My Story

There is a rather romantic beginning to my involvement in the Project. It all began with a dinner party. I was asked by a long-standing friend to make up a “6” and I was delighted to accept. I was advised that the two other couples were academics, perhaps so that I’d be on my best behaviour. As it happened, I completely forgot about the commitment, and it took a phone call (remarkably gentle) from my friend to propel me into: action, an appropriately spangled skirt, and a quick dash across town.

As talk turned to careers, one of the guests (who I later found out was the chief researcher) said that she’d been a teacher-librarian, had moved into research and was gathering together a group of schools to participate in her latest venture, the Plagiarism Project.

My initial reaction was delight that I would be able to work with other T/Ls to produce a valuable unit of work to help students with responsible use of information. Here was an opportunity for collaboration and an added bonus was that I would enjoy working with the research team. This proved to be the case!

My first hurdle was financial. The ARC grant required that the participating schools contribute to the cost of the research in cash and in kind. Philanthropic societies were loath to support us and I was not able to mount a convincing enough case to seduce the local council or semi-government bodies. I had all but given up when I approached my Principal who said I should have come to her in the first place. Problem solved!!

I was lucky that one of our teachers was training to be a T/L and was on the same wavelength. We knew that the research topic she was about to begin with her year 7’s could easily be used to gauge the amount of plagiarism that was taking place, so she was the obvious choice for me to work with.

Ethical considerations in the first phase of the project required informing teachers, parents and students about the Project, and getting signed getting permissions from all concerned. This is never easy – it was far worse that organizing an excursion – but at least year 7’s tend to be co-operative with paperwork, so we finally got the whole class to participate, barring one child whose parents objected. It was the beginning of 2006, and we were away, at last!

The first task was to design the assignment. Students had to produce a booklet about the person that they thought had made the most positive contribution to the world. We provided guiding questions and a rubric, which was heavily weighted to the process of researching rather than to the content of the final product. Bliss for a T/L!!

Miraculously, we found a time when the teacher had the class, I was available, and the researchers were there to observe. The teacher and I introduced the assignment, taking care not to mention plagiarism, as the research in this phase was focused on identifying how much plagiarism takes place without intervention. We took the opportunity to cover all the steps of the research process, but we focused on the requirements of the rubric: understanding the task, note-taking, range of sources and bibliography.

We encountered the usual problems when the researchers came to interview the students individually: sudden change of scheduled school events which conflicted with our schedule, lack of appropriate rooms and double-booking. However, we got through it OK and the upshot for us was that the researchers presented us with a fantastic, detailed summary of our students’ responses. And, yes, plagiarism was alive and well in our school!
The second phase of the project began in 2007. (Again the paperwork!) I was fortunate that the same teacher was keen to continue, so she knew the drill. However, it was really the easy way out for me, and in retrospect, I should have taken the advocacy opportunity to involve other teachers. This time, two classes were involved, and the focus was on raising the awareness of how students were using information and equipping them to avoid plagiarism. The instruction was along the same lines as the previous year, but it felt more ‘real’ to be including a discussion about plagiarism. An innovation was that I taught in-text citation to the year 9’s, but although they used it happily for this assignment, my hunch is that they will never use the skill again. I s’pose that at least they know about it, and that’s something!

The major issue here is consolidation of skills via teacher expectations. No matter how well T/L’s teach information literacy skills, if teachers are unaware that these skills have been taught to their students in another class – or worse still, do not value these skills – then T/L’s are wasting their time. The challenge is to educate the teachers so that it becomes part of their culture to insist that students practice all the skills of information literacy whenever they are researching. Teachers need to value higher order thinking skills which lead to the creation of new knowledge. They need to examine student work to detect plagiarism and make it clear that they will not accept this.

Teacher education is therefore the first step in combating plagiarism. The key strategy lies in the design of the assignment. If notes are handed in and assessed students will plagiarize less because they know that the teacher is on the look out for this. It also gives the message that the process is as important (dare I say more important) than the content.

There was overwhelming evidence that when students were asked to reflect on plagiarism they could easily identify it and, given the strategies, they could be confident in avoiding it. In other words, it is worth while raising the issue and teaching the strategies. However, there is also ample evidence that if the teacher does not indicate that they will be checking for plagiarism, students will copy and paste in order to save time and thinking. For many students, it depends on whether they think they can get away with it.

So, in conclusion, the experience of being a part of this research project has confirmed my view that we must keep creating opportunities to teach the skills of ‘smart information use’. Our students deserve nothing less!

Warm regards to my readers,
Josette

Hi Josette

Just testing to see that I have access

Writing your story

We are looking forward to reading your stories and reflections about your experiences with the development of your strategies for helping students avoid plagiarism. We hope these will be engaging pieces of writing, rather than the nitty gritty details of the strategies. What were the highs and lows? How did your students and teachers react? Do you have any interesting anecdotes? Any advice to give the world (while respecting the confidentiality of all involved, of course!)? Please do not use real names or provide any identifying information about any students or teachers in your stories.

Kirsty and Joy

Testing the template. Do we like this look?