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Prevention better than cure? The case for Plagiarism Detection

Prevention better than cure? The case for Plagiarism Detection. H.C. Davis IAM: Learning Technologies E lectronics and Computer Science University of Southampton. Structure of this Talk. (Largely concerned with Source Code Plagiarism) What is plagiarism? The causes of plagiarism?

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Prevention better than cure? The case for Plagiarism Detection

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  1. Prevention better than cure? The case for Plagiarism Detection H.C. Davis IAM: Learning Technologies Electronics and Computer ScienceUniversity of Southampton

  2. Structure of this Talk (Largely concerned with Source Code Plagiarism) • What is plagiarism? • The causes of plagiarism? • Approaches to preventing plagiarism • Detecting Source Code Plagiarism • Case Study using JPlag

  3. What is Plagiarism Obviously direct wholesale copying of source…but • How much source should be the same in well written solutions to a small problem? • What about buddying and team working? • How are we going to catch sub-contractors?

  4. Some Thoughts • It is very difficult to prove copying • It is even more difficult to prove sub-contracting • This talk assumes that our intention is to prevent plagiarism rather than to get involved in post-hoc legislatation

  5. The causes of plagiarism? • Over assessment • Unrealistic expectations • Strategic/cynical time management • Cultural expectation • Team working • Fear of failure • Laziness

  6. Approaches to preventing plagiarism (1) • Clear university/departmental policy Needs to define • What is plagiarism? • What will be done? • The borderline between acceptable collaboration and unacceptable plagiarism

  7. Approaches to preventing plagiarism (2) • Signed statements from students Give them the opportunity to admit to what they needed to borrow in order to complete the assignment

  8. Approaches to preventing plagiarism (3) • Logbooks and • Time-stamped code development It is hard to reverse engineer this stuff (especially without learning!)

  9. Approaches to preventing plagiarism (4) • Reduce assessment load • Diversify type of assessments • (peer marking and review, multiple choice questions, self assessed team assignments) • Establishing a culture of learning (rather than mark grubbing)

  10. Approaches to preventing plagiarism (5) • Detection • Naming and shaming

  11. Detecting Source Code Plagiarism • Must have all code on-line (floppies or hard copy not helpful) • Simple searching for suspicious strings • Scripts as above • Simple byte code comparisons • Specialised tools (JPLAG, MOSS, Coursemaster)

  12. Case Study Using JPLAG Getting Started • First get yourself registered with JPlag at http://www.jplag.de/ • (email jplag@ira.uka.de) • Download the JPlag applet

  13. 2. Collect Student Assignments • JPLAG expects one directory per student. That coursework can have subdirectories and JPLAG doesn’t care what the files are called. • At Soton we have a handin machine which supplies a ZIP file of exactly such a directory file with the student’s username as the directory name, so all you have to do is unpack it where you want it.

  14. Run the Applet >c:\jdk1.3\bin\java –jar C:\jdk1.3\jplagapplet.jar After a few minutes you will be able to see the results

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