Plagiarism or Poor Writing Skills? Part 2

This is the second in a two part look at plagiarism. 
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What can we do about a student's improper use of another's words in written assignments?  In my August 9, 2015 post, I distinguish between intentional and unintentional use of another's work and posit causes of the latter. Here I discuss strategies for detection of plagiarism and teaching about original writing.

Detection

The instructor's judgement. An instructor may quickly gain a feel for their students' writing.  A post or assignment submission containing phrases that are uncharacteristic of the student's writing, will alert the attentive teacher that a student may be plagiarizing.

Blackboard's SafeAssign. For essay type assignments the institution's learning management system (LMS) may have an integrated originality checker. 

In Blackboard this is the SafeAssign tool. During setup of the writing assignment, the SafeAssign feature (or LMS equivalent) can be enabled. 

To use Safe Assign check the box under Plagiarism tools in the assignment setup.

Turnitin Assignment. Your school may have a third party add-on to your LMS for checking student originality. Linfield College uses Turnitin as another option for faculty. In Blackboard instructors can choose to create an "assignment" with or without SafeAssign enabled. Or we can create a "Turnitin assignment."

Under Optional Settings the instructor can determine whether the student may view the report and resubmit.

These are helpful and automatic screening tools. But plagiarism detection tools are not infallible. Instructors may find examples of another's words in student submissions that passed the originality test. A recent issue of  Inside Higher Ed reported on a several-year study that suggests that the combination of the instructor's judgement and Google search produce far more accurate results than SafeAssign, Turnitin and their competitors. If you have concerns about a particular student or a particular piece of writing, try using Google to check your concern.

Teaching Writing

At many institutions faculty from all disciplines have taken on the shared responsibility for improving student writing skills. A great place to start is to use written assignments as an opportunity to revisit what we mean by original writing, paraphrasing and the effective use of quotations. Here are some strategies that may help.

• Include guidelines for writing in your syllabus or course expectations. Expand on your institutions plagiarism policy with your own specific definitions and behavioral standards.
• Use the features of "SafeAssign" and "Turnitin" that support self correction (allow students to see the report and make multiple submissions) favoring improvement over punishment.
• Look for unexpected phrasing and vocabulary in student's posts.
• Address examples of un-cited use of another's words or inappropriate quotation. Communicate with the students directly and require their work to be rewritten in their own words. 
• Be prepared to provide direct instruction on note-taking, paraphrasing, quotation and citation to the class or individual students. Ask students to distinguish between proper and improper examples of each.

It may take a student some instruction and a couple of rewrites before s/he understands the problem and the solution. Using a combination of clear expectations, early detection and teaching strategies, we may offer students tools to become effective, original writers and avoid the severe consequences to which academic/professional integrity violations lead.

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Straumsheim, C. (2015). What Is detected? News. Inside Higher Education. Retrieved on 7-30-15 from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/07/14/turnitin-faces-new-questions-about-efficacy-plagiarism-detection-software

Plagiarism or Poor Writing Skills? Part 1

image licensed for sharing by Tennessee Tuxedo

This is the first in a two part look at plagiarism. In this first part I seek to define the problem and identify causes. In part two, I will offer some solutions.
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As an instructor, I frequently run into examples of student writing that contain key phrases, entire sentences, and even entire paragraphs that were written by someone else -- not cited by the student. I have also, though far less frequently, received a paper or final project that was written entirely by someone else.

Both of these can be viewed as plagiarism. But there is an important difference. In the second case, the use of another's work as the student's own was clearly intentional and deserves severe consequences. In the former case the intentionality may be harder to discern. I choose to treat these cases as poor writing skills, and an opportunity for me to provide students with skills to succeed in the future.

There are many causes of unintentional plagiarism.

• With digital tools it is dangerously easy to use copy-and-paste instead of taking notes in one’s own words. I have observed otherwise ethical professionals forget that their copy-and-pasted notes are actually in another's words and use them to produce a paper or report.
• Many students develop poor strategies in primary school and continue them to this day. Students will often tell me that they thought quotation was unnecessary as long as they only used an "insignificant" phrase or sentence (or three) from another source.  Alternatively students may believe that it is acceptable to use large portions of another's work as long as quotation marks or citation are added. 
• A poor paraphrasing strategy that writers may not have shed by college is taking another's sentence and replacing or reorganizing words. They see paraphrasing as a restructuring of another authors words, rather than a restating of the underlying meaning.
• Some students have genuinely not received the expected training on the distinction between original writing and plagiarism.

Just as digital media has made it easy for students to copy others' words, it has also made it easy for instructors to detect when a student presents others' words as their own. We have powerful tools at our disposal. These tools can be used to catch our students at plagiarism and they can be used to teach our students how to write effectively and honestly.

In part two (scheduled for publication on August 17) I explore strategies for detection of unoriginal writing and for developing student's original-writing skills.

Evangelizing the gradebook

My appreciation for a grade book is new. And like any recent convert, I'm evangelical.

I have resisted the grade book in many LMSs over the years. Until recently I had an uncomfortable relationship with grades. And what could possibly do columns, numbers and calculated fields better than an excel spreadsheet? There seemed to be no reason to learn to use this clumsy tool that I did not need.

But I have discovered that the grade book in many LMSs has much greater value than assigning a number to a spreadsheet (though it does that surprisingly well). And, with a little preplanning the LMS grade book won't lock me into a particular style of grading. In the following I will be using Blackboard's grade book or "grade center" as an example, because Blackboard is the LMS used at Linfield. Moodle and Canvas grade books work a bit differently but can achieve the same ends.

• The grade book, when paired with my own rubrics, makes it easy to quickly grade assignments. Locating and downloading assignments is not necessary. Going back and forth from assignment to student list is not necessary.
• The grade book gives me multiple ways to give feedback to students: A number, written feedback, and in-margin comments.
• The grade book let's me give students "just-in-time" personal notes of encouragement or clarification.
• The grade book let's me blind-grade when desirable. I can grade work without seeing student names - which encourages me to be more objective about my grading criteria.
• The grade book presents me with ALL students' submissions of a single assignment in one place, making it easy to see patterns across the class.
• The grade book presents me with ALL of a single student's work in one place, making it easy to see patterns for that student. 
• The grade book tells me what is new. Until I started using the grade book, I looked at each discussion thread and each assignment every day to see what was new. Now I stop at the grade book first. The grade book presents an exclamation point (!) next to new work (posts, journal entries, quizzes, assignments).
• When grading a student's discussion contribution, I see all of their posts in one collection.
• When grading a blog or journal entry I can post comments on their writing, right from the grade book.

I know that timely and meaningful feedback is one of the key indicators of student success and satisfaction in an online course. Though my intentions have been good, I have found it hard to be prompt with feedback - until I mastered the grade book. In fact my home grown systems were far more clumsy than the one in my LMS.

I believe in setting a high bar for success in my courses. I also provide lots of ways to reach success: repeated attempts; alternative ways to complete assignments; optional assignments and more possible points than are necessary. Many of my students exceed the required work for an A.

Based on my rubric criteria, an "A" discussion post gets 6 points - though it is possible to get 7. Journal posts can get 4 but a 3.5 translates to an "A". I am able to assign bonuses for unexpected entries, risk taking, effort, creativity, insight. Each week I give students a points target. They know where they stand based on that target. My approach is not traditional and it is possible within the structure of the LMS grade book.

I'd love to hear how others are using their LMS grade book. Please comment below.

Powerful Learning through Self Assessment

Reflection by montykvirge-d4rblo7.jpg

Each term I include self assessment as an activity. Over time I have honed the questions I ask on the self assessment, and have found this activity to be a powerful tool that serves 3 key roles in my instruction.

As a teaching tool

Before I started the self assessment activity, I was frustrated by students who did not seem to read course objectives and rubrics or use them to guide their work. The self assessment I assign gives students a reason to engage with these course resources. Of course, as a firm believer in active learning, this should have occurred to me sooner. Once the students have a need for the objectives and rubrics, a reason to engage with them, their contents gained meaning.

As with other learning activities, I give students feedback on their self assessments. I use this feedback to acknowledge their progress, direct their efforts and give additional resources.

As a learning tool

Self assessment can be a metacognitive activity that requires students to reflect. If I structure the self assessment well, students consider how they are thinking about the course content. By giving students guided practice reflecting, I hope that I am giving them a tool that they can use throughout the course and beyond.

As an assessment tool

The self assessment confirms, expands upon and challenges my other assessment data. Most students end up telling me (mostly) what I expect to hear. This confirms my own assessment of students' strengths, weaknesses, and areas where I can improve my instruction. Students own words can provide me a more expansive or richer understanding of what students a-has or concerns are. I sometimes get information that reveals a student's greater or lessor understanding than I have previously given them credit. When a student presents a very different view of their progress than I have seen, a dialog can occur. I give the student an opportunity to demonstrate their learning and I have a chance to clarify expectations before it is too late.

Timing

I have tried the self assessment activity at different times in the term. It seems to be most useful after the first quarter and before the halfway point in the class. This allows
1) enough work has been done to assess.
2) enough time is left for the student to correct their course.
3) enough time is left for me to improve my interactions/instruction with an individual student or the whole group.

Take a look at a sample of the self assessment and rubrics I use. Please share your comments below, including any experiences with, or resources for, self assessment.

Teaching through confusion

In this video Dr. Derek Muller shares his research on how clear, explanatory videos do not help students learn science concepts. He found that clear linear explanations simply increase the learners confidence in their misconceptions. He argues that a bit of confusion causes learners to confront their incorrect theories and enables learners to explore complexity.




Muller's findings were initially surprising to me. Clear is better, right?

And yet I know that just because I explain something to a student (whether in speech, or written text), that information is not received as delivered. According to constructivist theories, information is not transmitted directly. Learning is a process of making sense and is filtered (mediated) through language, experience, culture - not to mention attention.

Muller addresses attention also. He found that when the instructional video's were described by learners as confusing, they paid closer attention. When the message seemed clearcut, learners paid less attention to what they were seeing and hearing.

While Muller's research deserves replication, it raises some great questions about all of the material and activities we offer students. Is there a sweet spot between easily accessible (where learning doesn't occur) and impenetrable (where learning doesn't occur), where enough complexity is offered to provoke learning?