Plagiarism and Academic Integrity

Plagiarism and academic integrity has been a focus area at the University for several years. After hosting sessions by Jude Carroll on institutional approaches to dealing with plagiarism, the University implemented a strategy to deter plagiarism (See LTB paper 14/2006), and began a pilot project in using the Turnitin Plagiarism Detection Software in 2006.

This software was successfully trialled by staff at KBS and Economics and several papers on using Turnitin as a formative writing tool were presented in the 2006/2007 academic year.

In 2007/2008, Turnitin was a pilot project. The evaluation report was submitted to LTB in June 2008 (LTB Paper 33/2008).

The final accepted recommendations are included below:

The University:
  • Adopt Turnitin as a core technology.
Departments:
  • Departments be encouraged to review their online definition of plagiarism in order to reflect a common and current definition across the University. Current ‘definitions’ cited on Faculty sites vary from University regulations (Annex 10 Academic Discipline Procedures and General Regulation V.3).
  • Staff be encouraged to participate in an assessment network aimed at facilitating assessment related discussions, encouraging assessment design to deter plagiarism and the sharing of good assessment practices across University staff. The network is an internal mailing list entitled assessment-network@kent.ac.uk.
UELT:
    • Support departments in implementing Turnitin in line with the University Guidelines (Paper LTB 43/2006) via:
      • circulation of relevant guidelines and information to departments (eg using Turnitin, storage of work, responding to paper requests)
      • provision of training materials for students in using Turnitin and feedback opportunities regarding information available on Turnitin.
    • Continue to develop resources to support academic integrity and deter plagiarism via:
      • developing guides to Kent styles in referencing with Templeman Library, in accordance with the Information Literacy Strategy
      • collecting examples of good academic practice from across the University for use on the Academic Integrity website
      • disseminating examples of assessment design to deter plagiarism.