Sunday, December 04, 2005

ICT Impact: Digital Plagiarism

Of concern to educators in the digital age is the prevalence and impact of digital plagiarism. However, not only do digital tools such as the Internet make it easy for students to access the work of others, they also make it relatively easy for non-original work to be detected.

Here at International School Dhaka we have recently developed an 'Academic Honesty' protocol and aim to support students in their studies by making it very clear what is acceptable in terms of orginality of work. In conjunction with a citation system students need to know that they can use words and phrases not belonging to them but must acknowledge their source. We employ two tools to help teachers and students with citation and detecting non-original work.
These are:
  • NoodleBib: A comprehensive and accurate MLA and APA style bibliographic composer
  • turinitin.com: Online plagiarism prevention software that promotes originality in student work
In his article "Strategies to Address Digital Plagiarism", Wesley Fryer presents a variety of strategies to address the plagiarism problem. These include:
  • Convey expectations readily to students
  • Require works cited (Bibliography, references)
  • Assess the writing process
  • Requires oral student presentations
  • Require students ot compare and synthesise
  • Teach students to critically question source validity
  • Require students to blog
  • Use assessment rubrics including peer reviews
Wesley concludes: "Just as “testing is not teaching,” neither should plagiarizing be equated with learning. It is a lesson we all need to model and teach."