Plagiarism: an Educational Approach

Nick Fox, Andrew Booth and Alan O’Rourke

University of Sheffield
Abstract

The paper reports an approach to addressing plagiarism and other unfair means in higher
education. It comprises a) an educational programme to introduce the concepts of plagiarism
to students and give them an opportunity to practice academic writing; b) a system of
declarations for all assignments; and c) a procedure to enable students and teachers to check
work using the text-matching package Turnitin. We discuss this approach in the context of
academic literacy, arguing that our responsibility to higher education students includes
fostering skills in academic writing. Furthermore, as academics we need to be aware of the
values and principles concerning originality and evidence-based citation that underpin
concepts such as plagiarism, and recognise that these concepts can be problematic for
students. Interviews with students and staff indicated a positive evaluation of the project, and
the paper describes the extension of the approach to cover all our teaching.
Introduction

Higher education institutions face a challenge to their examination procedures as a

consequence of intentional and unintentional plagiarism (Culwin and Lancaster 2001). The
rise in cases of detected plagiarism has been linked to the emergence of easy access to
millions of words of digitised scholarly texts via Internet sources, including e-journals held in
University libraries, academic search engines and more recently, Google Scholar (Ashworth
et al. 1997, O’Connor 2003, Park 2003). Not only are these sources readily accessed, they are
easy to cut and paste with two clicks of a mouse button. Sharing electronic text files similarly
facilitates collusion between students. Self-plagiarism, a less recognised phenomenon, may
also be on the increase, among both students and faculty members (Collberg and Kobourov
2005).

The higher education sector has responded by developing technical solutions to address
plagiarism. Most simply, lecturers apply the same methods as their plagiarising students to
detect non-original work. Typing a sentence from a suspect essay into a search engine such
as Google Scholar may quickly identify matching text, and hence the source of plagiarism
(Culwin and Lancaster 2001: 36). This process has been formalised in a number of software
packages that have been developed to detect texts matches (Scaife 2007) of which the best-
known in UK academic communities is probably Turnitin. 1 These packages enable matching
of text with an extensive database of materials including previously submitted student work,
and are consequently valuable tools to identify suspected plagiarism and collusion. Turnitin
permits teaching staff to submit an electronic version of a student’s work and discover the
extent of text matching, or create a ‘classroom’ and require all students to submit their essays
using the software. The software also offers opportunities for students to pre-test their work
for matching text (Whittle and Murdoch-Eaton 2008), and then submit it when it falls below a
pre-defined limit (for example, 20 per cent matched text). It should be noted that the software
does not detect plagiarism or collusion explicitly: it merely identifies matched text. There
may be legitimate reasons for matches, including properly referenced quotations from
scholarly sources. For these reasons, the software should be seen as a means for staff to
identify suspect matching text, as a first step in investigating why there is text matching.
Even when using software to detect text matches, plagiarism detection can be time-
consuming, as can any subsequent disciplinary procedures (Carroll 2002). In this paper, we
report our own response to plagiarism in a higher education context. This approach takes --
on one hand -- a zero tolerance approach to plagiarism, regarding it as a serious intellectual
offence worthy of disciplinary action, and on the other, an educational approach to academic
writing as part and parcel of the learning that higher education should foster in its students.

The problem of plagiarism

Unlike most other walks of life, the academic world is founded on a principle of
acknowledging intellectual outputs as the basis not only for scholarly advance, but of
individual achievement (Boud 1990). It is thus unsurprising that efforts to pass off another’s
intellectual work as one’s own are regarded as a serious infringement amounting to
dishonesty, lack of integrity or theft (Park 2003: 474, 476), indeed academic careers have
been interrupted or ended by exposure of plagiarism. Socialisation into academe includes
understanding this principle and the responsibility of all to adhere to it. Students need quickly
to adopt this value if they are not to fall foul of academic disfavour or discipline, although as
Lea and Street point out (1998: 158), it is also the duty of educationalists to recognise the
different models of literacy that students may apply to their writing in good faith. Where
individuals are studying to enter professions, or are already members of a profession such as
medicine, it may also be argued that plagiarism represents unprofessional behaviour that
should be punished with particular zeal.

However, we would argue that is over-simplistic to consider plagiarism simply as a feckless

endeavour to cheat or gain unfair advantage. While many cases of plagiarism considered in
academic disciplinary committees have identified intentional efforts to pass off others’
intellectual property as their own, many other reasons for copying texts without due
recognition have also been suggested. In their review, Hayes and Introna (2003) identify a
range of factors that may have led to increasing plagiarism, including a lack of understanding
by students and clarity by university authorities of plagiarism, worsening staff-student ratios
leading to inadequate mentoring, increased use of assessment methods other than unseen
examinations, and coincident deadlines for multiple assignments. Park (2003) documents
further psychosocial reasons why students may plagiarise, such as poor time management,
negative attitudes to teachers or assignments, defiance, temptation and a lack of deterrence.

Authors have argued that plagiarism may reflect students’ inexperience of how to write
authoritatively while offering solid and rigorous referencing of source materials (Boscolo et al
2007, Lea and Street 1998: 167). The risk of unintentional plagiarism is a source of anxiety
for students (Ashworth et al 1997: 192). There may also be cultural issues in a student body
drawn from many nationalities, as some students will be less exposed to Western traditions of
scholarship, while in some cultures repetition of a teacher’s words is a mark of respect (Hayes
and Introna 2003, Russikoff et al 2003). Where students hold ethical views concerning
intellectual production, these may differ from those of the academic mainstream or
institutional authorities, while fundamental principles of academic endeavour and scholarship
underpinning the concept of plagiarism are poorly understood (Ashworth et al 1997). Lea and
Street (1999) argue that while from an institutional perspective, plagiarism is a fraudulent and
culpable activity, from a student point-of-view, it raises questions of students’ identities as the
producers of intellectual outputs. Indeed, evaluations of student writing code ‘implicit
assumptions about what constitutes valid knowledge within a particular context, and the
relationships of authority that exist around the communication of these assumptions’ (Lea and
Street 1999: 170).

Like other higher education outlets, the University of Sheffield’s School of Health and
Related Research (henceforth, ‘the School’) has faced the problem of addressing plagiarism
and collusion appropriately. For the first author this had personal significance, as the
individual charged with the responsibility for the disciplinary procedures that follow
suspicions of plagiarism or collusion. Given that the School is predominantly postgraduate,
and that many students are health care professionals, it seemed essential to make a rigorous
and muscular response to these cases of intellectual fraud, which could also be regarded as
unprofessional behaviour. We wished to implement a ‘one strike and you’re out’ policy for
postgraduate students, in which severe penalties would be sought for any demonstrated
plagiarism or collusion via a University disciplinary committee.
However, given the social and cultural contexts within which students and their writing are
situated, and the importance of addressing not only the equity of the examination process but
additionally the development of students’ capacities as academic producers, it insufficient to
address plagiarism simply in terms of discipline, as many institutions (including our own)
have inclined (Park 2003). With a rapid increase in the numbers of overseas students
unfamiliar with UK academic culture, we wished both to ensure rigorous and punitive
responses to intellectual fraud, and to give students an opportunity to address their academic
literacy, gaining transferable skills in academic writing and developing their own writing
identities as members of an academic community. Whittle and Murdoch-Eaton (2008) found
that students appreciated the opportunity to pre-test their essays for plagiarism, both as re-
assurance and to gain greater understanding of academic writing. Ashworth et al (1997) have
argued that plagiarism needs to be addressed within a framework that acknowledges students
as apprentices in academe that need mentoring and nurturing:

Rather than being predominantly negative and prohibitive in tone, the message given
to students ought to stress the positive reasons for proper attribution and be
accompanied by concrete examples of both good and impermissible practice. We
believe that such an approach should include the idea that students are junior members
of a scholarly community (Ashworth et al. 1997: 201)

The ScHARR Plagiarism Project

In the spring of 2006, primarily in response to a disciplinary procedure involving alleged

plagiarism by three medically-qualified students on a postgraduate programme, the first
author launched a project to develop an approach to plagiarism in the School that would both
establish a punitive regime for plagiarism and associated academic cheating, and an
educational strategy aimed to eradicate these transgressions. The second and third authors
took on responsibility for developing the educational programme and materials and a protocol
for using Turnitin software to assess all written assignments for text matching within the
School’s examination procedures.
During the September 2006 to June 2007 session, the approach was piloted with new students
taking postgraduate programmes in the School, and an evaluation of its impact on students
and staff was undertaken towards the end of this session. As will be reported later, the
approach has been subsequently adopted for all students on the School’s undergraduate and
taught postgraduate programmes. The components of the approach were a) an educational
programme to introduce the concepts of plagiarism to students and give them an opportunity
to practice academic writing and use of text matching software; b) a system of declarations to
be used as cover sheets for all assignments and c) a procedure to enable students and teachers
to check work using Turnitin, and attach plagiarism reports to assignments.

The Educational Programme

During the introductory week, all attending students received a one-hour workshop on
plagiarism, comprising a presentation and exercises. They were also provided with an
independent study pack entitled ‘Making good use of the literature: plagiarism and how to
avoid it’, covering the issues raised in the workshop, training in the use of Turnitin, and a
compulsory exercise and declaration form. The pack also contained information about the
university penalties for plagiarism and collusion. This training was located within a two-day
introductory programme during which students learnt principles of scholarly enquiry
including use of library resources, searching and critical appraisal of literature. Distance
learning students (who do not attend this workshop) received the independent study pack
electronically. 2 A web page with FAQs was also devised, and the URL publicised widely to
students.

The exercise required the students to analyse two brief papers presenting contrasting opinions
on a specific topic, and synthesise these into an 800-word discursive essay. Students had then
to use Turnitin, in a pre-existing classroom set up by the plagiarism course organiser, to check
their essays. In their study of Turnitin, Whittle and Murdoch-Eaton (2008) found that
students wanted a declared cut-off point for matching text. Turnitin will identify legitimately-
quoted and referenced text as matching, so a generous 24 per cent matched text cut-off was
applied, above which the extent of text-matching would be considered as plagiarism (or
conceivably collusion if it matched an essay submitted by another student). Students could
repeatedly test and refine their essay using Turnitin. Once it ‘passed’ the matched-text
criterion, they then submitted it electronically to the classroom. The course organiser collated
results, to ensure all registered students took and passed the test within a designated period
(approximately six weeks).

The purpose of the exercise was two fold. First, it gave students experience of writing a
university essay, managing the source materials according to the concepts of academic
literacy introduced in the workshop and study pack. Second, they gained the skills to use
Turnitin classrooms formatively, prior to their compulsory use for submitting summative
assignments for their course.

The Declaration Form

When submitting their test essay, students completed a declaration form, indicating that they
had read the study pack, understood what was meant by plagiarism, were aware of the
university’s penalties for plagiarism and collusion, and acknowledged that their assessed work
would be tested for plagiarism and collusion using text-matching software. In tandem, new
assignment cover sheets were devised, to incorporate a further declaration by students
confirming their knowledge of plagiarism, the university penalties, and that they had
submitted the assignment to Turnitin. Students could tick a box indicating that their work had
less than 24 per cent matching text according to Turnitin, or offer an explanation of why it
scored about 24 per cent (there are some legitimate reasons why this may occur). Cover
sheets were to be handed in with all assignments. 3

The Turnitin text-matching procedure

To achieve comprehensive use of Turnitin for assignments requires separate ‘classrooms’ to

be created for each summative assessment. A brief training pack was provided to all module
co-ordinators using assignments for summative assessment. During the pilot, an
administrative member of staff adopted a progress-chasing role, to ensure all co-ordinators
successfully created a classroom and had informed their students of the log-in procedures in
advance of the assignment hand-in date.
The same 24 per cent cut off level was set for acceptable text-matching in summative
assignments. Students were able to use ‘revision classrooms’ to test their essays on three
occasions to ensure it fell below this threshold. If an essay exceeded the target level, a
student could thus revise it progressively to ensure that the final version would not exceed the
cut-off. This introduced a further formative element to the plagiarism testing process that
contributed to the educational approach adopted (Davis 2007). A satisfactory essay would
then be submitted to the main classroom, and when the student received the report, this was
then attached to the essay before it was handed in, with a completed declaration cover sheet.
Module co-ordinators could access the reports online if they wished, and could also check
prior to the deadline that students were using the classroom to test their assignments. The
pilot allowed refinements to this process, and following discussion, some assignments were
exempted from using Turnitin: typically those involving statistical analysis or other questions
where students could conceivably submit identical answers legitimately. Dissertations were
also exempted, as we wished to gain experience of the process before applying it to extended
pieces of work.

Evaluation of the Pilot Project

Following the first use of Turnitin classrooms for summative assessments at the end of the
autumn semester 2006, we approached course directors, unit co-ordinators and student
representatives to evaluate the impact of the initiative. They were invited to respond by e-
mail with general comments on the project.

Most students who had attended the project training were clear what the School required of
them from the beginning of the academic year, and coped well with the test exercise and the
use of Turnitin classrooms. Some appreciated the exercise as useful to their studies, and even
indicated that they had enjoyed the exercise. The main problems encountered were technical.
Some expressed frustration at the time needed to access papers for the test essay, Turnitin
registration, waiting for originality reports, and revising and re-submitting drafts if the text
matching for their first version came out above the 24 per cent cut off: There can be a delay
of up to a day between submitting an essay to Turnitin and the production of an originality
report showing text matching. Students indicated that this might be a problem for assignment
deadlines, particularly if the report showed a high proportion of matched text, necessitating a
further revision. A student course representative said

I personally had no problems with the plagerism [sic] software, but I understand some
of the other students did: It took up to 5 hours to generate the originality report for a
lot of students on one of the assignment submissions. It also clashes with one of the
anti-virus programmes that the university distributes to students!

Technical difficulties predominantly affected students on distance learning programmes,

including access to the papers used for the test essay, and to the Turnitin site. These problems
appeared to stem from lack of understanding of University systems for remote access to
campus computing services or use of non-University e-mail addresses. One distance learning
student, who had struggled with access from a remote location, complained that he had not
been told about the project when he first registered.

I do feel annoyed that this obligatory part of the course was not flagged up at the
beginning. I am also concerned that, if I was not warned about this, there may be other
measures forced upon me later on that I could not accommodate.

Students working at locations remote from Sheffield may have felt unsupported at a
vulnerable time.

I am very happy to engage in plagiarism exercises but … I could make neither head
nor tail of the Turnitin system. Thus, my essay is late and I doubt whether it is
plagiarism tested but I am not sure. It would seem that I may have inadvertently
submitted the original rather than a “test” and it is too late to now do a “test”. As I
have said before the course is good but the Turnitin system is appalling. I simply do
not wish to do another term, spend ages writing an essay and then have to struggle to
submit it (as it happens this time incorrectly).
These technical difficulties affected a minority; indeed the evaluation found that some
students had been using the test essay Turnitin classroom to ‘check’ essays for plagiarism on
behalf of their friends in other University departments. Only one student objected in principle
to using Turnitin to detect text matches.

To be honest, I'm uncomfortable with Turnitin. When I submitted the [test] exercise, it
was citing all kinds of supposed plagiarism from publications I had never even heard of,
never mind read or plagiarised. It evens cites your references as plagiarism! An article
about Turnitin in the New Scientist this week says that you can be found guilty of
plagiarism if you use information that you saw somewhere else and then use it without
realizing that someone else said it first. It's a bit like 'sleep plagiarising'. Most of what I
say is straight out of my own head, without reference to publications, but of course, I
knew very little about some of the issues, such as Yalom's Responsibility theory, before I
began the unit, so I dare say I could well tot up a few points without any intention. I have
a very good memory! … I think Turnitin is a step too far and will stifle creativity, even
though it is supposed to encourage this. … Turnitin is ‘Big Brother’, and it makes the
hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

Among teaching staff, the initiative was given broad support, and was perceived by course
directors as an effective way to deal with the perennial problem of plagiarism that they faced,
and was easy to implement. There was support to widen the scope of the pilot from
postgraduate taught courses to cover dissertations, postgraduate research papers, and research
theses. One course director commented:

My sense was that the students had few problems with it and neither did the staff. Given
that it appeared to kill plagiarism stone dead in the [name of course] then I think it’s done
the trick!

However a course director of a distance learning programme felt that more needed to be done
to support students to use the system.
 I am concerned about the reaction that this exercise is receiving from several of our
students. Part of this may be relating to how it is introduced, and I will be more
careful with new students to tell them about this early on in their studies and not to
‘surprise’ them with it near the end of term. I have had several comments to the effect
that students find the process overly complicated, confusing [and] rather patronising.
… I am concerned that the current practice is alienating for students. Whether this is
purely due to the distance learning context, or the way the issue has been introduced to
students is unclear.

Although Turnitin matches text against a vast database, it will inevitably not identify text
matches with other sources, including many textbooks. One course director noted that
examiners had identified an essay ‘passing’ Turnitin with 17 per cent matched text as actually
being 90 per cent plagiarised from a single book.

Apart from this, other problems were technical. One teacher felt poorly supported in using
Turnitin, despite the guidance offered

The use of the system is a good practice point in assessment methodology but this counts
for nothing without thinking how it will affect people at different levels. Module
coordinators are given no training or support with the system and can’t answer the
questions the students raise. We don't even know what the students ought to know how to
do. [Project officer] may know the ins and outs of the system, but it doesn't necessarily
help any of us if he’s the only one that does. Students inevitably struggle, … incorrectly
submit drafts, submit in the wrong classroom, or simply cannot access the system.

In summary, both students and staff indicated some concerns over the technical side of the
project, but raised few fundamental concerns with the underpinning conception of an
educational approach to plagiarism. Some distance learning students had struggled with the
technology, but that derived from a mix of inadequate support during the training phase of the
project and problems with remote access to University resources. Their exposure to the
package came after a month of the semester had passed, giving inadequate time for students to
complete the test essay before the assessment period.

Roll-out of the Approach

The plagiarism project was a standing item on the agenda of the School’s teaching committee
throughout the 2007/08 session and has continued to be discussed on a regular basis. The
committee considered the pilot evaluation in May 2007 and agreed to confirm the approach as
mandatory for all taught programme students. New versions of the educational packs were
developed for undergraduate, postgraduate and distance learning students, a different topic
was chosen for the test essay and a refresher course for staff was run in autumn 2007. A
follow-up process evaluation was undertaken among course directors in May 2008, to assess
progress of the approach across programmes, and to explore how the project had affected
levels of detected academic misconduct. Course directors reported that the process was
running smoothly, with no problems in administration of the classrooms by either staff or
students. One suggested that students were using Turnitin classrooms formatively

Many students (about a third I would estimate) submitted high-percentage versions

first, and reworked them to bring down the percentages. If one assumed that they
would otherwise have handed in the first versions, then the effect of the education
pack is significant.

All reported that the incidence of unfair means had fallen, although this cannot be quantified
as there were no baseline measures, and a longer-term analysis is required to confirm this
trend. However, despite the use of the software, plagiarism had not been eradicated. One
course director noted a case of plagiarism that had been missed by Turnitin, when text had
been copied from a book not included in the software database, but picked up by an assiduous
marker. This is a weakness in the system, but is a reminder that the software identifies
matched text, not plagiarism, and is not a substitute for vigilance by academic staff. Another
commented:
 I attach the plagiarism reports of the student who clearly did not understand what
plagiarism was, and who had cut and pasted an essay then changed occasional words
to get past the plagiarism checker. There are two reports: one before and one after her
attempts to change the language (using the Word thesaurus by my estimation!).
Turnitin has been very helpful in this case as it allowed me to identify what the student
has done, and which sources she used.

Two course directors pointed to negative impacts of the approach. One noted concerns
among staff and the external examiner that the use of Turnitin fostered a sense among
students that they were not trusted. Another commented that

I have had a few (students) who have sought exemption due to their previous
experience as lecturers. Some of these have felt affronted at being asked to do the
exercise, saying. ‘I would have thought that by now we would all know what
plagiarism is’. I have replied that assessments on the programme have shown that not
all students do know what plagiarism is and how to avoid it.

While recognising these reservations, the School teaching committee concluded that overall
the approach had significant benefits both in reducing plagiarism and in fostering the growth
of academic literacy. Endorsing the model for permanent use, in May 2008 the committee
commissioned a further pilot on its application to dissertations and PhD theses. One further
change was to re-brand the training pack as an approach to academic literacy, to emphasise to
students that the principal objective is educational rather than punitive.

Discussion

The approach we have adopted to plagiarism and collusion melds a software package that can
match student work against a database of digitised text with an educational programme of
training in the concepts underpinning academic writing and ways to avoid accusations of
plagiarism. As such, it reflects a recognition that students sometimes do seek to gain
advantage by cheating. However, it simultaneously acknowledges a broader literature on
plagiarism in higher education that suggests a problem grounded in a failure to fully
understand the principles of academic writing, and a lack of specific skills to produce original
academic work (Boscolo et al. 2007, Lea and Street 1998). Throughout the project we have
aimed to provide benefits to staff by improving the rigour by which use of unfair means can
be detected and demonstrated objectively, while assisting students to avoid rightful or
misplaced accusations of scholarly misconduct. Perhaps more importantly, our approach
proactively addresses academic literacy among higher education students.

In their study of academic writing, Boscolo et al (2007) argue that the synthetic work entailed
in producing assignments based around reviews of literature moves beyond knowledge re-
telling to knowledge transformation and elaboration. Students need to learn how to move
beyond superficial reporting of others’ work (whether or not this is deemed to be plagiarism),
to a transformative process in which

… the writer relates the contents of the sources in new ways, and makes connections
between the source materials and his/her knowledge. A good synthesis is, therefore,
more than a summary of other texts; it is an elaboration of contents in a new
representation, according to the writer’s purposes (Boscolo et al 2007: 422).

An educational approach to plagiarism must address the production of synthetic writing, in

which students learn to integrate source materials within an argument, and move beyond
summary to an elaborated discourse on a topic that ranges sources within an overarching
structure, in order to answer a specific question. Plagiarism, whether intentional or
unintentional, represents a shortfall in achieving transformative and elaborated writing that
meets the expectations of academe. It follows that a solely punitive approach to plagiarism
misses the underlying educational needs of students to grasp the principles and methodologies
of academic writing. By focusing on educating students about scholarly sources and their
contribution to academic production, our approach to plagiarism addresses, in part at least,
these needs. The objective is not simply to assist students to avoid an accusation of
plagiarism, but also to encourage understanding of the purposes of academic writing and how
to do it.
The evidence from our course directors is that this project has reduced plagiarism in the
School, and consequently the amount of time devoted to detecting and prosecuting unfair
means. However, a spin-off is that staff have gained a clearer insight into the provenance of
many cases of plagiarism as grounded in students’ poor grasp of the principles of academic
writing. Scrutiny of work submitted to Turnitin revision classrooms shows how students use
the revision classrooms to ensure their essays do not breach the cut-off point of 24 per cent
matching text. While this could be considered a ‘charter for cheating’, an alternative
perspective is that students are using the opportunities of an objective check on text matching
to improve their citation and use of source data; in other words, to gain skills in academic
literacy. 4 We would argue that this is an important process objective for a university
assessment. Lea and Street (1996: 170-1) point out that academic literacy is not simply a skill
for students to acquire, it is an implicit cultural issue that requires reflexivity among
academics about the processes of student writing. By learning more about how students
regard academic writing and construct their outputs, even where these do not conform fully to
established academic literacy values, we gain insight into the development of our students’
competencies that can only enhance our own competence as educators.

Developing the approach has required significant academic and administrative effort,
including the creation of educational materials and many hours of discussion of its
implementation. Questions have had to be addressed concerning the use of Turnitin for
assignments by students from other departments, distance learning and continuing students.
We have had to confirm that we could compel students to take the test essay and submit to
Turnitin under University regulations. Finally we have considered exemptions, most recently
for reflective work where inclusion in the Turnitin database could compromise
confidentiality. However the main challenge with such as project inevitably concerns
changing culture rather than process, and the project team has worked concertedly with staff
and students to help them understand the goals of academic literacy. Two years on, the
approach is finally fully integrated into course management processes and the second
evaluation indicates that it has become a familiar aspect of the assessment culture and strategy
in the School among students and staff alike. Further work is needed to evaluate how best to
submit long documents to Turnitin so we may extend the approach to postgraduate
dissertations and PhD theses. The project has been reported widely in the University
community, informed the University of Sheffield plagiarism policy developed in 2007, and
has been adopted by some other departments.

No doubt there will be future cases of plagiarism in our School, despite our initiative. Indeed
one assignment recently submitted had an originality report indicating 72 per cent matching
text, yet no effort at explanation! In such a case, should we diagnose malignant cheating or
grotesque ignorance of academic process? Had this work been identified by a marker prior to
our project, this student would have been penalised or even excluded for unfair means, but we
would lack the insights to proactively support their rehabilitation beyond admonition to
reference fully. Now we need both to impose an appropriate penalty and to work with the
student collaboratively to explore his/her difficulties over academic literacy. This suggests
our approach is correct, as educators we need to assist our students to be effective academic
writers: the plagiarised assignment is a reminder of our failures as well as those of the student.
We may indeed conclude that if higher education wishes to legislate upon unfair means, that it
has a duty to deliver not only academic content but also academic literacy skills, and that
higher education institutions should be pro-active in skilling their students to be able to
produce scholarly work without the intention to subvert, or fear infringing, precepts of
intellectual integrity. 5

Notes

1. The emergence of such software has no doubt made it easier to detect plagiarism.
Assertions that there is an epidemic of plagiarism should be tempered by the
possibility that plagiarism is now more readily detectable. From this perspective, the
emergence of digitised academic archives should be seen as marking the end of
plagiarism, not its rampant spread.

2. Different versions of the educational pack for undergraduate and postgraduate students
and FAQs may be found at
http://www.shef.ac.uk/scharr/current/plagiarism/index.html

3. During the pilot period the University confirmed that existing regulations authorised
use of Turnitin and plagiarism declaration cover sheets as requisites for assessment.
 4. A study by Davis (2007) indicates that students appreciated opportunities to test their
essays in Turnitin revision classrooms, as this provided formative feedback on correct
citation and over-reliance on single sources: key elements of academic literacy. She
concludes that Turnitin can assist students to improve drafts and encourages its use in
this way.
5. We checked the manuscript of this paper in a Turnitin classroom prior to submission.
Excluding bibliography and fully-cited quotations, it scored an exemplary one per cent
text-match.

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