Plagiarism prevention education and online tutorials are more effective at curbing plagiarism than fear tactics, said a new study published in January by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Syracuse University already requires all incoming freshmen to watch a tutorial video about plagiarism online before they arrive on campus. The video has been used by the Office of Academic Integrity since fall 2007.

Before the video was required, 62 percent of reported academic integrity violations were attributed to plagiarism. After the first year showing the video to freshmen, only 23 percent were attributed to plagiarism, said Gary Pavela, director of academic integrity at SU, in an e-mail.

So far this year, 54 percent of academic integrity violations have been due to plagiarism, Pavela said. He could not say whether or not the plagiarism movie was effective because this year’s number showed that plagiarism was up again, he said.

‘When plagiarism numbers are broken out by year and framed in the context of the video rollout, the data is inconclusive,’ Pavela said.

The roughly 15-minute video, mimicking the show ‘American Idol,’ displays five instances of academic integrity violations and how to avoid them, such as copying and pasting material from the Internet into a course paper.

‘The SU video is not plagiarism-specific,’ Pavela said. ‘Instead it covers a wider array of academic integrity scenarios.’

Samantha Danziger, a freshman advertising major, said she found the video helpful in showing many types of academic integrity violations.

‘I thought that the video was a different way to help students understand plagiarism,’ Danziger said. ‘It was much easier than just reading something about it in the orientation guide or in a class syllabus.’

In the 2008-09 academic year there were 142 violations reported. Of those, 50 were committed by freshmen, higher than any other class of students according to the 2008-09 annual report filed by the Academic Integrity Office.

Throughout the three years since the Academic Integrity Office has existed, the number of academic integrity violations has increased, according to the report. In the 2007-08 academic year there were 130 reported violations, as compared to the 2006-07 year when there were 127 reported violations.

The greater number of reported violations may be due to faculty in the Academic Integrity Office being more familiar with identifying violations, so more are noticed, Pavela said.

Thomas Dee, a co-author of the national study on plagiarism and an associate economic professor and the director of public policy at Swarthmore College, admits the study was only conducted at one university, which was not named, and said he encourages other universities to explore and investigate within their own communities what tactics work and do not work.

Dee said he and co-author Brian Jacob, an education professor at the University of Michigan, were motivated to conduct this study to investigate whether the perception of high levels of plagiarism at universities were accurate and how to reduce plagiarism.

‘Data prior to this investigation was based on student self-reports on plagiarism,’ Dee said.

The study used objective data by comparing two separate groups, one of which was required to watch an online tutorial about plagiarism while the other was not. They then wrote papers that were analyzed using plagiarism-detection software, such as Turnitin.com.

Dee said the evidence he collected during the study highlighted that students were not clear on what plagiarism actually entails. The numbers of perceived plagiarism were higher than the cases of actual plagiarism, he said.

The study showed that education on plagiarism had the biggest effect on males and students with low SAT scores. It also credits the increase in technology over the last two decades with making plagiarism easier and more accessible to all students.

The most common type of plagiarism seen in the study was a copy-and-paste type, Dee said.

‘Most students used ‘mosaic’ plagiarism when it occurred.’ he said. ‘They would copy sentences or clauses of sentences from a primary source without an attribution.’

This is true of most of the cases of plagiarism at SU as well. During the 2008-09 academic year, 77 of the 142 cases were classified as a misuse of sources, according to the Academic Integrity Office’s annual report.

‘Students don’t understand the fine line between gathering information electronically and plagiarizing,’ said Danziger, the freshman advertising major. ‘It’s dangerous because there’s more at stake at the university level, and it has a greater impact on your future.’

medelane@syr.edu

Published on February 2, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Meghin: medelane@syr.edu | @meghinwithani