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Three Steps for Preventing Plagiarism

Three Steps for Preventing Plagiarism. [1]. John Brocato Bagley College of Engineering – Mississippi State University. ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN. Presentation Overview. Our Program My Experience with This Subject Motivation for This Work The Three Steps Data?

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Three Steps for Preventing Plagiarism

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  1. Three Steps for Preventing Plagiarism [1] John Brocato Bagley College of Engineering – Mississippi State University ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

  2. Presentation Overview • Our Program • My Experience with This Subject • Motivation for This Work • The Three Steps • Data? • Limitations of This Work Delivery ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

  3. Shackouls Technical Communication Program • Support for entire college • Course required of all undergraduates • All levels of students’ careers • frompre-engineering to senior design ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

  4. My Experience with This Subject • B.A. and M.A. in English • Three years in English teaching freshman composition 1 and 2, technical writing • Nine years in engineering teaching technical communication to engineering majors • Four years on academic-misconduct committee (90+% plagiarism) ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

  5. Motivation for This Work • Plagiarism is a concern in any setting (academia and industry). • Engineering schools have an obligation to ensure their students’ communication is legal and ethical. • Non-technical-communication faculty may lack the time, expertise, or confidence to address this concern. ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

  6. 1. Define plagiarism for your students. • Theft of others’ work, purchase of papers online, grievous misuse of sources • Accurate description of paraphrasing • University policies and codes of conduct [2] ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

  7. 1. Define plagiarism (cont.). IMPORTANT:Provide good and bad examples. Original passage: To create functional and marketable embedded automotive applications with GUIs that use dashboard displays, developers must be able to successfully address all those problems. Unacceptable paraphrase: To create functional and marketable embedded automotive applications with graphical user interfaces that use dashboard displays, developers must be able to address problems associated with the size and performance of the interface. (Too many of the same words appear in both passages; same general sentence structure in both; no citation) Acceptable paraphrase: According to [AUTHOR], engineers must solve a host of technical and commercial problems in order to create successful embedded automotive applications that use GUIs and dashboard displays [1]. ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

  8. 2. Require one citation format. • Focuses expectation and execution • Allows for finite set of examples • Provides practice with following instructions ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

  9. 2. Require one format (cont.). IMPORTANT:Provide plenty of examples. Sample Citations Papers Published in Proceedings[4] J. Harden and B. Chapman. "Improving the Writing-Evaluation Abilities of Graduate Teaching Assistants in ECE Labs," in Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference and Exposition. CD-ROM. (Portland, Oregon, Jun. 12-15, 2005). Technical Reports[5] D. Hibbard. "Tensile-strength testing of fiberglass fixtures with a reformulated wetting agent: a summary of research results," Composite Mill, Rasche Fiberglass Factory, Torrance, California, Tech. Rep. MMFTT-TR-96-99, Jun. 1, 1996. (…and enforce the guidelines!) ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

  10. 3. Use Plagiarism-Detection Tools. • Excellent lines of defense in spotting potential problems • Most beneficial with in-class tutorial (many false positives) • IMPORTANT:Require students to upload their own writing, and let them see their originality reports. NOTE: We use Turnitin.com. ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

  11. Excerpt from an Originality Report

  12. Data? Two instances of plagiarism worthy of prosecution in the past five years  Nearly 1800 students through our required course in that time  Does not count minor problems (one sentence or less) or those found during the draft process ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

  13. Limitations of These Steps • Requires additional time in class and in grading • Plagiarism-detection software / websites require judgment – not a magic bullet • Plagiarism detection can be expensive • Can be a Pandora’s Box BUT…do some of this if you cannot do it all! ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

  14. References [1] “Drawing Illustrating Plagiarism,” in “Plagiarism,” April 6, 2008. [Online.] Not available: http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/ marcuse/classes/plagiarism600pxw.jpg [2] “Mississippi State University Honor Code,” in Dean of Students – Mississippi State University, April 4, 2008. [Online.] Available: http://students.msstate.edu/honorcode/ ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

  15. Questions? brocato@engr.msstate.edu ASEE-SE Conference 2008 – Memphis, TN

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