Help please - Plagiarism

[DizzIzz]

Hi, please can I ask for advice especially from any uni tutors etc....
DD has today received an email from uni asking her to attend a meeting in 3 weeks time about 2 pieces of her work, where she will have to confirm if she has or has not attempted to plagiarise.

She is in her first year and is absolutely distraught. She has read the guidelines and the module in question is not her main subject. She has referenced the percentage of work required but had not included quotation marks, as in her main subject she does not include quotation marks, just reference and footnotes. Surely they will be able to see that the fact she has all of the referencing, she is hardly trying to pass it as her own?

Any idea what the outcome is likely to be? Thanks.

Not an academic but while she is waiting, is it worth her going through the pieces of work and just putting the quote marks in, tiniest bit of tweaking just if it is needed to change the grammar to make it right for the quote marks and taking them with her.

It would at least show that while she has been waiting, she has been trying to understand where she went wrong. If her own subject has different requirements then it might also be worth taking the guidelines for her subject and a typical piece of work with her (having checked that there aren't the same guidelines in her subject and that she hasn't just been lucky not to have been picked up before now) to explain how the misunderstanding came about.

Did she do anything like miss the lecture where it was explained say and use notes to catch up that missed this off? Or get the lecture from her main subject but not the other one? Any reason really to help understand why she made the mistake and even to suggest ways that this could be overcome to help next year's students...

Hopefe they see that it was a genuine mistake!

Yes I suppose this will certainly do no harm. I think it is the only line of defence she can use, basically because it's the truth. Thanks for replying.

How much of the work was a direct quotation? I'm an academic- it is standard to paraphrase/summarise and then reference author. Direct quotes should be used sparingly, if at all. This is good practice and is an important skill. There are good referencing guides I'm sure she'd be able to get hold of.

Hi Possum, one piece is coming out at 30 plagiarism and the the other 36. Further checks that DD has made on one piece, included in the figure, is 22 lots of 1 per cent similarities, obviously totalling 22, hope this makes sense. I think I have read that 15 per cent is the average or acceptable level.

If those are Turnitin scores, they are very high, and at my place we would have a couple of alternatives: a) resubmission, capped at a maximum mark of 40% or b) zero mark for that particular assessment.

If that means the module failed at what we call "first sit" then there'd be a Summer retake, capped at 40% for the entire module mark.

In both cases, a strong talking to by module tutor, plus one other tutor.

In your daughter's case, it doesn't appear deliberate, just a error or misunderstanding. But referencing guides, and lectures and lectures and tutorials' worth of "How to avoid plagiarism" mean that I'm never particularly sympathetic, frankly.

Thanks, yeah hopefully they will believe that it wasn't deliberate based on the fact that she's referenced it all. She knows she is going to be punished and accepts this. We shouldn't be relying too much on an individual's sympathy on the day, as it would appear from the guidelines that they can use 5 options of punishment, with a zero mark being the worst. Fingers crossed she is reprimanded or reprimanded / asked to resubmit. Thanks again.

Does she understand now that's she's got it wrong? Because frankly that is what would worry me more, that she thought it was acceptable in her main subject. I can't understand that. But then I work in a discipline where direct quotations are a necessity (English Lit - you can't not quote!).

She understands that in her main subject she would use quotation marks if it was a direct quote taken from a primary source, not a secondary source - in the latter she would just reference and all of her submitted work has been acceptable.

If she's quoting a secondary source she needs to use quotation marks. If she's paraphrasing, she would just reference. I'm as sure as I can be this is correct - we have plagiarism tutorials and they're not subject-specific, and they all say this.

I will ask her to confirm, although all of her submitted assignments have been marked on that basis and she hasn't had any tutor / marker comments saying she has slipped up.

As a first year, and first offence, she may just get a warning and be advised to seek referencing support (usually offered these days). However, as others have said, even if she is penalised it won't affect her degree classification.
I agree with the suggestion of contacting the SU, that is the kind of thing they are there for.
Above all please don't worry about this though, it's really no biggy and most first years slip up at some point

Thanks Mandown, that's reassuring. She has looked for contacts at the SU and wonders who the best person will be, it lists many "officers" ....... Would it be Wellbeing Officer ?

There is usually some kind of advice centre in the union which deal with these issues, but if she's not sure she could contact any one of the officers initially and they'll direct her to the appropriate support. She could even just pop in to reception and ask.

Hi
Just coming back to agree with others that those are VERY high turnitin scores that strongly suggest that substantial sections have been "cut and paste".
Of course they could reflect in part innocent overlap of reference lists etc, but in general it is rare to get a score that high without a strong element of cutting and pasting and it concerns me that she thinks this is just a misunderstanding about the rules. All students should know that you can't copy the words of another author without quotes, and even with quotes she should not be copying the words of others to this large extent.

In my experience this sort of thing is most likely to occur when students a struggling or short of time and try and cut too many corners. Students usually don't feel that they have tried to cheat and can be unaware quite how much they have copied.

Is she struggling with the ourselves in general?

But I would expect the penalties to be relatively light for a first offence, as others have suggested perhaps a resubmission with capped mark.

"Course" not "ourselves"

Hi, she is not a high achiever as such, but loves the subject she is studying and doesn't seem to be struggling (apart from the general adjustment from school 6th form to feeling much more on her own at uni). She is averaging about 68-75 in marks and an online test was 90.

However, these 2 assignments are from another degree programme from another dept as an optional module. The 2 marks were 64 and 57 which is a little less, but having checked further on similarities etc, 11 per cent is coming up in the referencing and then there's the 22 lots of 1 per cents, so I'm confused really about a big chunks of copy and pasting. Sorry to sound silly but I only have a vague understanding.

What I do know is that some students have often in excess of 50 per cent but when it's looked into by a human eye it can drop significantly.

"She understands that in her main subject she would use quotation marks if it was a direct quote taken from a primary source, not a secondary source" - Why you would treat direct quotes differently depending on whether they were from primary or secondary sources? Genuine question: I'm not an academic, and I'd be interested to know if this is standard practice, and if so, why?

It's not.

I wonder if actually, what's happened is that she has gone along for a while thinking this was how you did it, and now her paper has been flagged they've gone back and realized it is a consistent mistake, so they need to talk to her.

The more I look at her work and the percentages, it is really quite funny...... 1 per cent for her own student id (as this has previously been used, yes), 4 per cent for 3 separate references to author name, and so it goes on

They will be used to decoding it, don't worry. It's not in their interests to chuck her out, really, so don't get worried before you need to (I know that must feel difficult).

She will just to be made to 're submit, and capped. I know at least three students in my year who had the same in the first and second years. Just get her to check in future, and learn from it. It's not a huge deal in first year, better she learns now than when it counts toward the degree.

Thanks LRD, having looked at things more, I'm really not as worried, it certainly isn't big bits of copy and paste, it's mostly 1s, 2s and 3s scattered all over, many just random phrases. Obviously I would rather she not be in this position and we have all taken it so badly because we all are so blooming honest.

Referring back to previous questions about quotation marks, I wouldn't like to think that she has submitted 7 large pieces of work in her main subject and it's been marked and accurate with decent marks, when actually she's going wrong all the time.

I would recommend that she asks a member of staff from her student union advice centre to accompany her to the meeting.

If she used turnitin and came back with 30% results that should have rung alarm bells, however the tutors should have explained this to her.

My guess as a first year she'll get admonished and told to attend study skills sessions. She will probably have to redo the work and accept a 40% pass mark. Often first year results don't go towards the final degree classification so she might he lucky enough to be able to put it down to experience this time.

Universities are loathe to kick students out at this early stage as they stand to lose the majority percentage of the students finance fees. As a first year (with the potential loss of 9k x 2 and 50% of this years fees still to come) she'd have to have done much worse than this to get kicked out IMO.

Yes, it's not great if she's not been corrected before. Might it be she missed a general correction given in class?

Because honestly, I cannot imagine why it would be acceptable not to acknowledge a quotation. If anyone else can shed light I'd like to know - but it would, I think, mean it's a subject that is very rarely taught? It is not allowed in any subject taught where I am.

Thanks for all of the positive feedback so far, but I'm off to rest my weary head for the night.