Daughter accused of collusion

[Iamsodonewith2020]

Daughter received end of year results and got a first in everything except one grade which was 0. She queried it and was told she was being investigated as the marking software had detected plagiarism. Fast forward a month and she has been called to a official hearing and is being accused of collusion. The evidence they have given is that another student on the course handed in identical project inc spelling mistakes! She is a first level student and hasn’t a clue what to do next as she definitely did the work but how does she prove it’s hers and she didn’t give it to someone else ( this is what is being implied)

University academic here. They will have called in both students. Yes, get DD to approach the students union for assistance. If she has any notes, or remembers anything about her thought process/organising the work this may help. Frankly if one student has straight distinctions and the other straight fails I don't think anyone will be in any doubt about who copied from whom. The only question may be whether she shared her work willingly. Don't get too stressed. It should be fine. These panels are usually pretty sensible

I was going to say the same as a PP.
Programming style, (even when conforming to company coding standards), can be quite identifiable. So my guess is proving that it is the DD's work would be quite easy.

The issue is rather how the other student got hold of the work.

(We had a chap where I worked who was an ace programmer but poor speller. It was very difficult to not correct spelling mistakes which were actually part of the code.)

There certainly needs to be a separate process to establish that the DD didn't willingly sell/give the work to the other student which is a different question than who actually generated the work in the first place.

Why would the work contain spelling mistakes if she is a high level student. Sounds a bit fishy to me.

@Viviennemary

Why would the work contain spelling mistakes if she is a high level student. Sounds a bit fishy to me.

Because if the submitted work is a computer program, they include comments explaining what is going on (it helps when developing and maintaining s/w as it may be co-developed, or later maintained by others). But you can't 'spell check' computer software. So e.g. a comment that says # The function is to seperate the positive numbers from the negative ones will have the misspelling of separate in it.

Why would the work contain spelling mistakes if she is a high level student. Sounds a bit fishy to me.

Because everyone makes error. What a stupid statement.

When I was a mature student at uni I used to often share my lecture notes with others who could not attend the lecture. But what they got was a "bare bones" account of the lecture which I later filled out with appropriate observations and references of my own. So yeah - they would have had a basic version complete with (any) spelling mistakes. But they never got the extras and there was considerable material that was unique to me.

You can share but you dont have to share everything.

According to the plagiarism policy in the university I work in, giving your work to another student is treated as seriously as copying the work of another student so both students would be penalised equally. It is up to the student to prove they didn't give the material to the other student, which can be difficult.

However, if one of the students can prove they didn't give the material with the intention of it being copied or the student who copied takes full responsibility (which happens a lot), we can be a bit lenient on the person whose work it is. We have on a very few occasions not penalised them at all - if the work was stolen/hacked or similar and it can be proven, for example.

In most cases, the person whose work it is lets someone else see it to give them an idea of how to go about it and don't expect it to be plagiarised. It's a tough lesson to learn but at least in 1st year, it won't impact on final grades.

It doesn't sound like your dd did share with that person but did she let anyone else see her work who may have shared? To be honest, a student who is performing so badly they need to cheat is unlikely to have the ability to hack your dd's system. I would suggest, as others have, that she contacts the SU.

@YeDancer

Hear that excuse a lot but I can't remember a time evidence of a hack was provided, even if true.

The nearest to a hack I have ever come across was a stolen memory stick. But, no, students generally do not have the skill to hack.

@Viviennemary

Why would the work contain spelling mistakes if she is a high level student. Sounds a bit fishy to me.

I used to know an absolutely brilliant scientific algorithm developer. He was extremely dyslexic, so it was generally harder to understand his comments than his code. He did his PhD in the early days of word processing and managed to include a spelling mistake in his dictionary... so, suppose his work was about haemoglobin, it was consistently spelled 'haemogoblin' throughout his thesis.

My doctoral supervisor, one of the most brilliant people I have ever met, was a poor speller. His brain worked much more quickly than his hands could follow and the spell checker did not always pick it up if it made a sensible word. For example, ton instead of not.

Your poor daughter.
There’s something a bit Kafkaesque about being expected to prove you didn’t knowingly share your work to be copied by someone else.
My only suggestions would be to see if she can find her work online. It may have been stolen and sold.
See if she can find if she’s been hacked at all.
Ask the uni to make sure they haven’t been hacked.

It is up to the student to prove they didn't give the material to the other student, which can be difficult

Weird burden of proof there. Difficult to prove a negative and it also goes against natural justice for a student to have to prove that they did not do wrong, rather than the university making the allegations to prove that they did. I've got to say this worries me a lot - a student could get themselves in hot water very easily.

@TheWomanTheyCallJayne

Your poor daughter. There’s something a bit Kafkaesque about being expected to prove you didn’t knowingly share your work to be copied by someone else. My only suggestions would be to see if she can find her work online. It may have been stolen and sold. See if she can find if she’s been hacked at all. Ask the uni to make sure they haven’t been hacked.

The chances of her being hacked are vanishingly small, unless she is very casual with her access credentials or doesn't log out of publicly accessible computers after use. In all my years dealing with plagiarism, I have never come across a case of hacking, despite dealing with IT students.

The one hacking incident I ever encountered is where a student had a really obvious password and someone guessed it, logged into his email account and sent offensive emails to members of staff.

@igelkott2021

It is up to the student to prove they didn't give the material to the other student, which can be difficult

Weird burden of proof there. Difficult to prove a negative and it also goes against natural justice for a student to have to prove that they did not do wrong, rather than the university making the allegations to prove that they did. I've got to say this worries me a lot - a student could get themselves in hot water very easily.

Yes, it is. However, the reason for that is that otherwise you get the situation where each student claims they did the work and the other copied it.

The reality is, in the vast majority of cases, the student did share the work. They will often share it as an example but don't expect it to be copied. They're the students I feel sorry for as it's a hard lesson to learn but by sharing their work, they are culpable of plagiarism too. I advise my own dc to never share work for that reason too.

If a student is very adamant they did not share the work, then a lot more investigation happens. The culprit will often own up in the end as well. I've only ever had one case where the work was stolen and we got to the bottom of that.

In almost every case I have been involved in the copier confesses. It is usually, as a PP says, where a good student let’s someone look at their work to help them and the other student, usually out of desperation, simply copies it. Both students would be penalised, the copier much more harshly than the provider. It is against the rules to allow copying of your work.

There’s something a bit Kafkaesque about being expected to prove you didn’t knowingly share your work to be copied by someone else.

It's not Kafkaesque: the university must investigate cases where there is prima facie evidence for cheating. It is to safeguard the quality and reputation of each student's degree, particularly those who don't cheat.

It is against the rules to allow copying of your work.

This.

Sometimes this is tough for the student whose work is copied - but sometimes there really is collusion, even if it's of the "helping a mate out" sort of thing. It is bad academic practice - enabling someone to pass off someone else's work as their own. Even if the work you are enabling to be plagiarised is your own.

On a slightly lighter note I remember a case where the copier adamantly refused to confess…until it was pointed out that the file he was trying to claim was his own work had the other student’s name in the spreadsheet footer.

You can "help a mate out" by other more constructive means such as helping them to devise an essay plan, suggesting some reading or just discussing ideas. However this still involves the other party getting off their backside and doing some reading and research. Your work and their may have some common themes but the text will be in their own words.

I helped another student extensively coming up to degree finals by allowing her copies of my notes. But I made sure not to use that exact material in any of my exam answers or essays.

@memberofthewedding

You can "help a mate out" by other more constructive means such as helping them to devise an essay plan, suggesting some reading or just discussing ideas. However this still involves the other party getting off their backside and doing some reading and research. Your work and their may have some common themes but the text will be in their own words.

I helped another student extensively coming up to degree finals by allowing her copies of my notes. But I made sure not to use that exact material in any of my exam answers or essays.

I've been amazed how many people will out-and-out ask to see your assignment drafts (for fair means or foul)! I've always been Uber-careful in the age of automated plagiarism checkers etc (versus one of my first degree lecturers who adopted a "if it includes a correctly-used semi-colon be suspicious" approach) to make sure that I don't pass my work around - but I'll happily explain it, or the general line of argument I've used in it.

I had one charmer (she's since shown herself up to be a complete snake) who did a paired placement with me and refused to even speak to me during it (or on the bus on the way there) and then asked me for my diary sheets for the entire placement! I've no doubt at all that she would just be shoving them in under her own name after looking down her nose at me all the time - so the most she got was a one line of "week 1 we did this activity, week 2 was this... week 4 was the week before Christmas" and had to do the flipping work herself.

@Viviennemary

Why would the work contain spelling mistakes if she is a high level student. Sounds a bit fishy to me.

Lots of very intelligent people are crap at spelling. I thought everyone knew that!

Lots of very intelligent people are crap at spelling. I thought everyone knew that!

But everyone also knows that'll check exists so it's valid point to raise isn't it? Isn't running the spell checker something every student knows to do, especially if they are very intelligent Maybe it's not relevant to how the copying happened but it's worth asking each party why they didn't check and seeing what they say.

You can’t spellcheck computer code, which is what this student submitted. It would pick up every variable and function as a mistake. Spelling really isn’t important in comments within the program.

@Chemenger

You can’t spellcheck computer code, which is what this student submitted. It would pick up every variable and function as a mistake. Spelling really isn’t important in comments within the program.

Does that mean that then that the issue of spelling is in fact a non issue? Why would it be mentioned as an indicator of cheating? I might have missed it but has the OP said that there was no written content to the submission?