The third one-day event on Institutional Policies and Procedures for Managing Student Plagiarism

We were delighted with the quality of presentations and discussions at the third one-day event on Institutional Policies and Procedures for Managing Student Plagiarism, on 4th June 2009, at Oxford Brookes University.

During the day, participants discussed current issues in dealing with student plagiarism, focusing on the institutional rather than the pedagogic aspects of student plagiarism, including issues around international students and the legal context. During three plenaries and seven workshops, there were opportunities to share good practice and to hear how others have developed procedures in line with the changing demands of higher education in 2009.

The plenaries raised a variety of questions and issues. Dr Wendy Sutherland-Smith (Monash University, Australia) examined the competing discourses of retribution and sustainable rehabilitation, and raised concerns about the 'moral panic' that is fuelled by the media. Dr Anna Magyar (University of East Anglia, UK), presented findings from an ethnographic study of the writing experiences of international students, calling for more sensitivity to the different understandings of 'authorship' held by students. In the final plenary, Jude Carroll (visiting fellow at Royal Technical University, Stockholm), drew on her secondment in Sweden to reflect back on the past ten years of plagiarism-prevention activities and policies in the UK.

Topics covered in the workshop sessions included contract cheating; the latest information on the capabilities of ‘plagiarism detection tools’; embedding a co-ordinated approach to plagiarism through academic conduct officers; student views on plagiarism; and the difficulties and tensions involved in applying penalties for plagiarism cases.

Resources available for view and download

Photo Gallery