Proactive tools for combating plagiarism : an investigation

Academic integrity is an essential graduate attribute with ignorance of the problem of plagiarism in students’ work not being an option. This study resulted from increasing concern that the prevalence of plagiarism in assessment submitted by students is on the rise and shows no sign of abating. This study supports the provision of assessment designed to specifically focus student’s attention on improving their ability to both recognise plagiarism and avoid it in their written work. All students in both the investigated courses were invited to participate in a post-assessment, electronically-administered survey consisting of sixteen questions regarding the students’ experience regarding their assessment. This study was designed to achieve two purposes - to gain insight into whether providing tertiary students with extra feedback regarding their referencing improves their confidence with respect to referencing and reduces their propensity to plagiarise as well as to increase our understanding of what factors underlie student plagiarism. The results indicate that a considerable number of the students found the assessment of assistance with respect to improving their referencing confidence. In addition, a significant proportion of the students indicated that their understanding of what constitutes plagiarism and their confidence in avoiding plagiarism improved as a result of the assignment and its associated feedback.