Teaching tips: deterring plagiarism through course design

Jude Carroll
OCSLD

Key actions

• Making it difficult to meet the assessment requirement by using something that already exists.
• Tracking/valuing the student’s process when producing the artefact
• Using a design strategy where cheating on one aspect means losing out on the next
• Planning in authentication exercises

Less ‘go find it’ and more ‘go make it’

1. Change the assessment task(s) each time you teach the course
2. Set tasks that refer to local or recent events, ideas, people etc
3. Add specific requirements to the assessment brief: “use book x”, “use primary data gathered from interviews”, “incorporate these lecture notes/case study facts”
4. Never use coursework to check on students’ knowledge and understanding
5. Avoid ‘show you know’ questions (What are the functions of the United Nations?); go for questions that require analysis, comparison, evaluation, reflection on practice. Consider asking about things that did not happen
6. Ask for formats other than essays or reports eg posters, dialogues, patient information leaflets, letters, a radio play

Less use of fellow students’ work

1. Ensure group tasks are assessed in ways that recognise individual effort
2. Seek individualised answers eg application of a common theory to different situations (“urban design in Headington”, “personality theories applied to my own”, “Death in Byron’s poems and Six Feet Under”, “this legal aspect in case x”)
3. Personalise the task, eg providing data unique to the student, individually negotiated tasks or use random task-creation techniques like drawing items out of a hat
4. Link assessed tasks that produce largely similar answers (“solve these problems”) with an authentication process such as a viva or exam. Consider using coursework for formative assessment and examinations/vivas for summative assessment.

Less opportunity for fraud, wholesale downloads and ghost-writing

1. Don’t allow last minute changes of topic
2. Tell students to keep drafts, significant articles and ask to see a random sample.
3. Record and date the writing process by visual inspection of evidence (plans, drafts, notes etc)
4. Where relevant, provide effective supervision

Designing-in deterrence

1. Link different assessments in the same course so cheating on one means doing less well on the next. For example, refer to the coursework in the exam and ask them to apply it, evaluate it etc. Use the coursework for learning the skills that will be tested in the exam or a requirement for summative assessment
2. Track and record the process rather than only judging the final product
3. Assess the process as well as the product

Using assessment processes to deter plagiarism

1. Provide explicit instructions:
   • Specifically forbid duplication
   • Tell students exactly where they can seek help
   • Explicitly instruct them in how to cite and use sources
   • Tell them exactly where they will cross the line between collaboration and collusion
2. Ask for a signed statement of originality
3. Ensure the assessment criteria value attribution and wide research
4. Ask for key references to be submitted with the final product
5. Require drafts to be submitted with the final product

Authentication activities [to check who actually did the work]

1. Organise random or partial vivas
2. Observe students doing assessment tasks, at least some of the time
3. Use in-class tests and supervised tasks to monitor skill levels
4. Set open-book tests and/or exams that test things other than memory.
5. Meta-activities after submission such as an evaluation of the piece of work, one page summary of its finding, justifcation of the key resource etc