Graduate School podcasts
Academic offences – Plagiarism Series 1, Podcast 1
Interviewee: Jude Carroll
Interviewer: Parmjit Dhugga
Parmjit
Hello and welcome to University of Nottingham Graduate School series of talks on the issue of plagiarism. In this episode we talk to Jude Carroll. Jude Carroll is based at the Oxford Brooks Centre for Staff and Learning Development at OxfordBrookes University. As an educational developer Jude’s interests in teaching and learning have focussed on deterring student plagiarism and effective teaching strategies for international students.
Parmjit
Hello Jude. Perhaps we can start with some fundamentals. Many students don’t appear to have a clear understanding of what constitutes plagiarism.
How do you define plagiarism?
Jude
It’s really interesting isn’t it that people can’t understand a definition of plagiarism, because if you look at the definition, it’s all very simple words. Plagiarism is when you submit someone else’s work as your own. You wouldn’t think that a simple phrase like “submit someone else’s work as your own” would cause confusion. But if you think about each of those words. Underneath each word is all kinds of different ideas that you need to get your head around. So for example, plagiarism only happens when you submit. No work springs fully formed it comes through a process. And often students wonder where in that process can I stop co-operating and collaborating, and start doing plagiarism. It’s not actually plagiarism until you submit but somewhere along the way it becomes plagiarism. And then you look at that business about submit someone else’s work. Plagiarism is about the work that’s owned by other people. So you need to understand. How does work get owned? How does work belong to somebody, who claims work? So ideas about how work gets published and the idea that certain ideas are linked to named people. You’ve got to get your head around, if you understand plagiarism. And then the definition says, submit someone else’s work. Work is the most important word in the definition of plagiarism. Plagiarism is about who did the work. Who did the work of organising, or finding, or writing or dancing or drawing? Any of that work that you’re saying, “this is my work”. The interesting thing about work is that it’s a verb. It’s about doing, who did it? It’s not just the writing, but also the researching and the sorting and the organising and the selecting. All of that work is valued for plagiarism. Plagiarism is about when you submit someone else’s work as your own.
So the question about how does work become your own? What happens to work to turn it from somebody else’s work into your work? And the answer is you must change it. You must change it to show that you understood it. In the way that we play the academic game in the UK, the way you show your knowledge is by showing your understanding. And the way you show you understand is because you’ve changed it. If you don’t change it, how do I know you know it?
Parmjit
Appropriate citation and referencing plays a part in avoiding accusations of plagiarism, how important is this activity?
Jude
There’s so many reasons why you reference that have nothing to do with plagiarism. The reason I reference is I want to show the reader I’ve been out there finding stuff. I want to show the reader I know which is good stuff and which is not good stuff. I want to show the reader it’s not me who thinks this, other people think this too. I want to show the reader that my argument is supported by all kinds of other people’s idea’s and arguments. And I’ve found them, and that’s something I’m proud of. And I also use citation and referencing because I want to show I’m polite, I need to acknowledge my colleagues.
I need to acknowledge what they’ve done. I also reference because I don’t want you to tell me that I’m a plagiarist.
Parmjit
We’ve spoken about the importance of avoiding plagiarism when we write, but plagiarism is not just limited to text based work is it?
Jude
Plagiarism is about submitting someone else’s work as your own. Anything that somebody else did the work of creating and you take it, that could mean, they made the graph, that could mean they collected the figures, that could mean they drew the drawing, that could mean they made the cartoon. Anybody else who did the work, and you take that work and say ‘I did this work’. That’s plagiarism. I’ve heard of plagiarism in dance, in choreography certainly plagiarism in art and design. Plagiarism in architecture.
Parmjit
We often encourage our students to engage in team based activities, to work together in the workshop or the lab. Sometimes students find it difficult to determine the degree to which they are expected to collaborate, and when collaboration can become plagiarism of each others work. What advice should we be offering to our students?
Jude
One of the ways that we define plagiarism is submitting someone else’s work as your own. Another way to define plagiarism is creating a false assumption in the mind of the assessor as to who’s work is being judged. If you take the second definition about creating the false assumption in the mind of the assessor. Students need to ask themselves at what point am I making the person reading my work, or judging my work, think falsely about who’s work they’re judging? The other thing is that students need much more to cite each other. To say I got this idea from George. Or to say George and I had this conversation. Or to say, I acknowledge the help I got from my colleagues in developing this work. We need to do that much more.
Parmjit
In part two we will go on to discuss the role of the tutor and the University in dealing with plagiarism.