Abstract
Despite university policies and classroom procedures designed to deter student plagiarism, upper-division students seemed to be violating the rules in growing numbers. Recent research suggested that student plagiarism results from a complex mix of factors, including a need for instruction, but offers little guidance regarding effective teaching methodologies. The authors developed and tested an instructional protocol and concluded that a mastery learning approach provides an effective method for reducing student plagiarism.
Student plagiarism has long been an issue for academic institutions, and advances in technology and information access have heightened concern about the number of opportunities for students to plagiarize (Jones, 2011). High-profile instances dominate the news cycle, and academics are increasingly “angry, disappointed, and offended” by egregious incidents (Dyrud, 2011, p. 138). Faced with the practical problem of student plagiarism, we turned to the literature for guidance. We provide a summary of the academic response to plagiarism, which demonstrates that the most common institutional response to student plagiarism involves procedural rules to detect, condemn, and punish offenders for committing an ethics violation but no evidence to demonstrate that these practices reduce the amount or severity of plagiarism. Research also suggested, however, that student plagiarism results from a complex mix of factors, including a need for instruction, but the effectiveness of specific teaching methodologies has not been systematically explored.
Faced with somewhat contradictory and incomplete guidance, we developed an instructional process based on the principles of mastery learning and demonstrated a decrease in student plagiarism. We conclude that the instructional method offers effective instruction even as it addresses some of the reasons an ethics focus appears to fail.
The Academic Response to Idea Theft
Dictionary definitions of plagiarism explicitly involve theft, with an implication of intentionally unethical behavior. Whether explained in terms of etymology or popular usage, the act involves “literary theft, stealing (by copying) the words or ideas of someone else and passing them off as one’s own” (Park, 2003, p. 472). Plagiarism manifests in several forms and includes such actions as purchasing papers or ghostwriting services, submitting other students’ work (with or without their knowledge), paraphrasing without proper acknowledgement of the source, or copying text verbatim from a source without the proper use of quotations (Nitterhouse, 2003;Park, 2003).
The complexity of the issue becomes apparent as the definition of plagiarism is excruciatingly dissected and debated. The literature reveals numerous definitions of the term that can vary across academic departments or even among faculty members working within the same department (Wilkinson, 2009). Reactions to plagiarism also vary dramatically, ranging from claims that it is a “crime” (Jamieson, 2016;Stebelman, 1998) by someone who is possibly suffering from a “mental illness” (Howard, 2000) to far more generous arguments that the issue is simply a “slip in scholarship” (Leatherman, 1999) or poor etiquette (Martin, 1994).
Despite the ambiguity surrounding the definition of plagiarism, a consistently moral stance highlights the underlying presumption of ethical violations involving intentional dishonesty. Throughout the literature, the terms “plagiarism” and “cheating” are used interchangeably (Adam, 2016), and academic institutions express an obligation to take a firm stance against plagiarism as a form of “cheating” (Christensen, 2011, p. 201). As academic institutions remain vigilant in their “war on plagiarism” (Serviss, 2016, p. 559), instructors are reminded they are the first line of defense with “a legal and ethical obligation to make students aware of what plagiarism actually is and how they can avoid it” (Davis, 2011, p. 160). Many institutions focus on moral persuasion with clear policies, definitions, and expectations (Davis, 2011), often coupled with practices to ensure the costs of cheating outweigh any benefit (Christensen, 2011) and that detection is likely (Hall, 2011;Jones, 2011).Saunders (1993)urged every instructor to report ethics problems, noting that “an unethical student is likely to be an unethical practitioner” (p. 231). Instructors teaching in business colleges may need to be especially wary, given that students in business disciplines admit to engaging in cheating behaviors at higher rates than those in such disciplines as engineering, sciences, and humanities (Meade, 1992).
For many, the solution lies in discovering the crime. Professional development programs attempt to arm faculty members with skills that focus on the detection of literary theft (Serviss, 2016), and the list of plagiarism detection software continues to grow and evolve (Roberts, 2008). Detection of an ill-defined construct proves difficult, however, in both definition and application. The popular detection software, Turnitin, for example, measures a percentage of the assignment copied from elsewhere, but the instructor must decide how much duplicated text constitutes plagiarism. An instructor could use a common rule of thumb, which sets 15% as the matching text cutoff signaling plagiarism (Barrett & Malcolm, 2006), or attempt to avoid being seen as “too strict” and declare the percentage of the matching text cutoff to be 50% (Ledwith & Rísquez, 2008). Faculty often complicate things further by considering the source of the matching text as a factor when judging the level of severity associated with a plagiarism offense. For example, copying another student’s paper was judged by faculty members as a more severe offense than copying from an online article (Pincus & Schmelkin, 2003;Robinson-Zañartu et al., 2005). Plagiarism detection software is marketed as a valuable weapon to guard against plagiarism, but “human judgment in the process of plagiarism detection is indispensable” to its effective use (Marjanović Jakovljević, Tomašević, & Živković, 2015, p. 121).
For the instructor who attempts to examine each section of computer-flagged text prior to making a final judgment, the task soon turns into hours of digging in order to assess the true level of plagiarism in each student’s work (Sutherland-Smith, 2005). The lack of complete and accurate results (Royce, 2003), combined with the additional workload to carefully review all instances of matching text, reduces the usefulness of plagiarism detection software;den Ouden and van Wijk (2011)concluded that its function “is largely a symbolic one . . . creating a routine that strongly discourages attempts to cheat and . . . reminding students of the issue at hand” (p. 197).
Even with the successful detection of the crime, the issue of appropriate punishment is equally fraught. Faculty members often feel “unsure about negative aspects of reporting cases of plagiarism” and fear negative career repercussions if they do (Sutherland-Smith, 2005, p. 91). Faculty views range widely in both the amount of plagiarism deemed criminal and the severity of appropriate punishment. In one study (Robinson-Zañartu et al., 2005), some faculty recommended expulsion for as little as 10% matching text, while others recommended no action at all for instances of 75% matching text. With faculty members responsible for playing the roles of “judge, jury and executioner,” a university’s plagiarism policy cannot ensure that students experience its uniform application (Sutherland-Smith, 2005, p. 92).
In the end, no reliable evidence supports the effectiveness of the “catch and punish” approach (Devlin, 2006, p. 46), but, efficacy aside, the focus on detection and punishment also suspends any discussion of pedagogy. Many faculty recognize the war on plagiarism as a threat to the academic relationship. The inherently adversarial approach turns instructors into enemies rather than mentors (Bretag, 2016) and shifts attention away from the primary goal of building a student body with sufficient knowledge to uphold high standards of ethical writing (Bretag, 2016;Serviss, 2016). The moral perspective understands plagiarism as a behavior that stems from deception. Fault lies with students presumed to have sufficient knowledge to properly engage in academic writing but chose not to do so, leaving no obligation for the instructor to provide a pedagogical intervention (Adam, 2016).
Pedagogy of Research and Citation
As it turns out, attempts to validate the assumption that students do understand the definitions of plagiarism and rules of citation yield contradictory results (Adam, 2016). Faculty members often assume that students admitted to institutions of higher education have a thorough understanding of what constitutes plagiarism (Sutherland-Smith, 2008). Research demonstrates otherwise. Plagiarism can arise from a genuine lack of understanding, either of the mechanics of proper quotation and citation or with interrelationships of meaning, knowledge, expression, and argument (Park, 2003). LaJuanDavis (2011)surmised that some “plagiarizers” really do not understand what they have done wrong. In a small study of business communication students (Jones, 2011), only half of the students could identify plagiarism when presented with various scenarios.Wilkinson (2009)concluded that “students may be receiving mixed messages about expectations and penalties and this may be contributing to students’ failure to understand the rules of references and how to avoid plagiarism” (p. 104). Her study noted that while 78% of staff members believed that students should have adequate knowledge of acceptable referencing techniques, only 57% of students were confident that they had this ability (Wilkinson, 2009). Some evidence also points to teachers as the source of plagiarizing habits.Dant (1986)andSchab (1972)both found that high school students were being taught to plagiarize, as teachers encouraged them to copy information from various references without citing their sources.
Some faculty try to avoid both the policing role and their instructional obligation by devising assignments that ensure copying research or papers cannot be successful (Christensen, 2011;Davis, 2011;den Ouden & van Wijk, 2011;Hansen, Stith, & Tesdell, 2011;Waltman, 1980). Admittedly an “end run around the cheating problem” (Hansen et al., 2011, p. 189), such tactics avoid the need to identify and punish cheaters but also avoid the complex task of teaching students how to effectively, professionally, and ethically conduct themselves within a knowledge community.
A sophisticated capacity for evidence use might be particularly important to business professionals. Some business communication specialists have pointed out the highly collaborative nature of corporate communication (Jameson, 1993;Reyman, 2008;Rockley, 2001), butevidence-drivencommunication was identified byLucas and Rawlins (2015)as a key core competency in business. These authors noted that educating students to anchor information with credible sources is an essential part of building this competency, which acts as a foundation for the trustworthiness of both the information and the author. High standards in written communication are seen as “proxies for professional integrity and honesty” of the author (Bellack, 2004, p. 527), and plagiarism dismantles the credibility of an author very quickly. The dishonesty and lack of integrity associated with the act are driving forces of negative reactions, even when the plagiarism ultimately benefited the original author (Silver & Shaw, 2017). Simply avoiding research assignments does not prepare students in the evidence use and citation practices foundational to a core competency of business communication, and it increases their chances of an inadvertently soiled reputation.
Some universities have incorporated learning and teaching strategies into their antiplagiarism policies (Devlin, 2006;Hansen et al., 2011), but the research does not provide a strong foundation of demonstrably effective instructional methods. A survey of proposed lessons and techniques has shown both incomplete assignment descriptions and subjective claims of success. JohnWaltman (1980), for example, proposed a paraphrasing exercise, which he claimed was “invaluable” (p. 38), but did not provide the logistics for conducting the exercise in the classroom. A decade later, with the unique discourse community of business widely acknowledged, DaphneJameson (1993)developed a 2-hour genre-based instruction and documentation workshop with an assignment to “select, integrate, and document source materials into a short business document” (p. 27), but she did not discuss the outcomes. More recently,Jameson (2011)has offered case studies in intellectual property rights as a relevant, business-specific context for plagiarism instruction but, again, does not share an assessment of their effectiveness. Similarly relying on business-relevant motivators, in this case risk management and credibility, along with a simplified citation style to address the unique business context, BrianNienhaus (2004)claimed “improved student performance” on writing assignments, asserting that “plagiarism has become a minor occurrence” (p. 345). But, giving no specific data, he admitted that “one reason may be the assignment of highly situational, practical writing tasks” (Nienhaus, 2004, p. 345).
Other authors have provided more discussion of instructional steps but, similarly, have not documented improved student performance. EphraimOkoro (2011), for example, coupled 2 to 3 hours of writing process instruction with interim assignment steps but reported only “noticeable improvement” in student writing, with no specific impact on plagiarism. Similarly, KerriO’Donnell (2011)required students to read the university’s plagiarism policy, as well as materials on organization and study skills, which was followed by a quiz. She reported “far fewer” cases of suspected plagiarism but no specific data.
Without clear guidance or evidence of successful results, an instructor might be hesitant to follow others’ advice. Furthermore, many studentsdoknow how to cite references and do not need further intervention. Studies have found that almost 30% of undergraduates are uncertain or not clear about the definition of plagiarism (Hosny & Fatima, 2014), and Satterthwaite estimated plagiarism rates to be about 30% (as cited inHart & Friesner, 2004). This means the majority of students would find lectures or activities devoted to plagiarism or the logistics of citation as the “useless redundancy” thatDalton and Wright (2004)found leads to decreased interest and elicits agitation among students. Yet, assuming that students have the skills or knowledge to cite sources appropriately leaves some students at risk for plagiarism. Instructors must recognize that different experiences, histories, and the order in which students take courses can all lead to variations in ability levels (Dalton & Wright, 2004).Hart and Friesner (2004)recognized that “students (and particularly those whose skills are poorly developed) will need some practice to learn the relevant skills” (p. 93), but they do not provide a method for identifying at-risk students. A guide for effective citation instruction would be beneficial for instructors, particularly including a method to target students with a lower aptitude for proper citation techniques.
A Proven Solution: Mastery Learning
Faced with coursework that exhibited potential plagiarism and lacking clear guidance from previous research, we took on the task of developing and testing an instructional method that quickly identifies individuals who have not mastered a skill and offers systematic instruction with verified results: mastery learning.
The mastery learning approach stems from a fundamental belief that all students can reach a level of competence if provided with adequate time, feedback, and practice (Carroll, 1963). Mastery learning employs aformative assessmentimmediately following initial instruction (Guskey, 2007). The assessment can take any form deemed useful, such as a quiz, presentation, live demonstration of a skill, or written activity (Guskey, 2010). The goal is to provide students with feedback on their current ability level and highlight areas needing improvement (Bloom, Hastings, & Madaus, 1971). The formative assessments bothdiagnosethe student’s problem areas andprescribea specific corrective activity for overcoming them (Bloom, 1968).Correctivescan include additional resources or examples that provide the student with more information about the topic (Zimmerman & Dibenedetto, 2008). Students required to participate in additional instruction receive another round of formative assessment that parallels the first (Guskey, 2007). A second formative assessment provides the opportunity for students to experience the success that comes with mastering a topic (Guskey, 2010) and ensures that students still needing instruction can be prescribed additional work.
A mastery learning approach applied to the topic of plagiarism seemed particularly apt on three counts. First, given the documented differences among faculty definitions and responses, the initial instructional overview provides a means to explicitly state course-specific definitions and policies. While students react negatively to “useless redundancy,” they appreciate a quick overview of a topic that acts as a refresher and outlines course-specific expectations (Dalton & Wright, 2004). Second, the formative assessment objectively identifies students who require instruction in the areas of referencing or plagiarism. Given the evidence that students often misjudge their own competence or lack confidence in the skills they have, a quick skill verification offers important evidence for both instructor and students. Finally, ensuring mastery provides evidence that each student has the ability to cite a source appropriately prior to his or her submission of a full research assignment. A subsequent plea of ignorance or unintentional plagiarism becomes null, paving the way for consistent and fair application of a university’s academic honesty policies.
Methodology
The investigation proceeded in phases representing both the application of investigative steps and a few missteps that highlight problems that can arise from incorrect assumptions or superficial instruction. In Phase 1, baseline data were collected when the instructor replaced ad hoc, subjective detection methods with plagiarism detection software and added a review of expectations and explicit penalties. Phase 2 included an analysis of the underlying causes of continuing plagiarism, which pointed to a mastery learning approach as an effective instructional solution. In Phase 3, with institutional review board approval, previously collected student data were utilized to determine instructional effectiveness.
Course Background and Assignment Guidelines
At the University of Northern Iowa, all management majors are required to complete a three-unit organizational behavior (OB) course, which covers business communication, ethics, motivation, leadership, and team dynamics. The course lists several prerequisites, including a junior-level organizational management course, so enrollment is limited to juniors or seniors already admitted to the College of Business Administration.
The major course project involves an in-depth academic research paper exploring a specific topic from the course. The assignment allows students flexibility to explore a personally intriguing topic. The enhanced autonomy incorporated into the assignment supports motivational concepts discussed within the course, particularly the idea that true intrinsic motivation hinges on personal interest in a topic. The personal application and action plan were incorporated, in part, to deter plagiarism with a more applied, personal assignment. The course syllabus states, The individual development project is a chance to explore an area that you wish to develop related to the field of Organizational Behavior. Sample topics might be an aspect of business communication, leadership, personality, etc. Throughout the paper, you willuse theories and researchfrom the field of Organizational Behavior to learn more about this area. The final section of the paper will include a research-basedaction planthat will provide information about how you can enhance this development area.
Phase 1: Baseline Performance
One author had taught the course for a couple of years with a typical set of plagiarism policies. The course syllabus did not specifically mention plagiarism but instructed students to “reference using APA format.” When grading final research assignments, the instructor would sometimes notice dramatic shifts in writing style and tone within some student papers, and the phenomenon seemed to have increased over recent semesters. A manual search of online materials revealed plagiarism in several submissions, with errors typically consisting of verbatim text not enclosed within quotation marks. The instructor wondered whether the increasing availability of online source material might be encouraging plagiarism and sought out some general resources.
Given the ad hoc, inconsistent identification of plagiarism and the relatively minor offenses, invoking a substantial university-level penalty for plagiarism did not seem appropriate. The instructor chose to take a point deduction for “citation” errors in research methods, a common practice among faculty members across academic disciplines (Harton, Gordon, & Aladia, 2017;McCabe, 2005).
While it was clear that students often cited references incorrectly, the extent of the problem had been difficult to determine. A human scan of suspicious passages on an ad hoc basis seemed to indicate the typical problem might be a lack of knowledge about citation practices, which led the instructor to move forward with several new practices designed to deter plagiarism:
Both the university plagiarism policy and a corresponding course plagiarism policy were included within the course syllabus.
The course policy specified penalties for various levels of detected plagiarism: Extreme plagiarism case (e.g., submitting another individual’s paper from a previous semester or copying large quantities of information from another source without citation, etc.): A zero on the assignment and the case reported to university administration. Moderate plagiarism case (e.g., improperly citing the textbook/reference, failing to use quotations for a direct quote, etc.): A complete redo of the assignment, using a completely different topic, for reduced credit.
Students submitted their papers directly to a popular plagiarism detection platform, Turnitin. The instructor reviewed the characteristics of the plagiarism detection system to ensure that the students understood that their papers would undergo a systematic examination for plagiarism.
A 75-minute course session titled “Conducting Research in OB” provided correct methods for conducting research, as well as thorough examples of plagiarism and proper citation techniques. Students were directed to additional plagiarism resources, such as the WriteCheck’s plagiarism website.
Students were encouraged throughout the course to seek assistance from the instructor regarding any uncertainty concerning proper citation methods or plagiarism.
The instructor had taken these steps to create a typical defense against plagiarism, based primarily on advice provided on the Turnitin website and in an article provided by a colleague (Marshall & Garry, 2005). Unfortunately, an examination of the final research projects demonstrated no effect.
An initial scan of the Turnitin originality reports suggested relatively low percentages of possible plagiarized material (most under 15%, including quoted material and reference list). Based on the guidelines within academic publications (Barrett & Malcolm, 2006), the instructor initially assumed this represented a reasonable amount of text, properly quoted and cited, that might appear in academic reports and was initially satisfied that the newly clarified expectations and systematic detection had solved the plagiarism problem. When grading the research papers, the instructor noted several that exhibited the telltale shift in writing style and tone that had triggered her ad hoc manual plagiarism checks in previous semesters. Because these were few in number, however, it was not until the day students expected their feedback that the instructor double-checked those suspicious papers against the Turnitin reports. Not expecting to find any plagiarism, she nevertheless decided to review the rest of the papers.
Several of the papers included plagiarized sections. The low similarity percentages had been due to the nature of the assignment, which called for personal experience and reflection that did not require citations. Although several students had submitted papers that included only 15% researched material, 100% of the researched information was plagiarized. Given the explicit and time-consuming in-class discussion of the topic, along with the seemingly reasonable similarity statistics, the discovery of plagiarism came as a complete surprise. Although the students expected feedback within hours, the instructor decided to delay returning the papers in order to carefully review all submissions, identify the complete list of students with plagiarized passages, and devise a plan for handling the problem.
The instructor announced a delay in providing feedback on the assignment because plagiarism had occurred in several papers and explained that she would need time to do further investigation and determine a plan of action. Student reactions to this announcement were entirely unexpected; they panicked. The department head’s office filled with students crying or making apologies, horrified that they might have committed this crime. Other students sought out their own faculty advisors, desperate to learn what might happen to them if they had, in fact, plagiarized. Several students emailed the instructor begging her to reveal whether plagiarism had occurred in their papers. One student, who had paraphrased and cited references appropriately, wrote, Is there any way you can relieve my anxiety and tell me if I did/did not plagiarize? I know you wanted to wait until Thursday, but after hearing several people did it from you in class, I really can’t stop thinking about it.
Students were not distressed that software had detected their violations of university policy. They were not attempting to cover their tracks or excuse unethical behavior. They simply had no knowledge of whether they had plagiarized, and many assumed the worst: that they hadinadvertentlycheated. Their reaction did not demonstrate a large-scale ethical problem among the students, but it did demonstrate an utter lack of confidence in their ability to reference sources.
The instructor carefully reviewed the originality reports, looking beyond the percentages to examine the individual sections that were similar to another source. Of the 62 papers, 12 submissions included multiple instances of plagiarism. The instructor had believed that these upper-division students should understand the basics of citing references and that the use of plagiarism detection software would be enough to deter intentional plagiarism as well as sloppy research practices. The realization that nearly 20% of the students still engaged in plagiarism deserved some analysis.
On inspection, the plagiarism fell largely into two categories: (a) exact wording without quotes, yet including a citation to the reference or (b) the application of reference knowledge throughout a paragraph, with only the final sentence of the paragraph linked to a citation. The number of students committing these errors revived concerns about student knowledge of paraphrasing and proper citation techniques. Essentially, students were stealing material and then pointing the instructor to the source of the stolen property, while knowing that a detection system was in place. This seemed like odd behavior for a truly malicious plagiarizer. The four examples inTable 1demonstrate the typical citation problems (matching text is in bold). Students consistently included reference citations, yet failed to indicate verbatim copying of the text with quotation marks, a topic explicitly discussed during the research session. In addition, there were instances where the source authors had cited a primary source, but students failed to follow APA conventions to indicate that a source was being used “as cited in” a secondary source.
Citation Errors in Student Papers.
Note.The source column inTable 1shows primary references cited in the source material that students did not properly indicate as having been cited by those authors.
While some might argue that these violations are minor, the accepted definition of plagiarism applies: The author is passing off someone else’s words as his or her own. A “moderate” plagiarism violation would seem the correct category, yet the visible concern expressed by students committing the error raised doubts that any had intended to defraud. Ignoring the violations seemed equally inappropriate, however, since that response could only reinforce the plagiarizing behavior.
Phase 2: Investigating Causes
Despite upper-division status, explicit classroom instruction, a promise of detection, and a draconian university policy, 20% of students still committed plagiarism on a major assignment and many others could not be sure that they had not. The instructor felt it important to learn how and why seemingly honest students were committing these errors and elected to take a direct approach. A face-to-face meeting was set up between the instructor and each student whose paper demonstrated plagiarism. For these 12 students, the returned paper came with the attached notice at the end: This letter signals that plagiarism was detected in your paper. As discussed in class, plagiarism includes any improper citations, including (but not limited to) copying text word for word without the use of quotations, and/or without citing the research source. The syllabus contains the University wide policy, as well as the course policy regarding this issue—receiving a 0 for the assignment. I am willing to meet with you about this issue. Keep in mind that I do not want to hear a variety of excuses for this behavior or deal with extreme displays of emotion. You have 15 minutes (by appointment only). If you can present a reasonable plan to handle this situation, I am willing to consider it. A reasonable plan will not require extensive work on my part and will not result in receiving full credit for your work. All communication regarding this issue will be face to face, rather than via email or phone. Please note that I did everything I could to prevent this problem from occurring, including discussing plagiarism in class, providing a website that gives additional information about plagiarism, and reminding the class that theTurnitin.comsystem is designed to catch plagiarism.
The meeting objective was to uncover how and why plagiarism appeared in the submission. The instructor saw this as an opportunity to learn more about the plagiarism instances, as well as assess each student’s professionalism during a confrontation or disciplinary action, a topic that was relevant to the course curriculum.
The interviews uncovered a few primary themes to explain the violations. A majority (10) of the students were apologetic, stating that this referencing technique was their standard for all classes and that this method had not been flagged or penalized in the past. Two students approached the interview with an aggressive stance, stating that these violations were perfectly acceptable methods for research citations and demanding full credit for the paper. One belligerent student stated, “This paper would receive an A in any other class,” and demanded the same assessment in the current course. Unlike those who were uncertain of whether they had plagiarized, the aggressive students demonstrated a complete certainty that they had learned and practiced proper citation methods throughout their college experience. If this technique had indeed been taught and reinforced, it would seem logical for the student to become angry with an instructor making seemingly outrageous accusations of plagiarism.
In response to additional questions regarding how each learned this behavior, several students noted that other business instructors classified the failure to add quotes to information taken directly from a source as a punctuation error. Others stated that the instructor of a previous business course had taught students that it was appropriate to list citations only at the end of the paragraph. Each student provided a specific faculty name to support his or her claim that other faculty handled plagiarism differently in their courses.
The instructor specifically asked each student why he or she had ignored the guidelines presented during the “Conducting Research in OB” session. The students reported they had dismissed that class session as something for “other” students who lacked experience with citing references. As junior or senior business majors, they had already submitted papers in other classes and had not received negative feedback on their citation techniques. Thus, students believed their methods to be acceptable for all classes or disciplines. Confident in their own ability to cite references properly, they admitted to paying little attention during the class review.
At the end of each interview, the instructor prompted the student to suggest an action plan to handle his or her specific case of plagiarism. The plans ranged from a willingness to receive a zero on the assignment, to a redo of the entire paper, to an adamantly repeated demand for full credit on the original submission. In all cases, the instructor successfully persuaded students to take advantage of the learning opportunity and redo those sections of the paper where they had demonstrated a failure to properly quote or cite their sources. The revision would not result in full credit, but offered a chance to learn proper methods as well as avoid the specified penalty for moderate plagiarism, writing an entirely new paper.
In general, learning did occur. One student was especially thankful for the opportunity because she was working as a research assistant for a business professor. She realized she had been committing these same violations within a research paper coauthored with that professor. She was horrified to think about the consequences had the article been tagged for plagiarism by a journal or had she continued her improper citation practices into graduate school.
Students blamed previous instructors for all errors and omissions, but because these students had been perfectly willing to name names, the instructor took the opportunity to investigate. Asking each colleague to describe how they detected and handled plagiarism, the instructor was surprised to confirm the student accusations. The conversations verified that many instructors do not check for plagiarism at all, citing a variety of reasons: the extensive time commitment needed to hunt for plagiarism, a belief that their own course assignments were not conducive to plagiarism, and a belief that scanning for plagiarism would signal distrust, potentially ruining the academic relationship and the opportunity for close student connections.
In addition, the faculty interviews confirmed that some instructors were providing inaccurate citation instruction and/or minimizing the severity of copying information verbatim without quotation marks. One instructor was teaching students to place references only at the end of the paragraph, rather than linking each piece of information to a source. Others confirmed they treated the failure to use quotation marks as a minor error in language mechanics.
Phase 3: Mastery Learning
With their claims of ignorance verified, the instructor recognized that some business students needed additional education on accepted (i.e., APA or MLA) citation rules, yet the stiffer penalties and additional instruction had shown little promise for solving the problem. Previous faculty approval of improper citation practices, even though implicit or inadvertent, had neutralized the impact of the explicit plagiarism policies and citation overview already presented in the course. The instructor thus abandoned the ethical framework in favor of a mastery learning approach, an instructional technique that provides students with feedback on a task along with another opportunity for the student to demonstrate mastery (Bloom, 1968). Thecorrective activitiesprovide students with an opportunity to learn from mistakes and experience success on a second attempt (Guskey, 2007). The aim would be to ensure that students had the ability to cite references properly before they were asked to complete the major research project for the course.
Course policies, assignment guidelines, a requirement to submit through a plagiarism detection site, and the research session remained the same. However, on completion of the research session, the instructor conducted a brief in-class activity that required students to demonstrate their knowledge of proper citation techniques. The activity drew from the research session, which had included an example of how a previous student had improperly cited a journal abstract. In this case, the abstract from an article titled “Academic Procrastination: Frequency and Cognitive-Behavioral Correlates” bySolomon and Rothblum (1984)was projected on the screen using PowerPoint. Students were instructed to paraphrase and properly cite the abstract in the same fashion that they would use for a paper. Each student needed to write at least one sentence, but students were encouraged to write more to clearly demonstrate an ability to paraphrase and cite research information properly.
Each of the activity submissions was reviewed by the instructor. The process could be reviewed quickly since each student submitted only a few sentences. A review of their submissions indicated that over 71% of the 84 students failed to follow the paraphrasing and citation guidelines exactly. The instructor reviewed the inaccurate citations to identify common themes, and it seemed that similar themes found in Phase 1 could be identified in this abbreviated in-class activity. The examples inTable 2demonstrate the typical citation problems (matching text is in bold and simple word replacements are shown in italics).
Typical Citation Problems for In-Class Activity.
Clear feedback was provided for each student to help identify the errors. For example, Student 4 was provided with the following feedback:
Cite references throughout the paragraph. A reference should be very clearly linked to each piece of information that was used from the article. If multiple sentences are linked to a reference, that should be clear to the reader.
Avoid citing personal sentences. A reference linked to a personal statement will indicate that the research article was about you personally. Link the reference material clearly to information from the article.
Following the guidelines for formative assessment (Guskey, 2007), the results shaped follow-up instruction. The instructor used the first 15 minutes of the following class session to address the common themes connected to the activity errors, highlighting the lack of paraphrasing in the submissions. A few students adamantly claimed that the information from the article could only be worded in one way, a way that was unfortunately but insurmountably used already by the author. Further discussion revealed the root cause of their dilemma to be students’ failure to comprehend the content of the original paragraph to be cited. Students found rewording of a sentence to be very difficult when they did not clearly understand its meaning. A second theme involved reminding students to include a reference for paraphrased information for each sentence linked to the reference; some erroneously believed that once they had accurately paraphrased information, credit to the author was no longer necessary or that a reference at the end of the paragraph would indicate that the whole paragraph was linked to the reference.
Students who had not completed the citation activity accurately were required to demonstrate mastery of the citation guidelines prior to submission of the course project. They received a corrective activity (see theappendix), to be completed within 2 weeks.
The instructor reviewed the submissions for accuracy and provided specific feedback that would allow each student to correct the errors. Of 60 students who needed to complete the paragraph citation activity, 15 failed to complete it correctly in their redo submission. The students who failed the redo activity seemed to transition from a lack of paraphrasing to committing another common error, such as adding references only at the end of the paragraph or removing the reference from the paraphrased sentences. Students who had not yet mastered the proper methods for citations were instructed to complete the activity again, referencing a different piece of information from theNitterhouse (2003)article. Only one student failed to master the citation process on the third try; that student required six attempts to achieve mastery.
As before, the instructor turned to plagiarism detection software to locate copied text in the students’ final research report assignment. The results for 84 submitted papers indicated that over 98% of the papers demonstrated proper citation techniques. Only one paper included several sections of verbatim text without proper quotation. That student used several sections of material without properly quoting the information and was required to redo the assignment entirely, using a new topic. The student’s previous in-class activity results provided evidence that the student had the ability to cite references properly; thus, a claim of ignorance could not be supported. However, the student did not challenge the punishment and was not surprised by the accusation. The student admitted that he had rushed throughout the project and failed to make careful notes to indicate when he had copied the text verbatim. His own carelessness had led him to believe that the copied text had been properly paraphrased.
Conclusions and Implications
Overall, the results provide evidence that formal plagiarism guidelines, the use of plagiarism detection software, and even the inclusion of an entire session on proper citation techniques are not enough to deter plagiarism. These procedures cannot catch the attention of students who have successfully submitted plagiarized material in the past. On the other hand, a relatively small amount of instructional time paired with a mastery assessment dramatically improved student performance. Furthermore, a mastery learning approach mitigated most of the detection, policy, and pedagogical issues raised by previous scholarship. We developed five conclusions regarding effectively developing business students’ citation skills.
Plagiarism detection shortcuts are imperfect, and full assessment of all texts represents an impossible faculty workload.This project demonstrated several known problems with plagiarism detection software, which can return misleading statistics. Here, the attempt to make an assignment more personal and unique had the side effect of decreasing the amount of referenced material, thus deflating the percentages identified as plagiarism by the software. On the other hand, a manual detection of plagiarism can be overwhelming for an instructor, and checking every reference for every student is simply unrealistic. The mastery learning technique does not replace the need for some detection steps, but the dramatic increase in student competence reduces their centrality.
Concerns about ascertaining a student’s ethical intent or the fair application of university policy provide faculty with strong incentives to ignore or downplay plagiarism.The imperfect detection of manual searches calls into question the application of punishments for only the few papers that include glaring errors such as shifts in writing style and tone. Meanwhile, the use of detection software cannot ascertain whether a student was cheating, sloppy, or misinformed about correct citation methods. The mastery approach offers instructors the ability to verify students’ capability to perform ethically and offers tangible evidence that any subsequent plagiarism is their responsibility. Instructor stress is reduced, along with the inherently adversarial relationship involved in the policing paradigm.
Removing research and citation expectations from the curriculum fails to prepare students for important professional expectations.While assignments can be altered to remove the need for any secondary research or in-text citations, they then fail to prepare students to effectively and ethically use evidence to support their positions. Nor can such assignments address the sophisticated issues of competence within a knowledge community. The mastery learning approach offers potential for both. While the example here focused on the mechanics of proper citation, the debriefing discussions also demonstrated the difficulty students have with paraphrasing texts they do not fully understand. The instruction and mastery test could also have addressed more sophisticated tasks such as documenting the history or politics of an idea over multiple sources, tracing the conceptual development of an idea, or justifying adherence to a position.
Faculty teach different citation methods, including some that are not acceptable in academic scholarship.This investigation corroborated the excuse many students give: They were not taught to follow the rigorous standards of academic citation. Whether due to faculty error or inattention, such inconsistencies create a serious obstacle to student learning that seems far beyond the capacity of any one instructor to remove. The mastery learning approach allows an instructor to quickly and effectively teach the expectations within a single course, which guarantees, at least, that students are not surprised by those expectations. Furthermore, the objective assessment allows students to clarify their own understanding, which might have faded due to instructors’ varied and contradictory interpretations of rules the students might actually have learned in foundational courses.
Reteaching correct citation methods to all students across multiple courses adds useless, annoying, and ultimately counterproductive redundancy in the curriculum.Spending precious instructional time on material students should have learned and many or most did learn can prevent faculty from offering any instruction at all, despite good evidence that about 30% of the students would benefit. Furthermore, many of those will simply tune out the perceived redundancy, not realizing that they are confidently using incorrect citation methods. The mastery learning approach can be structured with the first formative assessment following very little or even no in-class instruction at all, functioning as a verification of learning that should have occurred in previous classes. This reliably captures the attention of those who thought they did not need to pay attention and allows the instructor to spend valuable classroom time on just the points that most students had not fully understood. The alternative, an out-of-class homework assignment, cannot solve the problem, adding enormously to faculty workload while simply shifting the time-wasting redundancy to the knowledgeable students’ valuable out-of-class time. The very brief formative assessment in class allows the instructor to assign and grade the work of only those students who need it.
Overall, a mastery approach to plagiarism provides a solution for several obstacles that had been identified in the literature, with the added advantage of demonstrably better student competence.Bloom (1968)predicted that up to 90% of students within a class had the capability of mastering a concept. In the case of proper citation, our results support the prediction. The initial formative assessment revealed that 71% of the students had not mastered the concepts of paraphrasing, and yet more than 98% of the students were able to reach the mastery level and submit papers with properly cited sources after they had received explicit instruction and formative assessment through as many rounds as required for success. Only one student did not demonstrate mastery at the end of the course, and his situation reflected a somewhat unrelated deficiency in research methods.
Whether students received incorrect instruction, failed to understand the instruction they received, or simply had not paid attention in the first place, the mastery approach provides an individual instructor with a workable system for ensuring that students have fully mastered the expectations for assignments in his or her course. Furthermore, the students’ demonstration of the skill removes the need for instructors to make moral judgments or enforce university policy when there might be sincere doubt about a student’s knowledge of proper citation.
We do not claim that a mastery learning approach solves the problem of plagiarism. There will always be students who choose to copy another’s work, purchase a paper online, or misrepresent others’ ideas as their own. Nor does instruction in citations resolve all errors of research methods or a failure to fully comprehend the source material. Still, given the strong evidence that a large proportion of students do not fully understand the mechanics of proper citation, an effective and efficient instructional method might greatly reduce the problem.
Footnotes
Appendix
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of the University of Northern Iowa (approval #18-0005). Student writing is reproduced by permission.
Author Biographies