
ously, in our discipline there are many web sites with code
for a large range of elementary programming tasks. Students
know about these web sites, and use them if the assignment
is close to a standard programming problem. When an assign-
ment is set, it is worth checking for solutions on the web: if
they can be found, the students will nd them.
Draft submissions and development traces. In some
subjects it is effective to allow early or draft submissions,
which can be used as further verication of who developed
what work when. Much plagiarism is due to last minute panic.
A related mechanism is to require students to use source-con-
trol systems, and to require that the source archives be submit-
ted with the assignment. These archives maintain a trace of
when a le was modied and by whom.
Cross-check exam questions. Exams can be used to
determine whether students are familiar with the assignment
material. If some exam questions are based on assignments,
exam results can be cross-checked against assignment results.
If such questions are a formal hurdle in the subject, failure in
the question can lead to failure overall, or to the requirement
that there be a post-examination interview.
Supervised competency tests. It is impractical to set a
competency test in every subject, but they can be included
in strategically-chosen subjects to verify that students have
acquired basic skills. Such tests should be supervised, for
example in a labclass. Tests of this kind - distributed to stu-
dents and completed within the scope of a single lab-class
- can also be used in circumstances where take-away assign-
ments may provide little evidence of individuality. It is of
course essential that each class get different questions to com-
plete.
Limitation of group work. In large computer science
departments with overloaded staff, it is tempting to set group
assignments to reduce the assessment overhead. It is claimed
that learning to work together is a valuable skill and that stu-
dents gain from programming as a team.
These claims are unarguable, but it is far from clear that
putting students in groups and asking that the group turn in
a single solution has the effect of making the students work
together. Weaker students can hide behind the collective
and fail to contribute, or share the blame with unwitting col-
leagues when their contribution is found to be stolen. Some
students seem genuinely to believe they have contributed
even if their code is a tiny fraction of the total, because they
have poor perception of how hard the others have worked.
And arbitrary formation of groups can penalise good students
trapped with poor colleagues.
Some of these problems can be mitigated by asking each
student to identify their contribution. However, in the case
where there has been genuine collaborative work this require-
ment can lead to painful disputes. In our view, both from the
point of view of students’ development and with regard to the
issue of identifying plagiarism, group work should be limited
to subjects such as software engineering where it has a clearly
identied benet and operates in managed structures.
General publicity and warnings. It is fundamental that
students be aware of the issue of plagiarism, that penalties are
being imposed in practice, and that cheating is being strictly
policed. In particular, students need to be educated at the
start of their program, and each subject should explain what
plagiarism involves in that specic context.There should be
student-oriented resources such as websites that explain all
aspects of the issue: what it is, how to avoid it, what the con-
sequences are, and where to go if issues arise.
6
Consistent penalties. It is unjust for the same offence to
attract different penalties in different subjects, but there is a
need to escalate the penalties for repeat offenders. The meth-
odology we used was to require that, in individual subjects,
the standard penalty of loss of all marks for the assignment
in question be imposed even if the work is only partly plagia-
rised. Lecturers have no discretion to vary the penalty, thus
protecting them from students who become overly insistent
about having the penalty removed. However, lecturers were
given the option of recommending to the discipline coordi-
nator that there were mitigating circumstances, thus allowing
the coordinator to make consistent recommendations of clem-
ency.
With individual instances of plagiarism recorded centrally,
repeat offenders are detected and further penalised at a disci-
pline hearing. We adopted the protocol of imposing subject
failure for a second offence, and on a third offence of referring
the student to the university, at which point they have usually
been expelled. Staff opinion was evenly divided as to whether
this was lenient or harsh.
Declarations and alerts. In a typical university, each
subject has a guide specifying subject requirements, syllabus,
and so on. Subject guides can include formalised warnings
against plagiarism. At submission time students can be asked
to declare that the work is original via a signature or a click on
a “terms and conditions” box or by typing “yes” in response to
a question. Such mechanisms provide support to the school
should a student mount a legal challenge against a penalty
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imposed in response to a plagiarism incident. Without such
a warning, it could be argued that releasing a student’s sub-
mission for plagiarism testing violates their privacy and copy-
right. As Foster (2002) reports, ‘those concerns contributed
to the decision by ofcials at the University of California at
Berkeley not to subscribe to Turnitin.com.’ However, since the
work is not distributed elsewhere, and the testing does not
threaten its commercial value, many other universities have
implemented it with a warning to students that copies of their
work will be checked.
Managing detected instances of
plagiarism
We developed a template letter to send to students identi-
ed as having submitted similar assignments. This standard
letter noties the students of what has occurred, that a hear-
ing is to be held, what their rights are, and ensures that they
are aware of appropriate sources of advice. Students are
encouraged to bring a support person, such as a friend, rela-
tive, course advisor, student counsellor. At least two staff are
always present, the course leader and another academic with
experience in management of plagiarism. At all times it is
important for these processes to be open and consistent with
university policy and student rights. We agree with the obser-
vation made by Cizek (1999) (quoted from www.lemoyne.edu/
library/plagiarism.htm), ‘responding to cheating is perhaps
one of the most distasteful, time-consuming, and undervalued
tasks that a teacher can face.’ Hence, we developed a set of
guidelines to explain to staff how to handle these student
hearings and outcomes.
Early in the development of the process, we observed that in
interviews many students spent a great deal of energy (theirs
and that of staff) arguing that the work was not in fact copied.
The students’ arguments often relied heavily on tactics such as
shouting, denial of facts, repetition, and threats. Similar obser-
vations were made by Ryan (1998) who noted that ‘instead of
expressing shame or remorse, reactions included denial (even
in the face of overwhelming evidence) and deance. One stu-
dent even exclaimed: “You can’t do this to me – I’m on a schol-
arship!” ’ In a typical case, a student would argue that since
the programs were required to produce the same output, it
followed that they must be identical, down to details such as
spelling errors in the documentation - an argument about as
sound as insisting that two buildings with the same number of
doors and rooms must have the same colour of carpet.
To forestall such arguments, we introduced the notion of
‘academic judgement’. If a lecturer, in the capacity of an
expert in the subject material, determines that the similarity
between two pieces of work is greater than is possible by
chance, then they must be copied. Students who disputed the
similarity were advised that the programs could be referred
to an independent academic for judgement, but that such
decisions would not be disputed directly with the student.
This process is analogous to that used for re-marking of failed
exams.
‘Once any organisation – small, independent journal or
major university – decides to investigate, it immediately con-
fronts questions of what type of evidence will be required to
prove or disprove the allegation, whether such evidence exists
and can be obtained, and who should be required to supply or
obtain it’ (LaFolette 1992). The most difcult part of this proc-
ess was determining whether it was possible – as the students
often claimed – that the other students with the same code
had in fact stolen it. In almost all cases, thorough interviews
or hearings led to resolution of such issues. Although thefts
appeared to be a small minority of cases, due to the personal
impact on the innocent party in some cases we imposed
more severe penalties, such as subject failure, than in victim-
less cases. In a similar type of investigation into 78 students
accused of cheating in an introductory computer-science
class, Young (2001) reports that a university committee cleared
all of them. ‘The students were accused of sneaking a peek
at the answer for an assignment that their professor had acci-
dentally posted on a public part of the college’s Web site.
The committee found that though some students probably
did cheat, they were unable to determine which students had
done so and which had legitimately sought help from teaching
assistants.’
In our case, having identied the students involved in pla-
giarism and applied the penalties, the staff involved post the
details to a central register. This register of plagiarists, with
restricted access, allows identication of repeat offenders. A
letter is sent to the students as a formal record of the actions
taken.
In all of these processes, publicity is essential: to signal our
serious and sustained intention to change the culture; for staff,
to encourage their input and continued support for the policy
development; and nally for new staff, to inform them of cur-
rent policies and penalties to be implemented consistently.
The student website explains in elementary terms what con-
stitutes plagiarism. The staff website contains details of poli-
cies, template letters, and information on interviews and on
applying penalties.
7
Other publicity has involved regular updates in newsgroups
and web fora, noticeboards, general staff meetings, student ori-
entation, and sessional staff induction sessions, not only iden-
tifying new policies but publicising the consequences of the
plagiarism detection. Once again, there is tension among staff
over the level of disclosure. As Clement (2001) writes, ‘some
want the behavior, not names, and the decision of the boards
to be made public in the school newspaper so as to act
as deterrents. Others argue that condentiality means noth-
ing and should be made public except to those who are
involved.’
A U S T R A L I A N U N I V E R S I T I E S R E V I E W
One way to avoid this conict is to appoint a ‘discipline
coordinator’ to decide what should be publicised, to provide
informed, centralised management and advice to staff, and to
ensure that incidents are appropriately investigated and fol-
lowed up. Also, as Schneider (1999) notes, ‘the real sticking
point is time. Tracking down a plagiarist’s sources can take
days, sometimes weeks - time that professors can ill afford
at the end of a semester, when papers start ooding in.’
A school disciplinary panel can be convened to hear seri-
ous cases outside the context of individual subjects. The
actions of this panel can include, not just imposition of
further penalties or referral for university disciplinary pro-
cedures, but recommendation of counselling or general aca-
demic advice.
OUTCOMES
The plagiarism detection software was run over the assign-
ments for ten subjects in semester one, 2001. Large numbers
of students were identied as submitting copied work, and
many were repeat offenders. In one third-year subject, 17% of
students plagiarised to an extent sufcient to make the need
for discipline unarguable. Roughly another 10% of students
plagiarised at an early stage in their work then continued inde-
pendently. Due to the belief that it was unreasonable to raise
standards too dramatically these were not pursued. In a sec-
ond-year programming subject, 17 students were caught in
outright copying; a further 20 or so were not disciplined for
the reason above. Submissions by international students were
more likely than those by local students to be identied as pla-
giarised. As discussed earlier, nancial difculties appeared to
be a signicant factor, as did social or personal problems due
to living away from family or in shared student accommoda-
tion. We saw no evidence that cultural factors were encourag-
ing students to commit plagiarism.
Prior to semester two, 2001, we publicised the cases where
plagiarism had been caught and penalised. Explicit warnings
were posted in subject guides and assignment specications.
An overhead slide was prepared for all rst lectures. During
the second semester the rate of detected plagiarism was about
one-third that of semester one, for roughly the same number
of submissions. Only three of about 40 detected instances
were repeat offenders. Several problem students had left,
some by choice and some otherwise. Only three students
were detected plagiarising in the second-year programming
subject, despite (or because of) the students repeating from
rst semester.
Some startling stories came to light. One student was found
to have plagiarised eight times, in every assignment we had
records for. After checking his exam papers, the handwriting
differed so widely that he must have used a substitute in at
least three cases, as was conrmed by a handwriting expert.
He was subsequently expelled.
Some of the repeat offenders had previously convinced
experienced lecturers of their innocence, and so had escaped
any penalty. As discussed earlier, it appears that some stu-
dents form study cooperatives: some work to cover communal
living expenses while the others do all the assignment work;
or some work on assignments for agreed courses, while the
others work on the alternative courses; or some senior stu-
dents “help” their junior relatives or friends. A student had
been entrapped by a so-called friend seeking sexual favours.
Another, who had run out of money, was living in profound
isolation from support networks, unable even to phone his
family. The interviews revealed many insights into the prob-
lems faced by students as they juggle work, study, changing
living circumstances and growing maturity. The ne line divid-
ing friendship or groupwork and cheating had been crossed
for all sorts of reasons.
The most dramatic case involved a private tutor. In one
assignment in one subject we found fteen versions of the
same solution. On interview, all the students were clients of
the tutor. Detective work, luck, and careful record keeping
paid dividends as one of his clients in the rst semester
included the tutor’s name instead of his own in an assign-
ment. The following semester another student submitted the
same program, even though the assignment for that course
had changed. A third student informed us that the tutor was
advertising in the student union and gave us a copy of his
advertisement and the tutor turned out to be a past student.
This gave us several further links, including samples of the
tutor’s distinctive programming style and the email address he
was using.
None of this tutor’s clients appeared to be aware that the
assignment they had bought had also been sold to others.
Some of the students had been entrapped by the tutor, with
offers of help and so forth that had never materialised. Others
went in with eyes open. From the number of students caught
in this subject, the reported fees of hundreds of dollars each,
and the number of subjects in which the tutor offered tuition,
this was clearly a lucrative operation.
LESSONS
The experience of determinedly pursuing plagiarism has high-
lighted many issues. Arguably the most signicant is that the
ability to detect plagiarism must be complemented by pro-
cedures to deal with the consequences. Without clear, well-
documented steps for staff to follow, pursuit of plagiarism is
simply too difcult.
Another lesson is that staff need to be willing participants.
Many see themselves as on the side of the students, not as
police. We could never have achieved such a signicant reduc-
tion in plagiarism without the willing co-operation of staff.
Moreover, their advice, prodding, and questioning led to the
writing of guidelines, and their persistent requests for ade-
A U S T R A L I A N U N I V E R S I T I E S R E V I E W
quate information for students led to the setting up of web-
sites for quick easy access to the up-to-date policies.
There needs to be someone who is responsible for disci-
pline, to provide advice, manage hearings, keep records, follow
up repeat offenders, convene disciplinary panels, and gener-
ally remind staff and students of the consequences of plagia-
rism.
Staff need to use a mix of anti-cheating strategies: frequent
publicity, cheat-proof assignments and lab invigilation where
possible, assignment-based questions in exams, random checks,
occasional interviews, and exam questions that cannot be
answered by parroting. There is no magic bullet. In our
discipline, for example, there must be assignments and they
must attract marks. Without assignments, there is no way of
assessing students’ competence as authors of substantial pro-
grams, or for the students to gain essential experience. With-
out marks, the attitude of students switches from ‘do my best
to get every last mark’ to ‘do the minimum that will get over
the line’. (Interestingly, the number of marks for an assign-
ment doesn’t seem to have much impact on how hard stu-
dents work at it – so long as the number of marks is greater
than zero.) And students who have cheated in an assignment,
and don’t really understand the work, do not necessarily fail
an exam.
Managing plagiarism is an ongoing process. Each new
batch of students needs to be informed of school policy and
reminded each year of the consequences of plagiarism. Staff
still need to be vigilant, keep records, design fresh cheat-proof
assignments and assessments every year, and, where possible,
there should be assignment-based questions in exams. We
have also found that random checks on tutorials and labs
are useful as are occasional interviews, since they serve to
let students know that staff are genuinely interested in their
progress. Since plagiarism is such a murky business, there can
be no one solution but we have found a mix of all the above
strategies to be effective.
NOTE
We thank the staff of our school for the substantial support they gave us during
this process of improving our management of plagiarism. We thank Abhijit
Chatteraj, Rohan Durrant, Don Gingrich, Santiago Gomez, Tim Hoad, Jason
Lu, Kathleen Lynch, Peter McDonald, Jason Sobell, Seyed Tahaghoghi, Saman-
tha Talbot, Cecily Walker, and Hugh Williams. We particularly thank Sheila
Howell.
ENDNOTES
1 This partly appears to be a consequence of a University policy repealed
some years ago. In this policy, it was mandatory that all instances of plagia-
rism were to be reported to the university for formal disciplinary procedures.
Staff - who naturally enough form trusting and friendly relationships with their
students - would not report students for plagiarism, as they did not wish to
be responsible for initiating such serious action. Thus plagiarism was almost
always handled secretively at the subject level.
2 The software we made available was jplag from www.jplag.de.
3 See for example copycatch.com, www.plagiarism.com, turnitin.com, and
www.plagiserve.com. Websites listing several software package services include
www.plagiarism.phys.virginia.edu/links.html, www.ncusd203.org/central/html/
where/plagiarism_stoppers.html & www.lemoyne.edu/library/plagiarism.htm.
4 A site popular with our students for coded solutions is www.cplusplus.com.
Essay sites, commonly referred to as “paper mills”, are listed in library publica-
tions such as www.coastal.edu/library/mills2.htm, which gives 250 general and
indexed sites.
5 While supervising such a test, Zobel became aware of a student in the
back row crouching low over his desk, apparently ill. It turned out that he was
using a hands-free cellphone.
6 Some Universities and colleges provide elaborate examples of plagiarism
and how to cite references correctly, such as owl.english.purdue.edu/
handouts/research/r_plagiarism.html, www.indiana.edu/wts/wts/plagiarism.html,
www.hamilton.edu/academic/Resource/wc/AvoidingPlagiarism.html and www.sja.
ucdavis.edu/avoid.htm.
7 Some other useful teacher resources include “Plagiarism and the Web”
at www.wiu.edu/users/mfbhl/wiu/plagiarism.html, “Cut and paste plagiarism:
Preventing, detecting and tracking online plagiarism” at http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/
janicke/plagiary.htm, and “Thinking and talking about plagiarism” at
http://bedfordstmartins.com/technotes/techtiparchive/ttip102401.htm.
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Justin Zobel is an Associate Professor in the School of Com-
puter Science and Information Technology at RMIT Univer-
sity.
Margaret Hamilton is postgraduate program leader in the
School of Computer Science and Information Technology at
RMIT University.
