10 Terms of Use for Plagiarism Detection

Today at a meeting of department heads, we were asked to consider spending a few thousand dollars to gain access to the most popular plagiarism detection database: Turnitin.

In leveraging tools to teach learners about academic integrity, here are my recommended Terms of Use for Plagiarism Detection:

1] Staff members will commit to teaching lessons on academic integrity. (via @ransomtech)

2] Teachers will overtly model academic integrity by attributing their sources for lessons, assignments, and coursework. (Where do your ideas, text, graphics come from?)

3] Conscientious attempts will be made by teachers to design authentic writing tasks that are resistant to copying. (via @sadone)

4] Students will be provided with opportunities to present their ideas in alternative ways including the use of emerging media tools.

5] It will be the norm for written assessments to be completed in the presence of the teacher.

6] Comprehensive training in the roll-out of digital detection software, will welcome the participation of interested students. (via @rivenhomewood)

7] Plagiarism detection will be used primarily by students as a way to gauge the integrity of their writing before submitting final drafts. (via @GDhuyvetter)

8] It will be the norm for students to use modern writing tools that track the 'history' of a document's development. (E.g., Google Documents)

9] Educators will learn (and teach students) how to use quoted text in a 'Google Search' as a way to validate suspicious strings of text.

10] Users will become familiar with the terms of the service agreement and will carefully consider the ethical consequences of submitting content to an online plagiarism service.


Photo Credit: churl

Academic Integrity in Online Learning

In a regional professional development session held earlier today, online teachers were asked to consider academic integrity through the lens of both student and teacher. Integral to our understanding of the issues related to honesty of networked learners, are a number of cultural and technological trends. Following a review of the realities of the remix generation, I shared my contention that teachers can 'cheat-proof' learning tasks through the use of freely available e-learning tools and differentiation.

Academic Integrity

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: 2.0 cheating)

Following on the heels of Alec Courosa's presentation at the University of Saskatchewan's Academic Integrity Awareness Week, I was happy to attribute the ideas in my presentation to those who have most influenced my thinking on this topic.

You may be interested in reviewing Michael Wesch's "Anthropological Introduction to YouTube"; Lawrence Lessig's TED talk on how modern creativity is being strangled by the law; the work of my colleague, Suzanne Riverin, who condensed key learnings of Bonk and Zhang's "Empowering Online Learning"; and the 'non-traditional' scripted "Late Night Learning with John Krutsch".

Thanks to a tweet from Clint Lalonde, I also had the opportunity to share a highly entertaining 'how-to cheat' video. Beyond highlighting the ingenuity that can be harnessed by motivated learners, this video models what a rich learning task might look like in a tech design or media production course!



The next few editions of the Teacher 2.0 Podcast will focus on Academic Integrity.