Mitigating Cheating and Plagiarism

Editor's Notes

• #2 Welcome to Mitigating Cheating and Plagiarism, a workshop concentrating on issues of academic integrity and what you can do to prevent them in your classroom.
• #3 Our objectives for this workshop will help you: Implement various pedagogical strategies to teach students the importance of academic integrity Use technology tools such as SafeAssign and Respondus LockDown Browser to help mitigate and prevent cheating and plagiarism Identify new tools that may be available for preventing cheating such as Remote Proctor NOW
• #4 Academic integrity is a big issue for many faculty, and it can even prevent some from taking their courses into a hybrid or online format because of fears that technology may give students too many opportunities to cheat on papers and tests. In reality, the research says that students do not really cheat any more in their online classes than they do their face-to-face courses – in fact, some research even suggests that online students cheat LESS than students in live classes (http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring131/watson131.html). Nonetheless, it is never a bad idea to help all students understand that you take academic integrity seriously, and that you wish for them to exhibit a high standard of ethics. Tools such as SafeAssign, Respondus LockDown Browser, and ProctorU and Respondus Monitor can help reduce cheating by acting as deterrents as well as “checkers” for cheating. SafeAssign checks student writing against databases of other academic papers, web pages, and other sources. LockDown Browser is a tool best suited for live and hybrid classes, which prevents students going from other places within their systems while online taking a BlackBoard test. ProctorU and Respondus Monitor use the students’ webcam and microphone to watch the student while taking a test and serve as a remote proctor. These may be most useful for high-stakes tests, like final exams, that are to be delivered online.
• #5 There are many reasons why a student might choose to cheat on an exam, project, or paper. Some of the most common reasons cited in studies of student academic behavior include: They lack proper knowledge The don’t understand university policies They don’t understand the seriousness The class is too high-stakes Poor time management skills Of these, poor time management and a lack of time for proper study are cited as the top reasons why students cheat. Rarely do students go into a class with the intention of cheating, in fact; it happens over time as they realize that they have not been able to put the proper time in to do well in the course. The likelihood of cheating goes up when a class or specific test is very high-stakes and may “make or break” a student’s performance or ability to continue in a program. On the other hand, there is a fair number of students who are completely honest when they state that they did not know they were cheating, or that they did not know it was not allowed. It may seem like common sense to you and me, but to students who have gone through a high school career where group study and open book tests were frequently the norm, they may not truly understand your policies regarding academic integrity, or how seriously you and the university takes it.
• #6 There are of course many ways that students can and have thought of to cheat on exams and projects, including the most common way of copying and pasting from Internet resources, but there are other methods as well. Term paper mills exist where students can purchase a paper, although most of these are already catalogued by technologies like SafeAssign. Homework and answer-sharing sites such as Quizlet and Sparknotes are also available, which are often not in themselves meant to be cheating resources, but students may be tempted to use them in this way. The more extreme examples of cheating include identity-swapping, where students take exams or complete assignments on behalf of another student. Some may also take pictures with their phones of exam questions and send them to other students – solutions like ProctorU and Remote Proctor Now can take care of this behavior when students are online, but even in class, the enterprising student can use these tricks. Those who are really interested in cheating (the “professionals” as we might call them) will even review lessons posted on YouTube about how to cheat on exams and papers. They are certainly out there to be viewed.
• #7 There are a number of tools available that can help catch cheating either before it happens, or after the fact. Either way, you have the tools to combat this issue and instruct students on maintaining good academic integrity. There are also many strategies you can use as well, including providing support and maybe even direct instruction on how to manage one’s time better, set more clear policies in your syllabus, and of course, you can always send students to our online course in BlackBoard. The Cheating and Plagiarism course for students focuses on lessons in time management, what academic integrity is all about, and how to properly paraphrase while writing academic papers. These were all areas that have been identified through surveys and research as places where students have weaker skills, so this course can help improve that.
• #8 Time management, as noted previously, is a big problem for many students. Some have not yet learned how to set aside time for study, and others do not have a good idea of how long it should take them to study for the many classes they may be taking. Students often wait until the last minute or find themselves behind because they did not devote their time in the right way. Teaching students how to prioritize and compartmentalize their time will help them with all aspects of their schoolwork, although keep in mind that they do have other classes than yours. It is often difficult for us to consider how long students may need to spend with courses that are not in your discipline, but do your best to guide them to dedicate at least 3-5 hours per course per week outside of class. Urging them to use calendars and planners may be helpful, and a template is available on the student cheating and plagiarism BlackBoard course.
• #9 Your syllabus is a great place to start with establishing policies in your classroom. Include the official Academic Integrity policies in your syllabus and take time to explain these in class. You might even ask students to complete a class contract at the beginning of the semester, which might even be a quiz of some kind about what’s on the syllabus and what your policies are. If they agree to a contract and understand the importance of academic integrity that you place in class, they will be more likely to pay attention to it. If you appear to place little emphasis on such policies (even if you really do value them, but just don’t express it!), then students may not be as likely to take them seriously.
• #10 You may even go so far as to offer a lesson in ethics and academic integrity in your class. Actually displaying videos and talking about ethics in class brings the subject to light and allows for a conversation about what academic integrity means and hopefully allows you to put to rest any misconceptions your students may have. We have many resources available in our PNC Plagiarism and Cheating Modules in BlackBoard that you may take advantage of – you can even require students to participate in the module and track their progress. Just go to the My BlackBoard tab to review the course for Faculty, and instruct students to do the same for the course for Students.
• #11 To prevent cheating and plagiarism, there are several tools available to us, including SafeAssign, LockDown Browser, Respondus Monitor, Remote Proctor NOW. These tools help prevent cheating and plagiarism through electronic means. SafeAssign is integrated into every BlackBoard assignment and allows students to send work to a database that looks for matching sentences and phrases from websites and other similar papers. It returns an originality score to the instructor and if you like, you can let students see their originality report as well. No report is perfect, as there are always some words, citations, and phrases that are picked up, but any score over about 10% would indicate that some plagiarism is taking place, or that students are using too many quotes and not enough paraphrasing. LockDown Browser prevents students from opening other programs or windows on their computer while taking a test. Respondus Monitor works with Lockdown Browser to take video and audio of the student taking the test. You can then go back to the videos to review and see if anything “funny” was going on. Remote Proctor NOW also records all interactions and has staff look at the videos after the student takes the test, but the difference is that someone from the company reviews these videos and reports any suspicious activity back to the instructor after the fact back to you. Both systems work well for high-stakes testing that needs to be done at a distance. RP Now does incur a fee to the department, of $15 per student per exam at a flat rate. Consult with the OLT and with your department chair if you wish to use this product, which has been adopted by the Purdue system, and is in pilot evaluation here at PNC as of Spring 2016.
• #12 SafeAssign checks papers for plagiarism by comparing submitted work to a database that covers almost everything imaginable. It returns a percentage score of how much the paper matches to the database, and even allows you to see the source of the original item when plagiarism is found. With this in mind, take note that SafeAssign is just a tool, and as such as its failings. It may show you false positives, especially with references and quotes, which increase the percentage score. Typically, most instructors accept 10-15% as a margin of error for submitted assignments checked by SafeAssign – you should still check any paper if you have concerns more carefully, of course, but typically you won’t see “real” plagiarism until you get something over 20%. If you allow students to check their own scores, you may wish to share with them your margin or error tolerance that you have determined, so that they do not get concerned when they see a percentage higher than they expect.
• #13 You can add SafeAssign checking to any assignment in BlackBoard. In the past, SafeAssign was a separate type of assignment, but now it is integrated into the normal assignment tool. Just go to the assignment settings/properties under Submission Details to find the Plagiarism Tools checklist. You can choose at this point whether to check with SafeAssign, and whether to allow students to view their ratings as well as whether to exclude it from the global database. This final option is good when your submissions are drafts, and you intend for students to submit another version later on. If the item is included in the database the first time, of course, the second time will come back nearly 100% plagiarized, which of course won’t be accurate! To check on submissions, you can either return to the original assignment or use Needs Grading - the scores are included in the submissions for grading. You can also go to the Course Tools and SafeAssign to see everything at a glance and review the scores for each student at once.
• #14 Respondus Lockdown Browser is a program that allows you to remove the student’s ability to do anything else but get into BlackBoard and take their test. All other applications will be closed and cannot be accessed until Lockdown Browser is shut down. BlackBoard can be set to require the browser to be used, removing the ability for a student to get into the test without using Lockdown Browser. The download link is available in the MyPNC portal in the BlackBoard tab. The link is also here on this slide as well. Tutorials and other information is available here as well as the download itself. This is an actual application that students must download, install, and open on their computers in order to use it. If you have students with difficulties in doing these things on their computers, you may want to refer them to the tutorials or walk through it with them at least once. Also, note that this program is available in most of the labs, and is great for tests you give in person in a lab setting. When students are at home, it is quite possible that they will have other devices available to them, so if your concern is about their ability to take screenshots or otherwise copy questions during an exam, Lockdown Browser will not necessarily stop them from doing this.
• #15 To set a test to use Lockdown Browser, go to the Course Tools and the Respondus Lockdown Browser tool. There you will see all of your currently available tests and be able to click the arrow to set whether you would like the browser to be required. Note that this will automatically set a “password” into your original test settings, which does not need to be known by you or students. This is merely a token to be passed between Lockdown Browser and BlackBoard. Do not change this password in the Edit the Test Options settings as this will cause the link between Lockdown Browser and your test to be broken. You can repair it if you accidentally change the password by returning the to Course Tool and clicking the “Fix It” icon that will pop up. You can set an additional password for the test that students will be required to use in the Lockdown Browser course tool, if you wish to assign one. Note that this same course tool is also where you may set Respondus Monitor settings for a test.
• #16 Respondus Monitor is available within the course tool for Respondus Lockdown Browser. This tool adds an additional measure of security for a test by requiring that students use their webcam and microphone in order to be recorded while taking the test. It works with Lockdown Browser, so by requiring LDB is the only way to require Monitor. Monitor will automatically walk students through a series of steps to ensure that their camera and microphone are working properly, and in the Course Tool you can preview and select each of these steps for yourself. You can also, from the Course Tool, review the videos that have been captured after students have taken the exam. The entire exam is recorded, and you may choose to watch the entire thing, or skim through. This will allow you to see and/or hear any suspicious activity that may have been going on in the student’s environment while he/she was taking the exam.
• #17 Remote Proctor Now is a new system adopted by the Purdue system recently. This is available at an extra cost of $15 per exam, per student. Your department must agree to pick up this cost, but this system will not require students to pay anything to participate. It works very similarly to Respondus Monitor. The difference is that instead of you watching the videos, someone else at the company watches the videos and flags any suspicious behavior seen for you. You will have a dashboard of videos and flags after an exam is finished that you can review and decide what to do with any “offenders” as needed. An additional perk of RP Now is that it work with any online testing service. So if, for example, you have students complete tests in a textbook site like MyLab from Pearson, you can still have the tests remotely proctored. Respondus Monitor only works within BlackBoard, so it may limit your options if you use any outside exams. Contact the OLT if you would like to learn more about Remote Proctor Now.
• #18 ProctorU is a live proctoring service performed remotely via webcam and microphone. A student takes a test with a real human on the other end watching them, and their screens, and flags any suspicious behavior. The cost of this service starts around $17 is based the test length. This service can work with any system, including anything outside of BlackBoard, but the cost of the exam must be taken on by the student. At this time the university has no agreement with ProctorU. If you wish to use this system, you should inform students about their need to purchase exam time at the beginning of the semester so that they are prepared. You may also wish to consult with your department chair about the use of this system.
• #19 These resources can teach you more about these academic integrity tools. In addition, you are enrolled in a course in BlackBoard that will help you get more familiar with these tools and other strategies. Students are enrolled in their own version of this course, which will be optional for them to go through, but will always be available to them for reference.
• #20 Remember, we have many resources available to you to help you through your course design process. Whether you are just getting started with BlackBoard or whether you are a long-time user, there are resources, tips, and personal help available whenever you need it. We’re just a call or an email away, or stop by and see us in TECH 206.