Slides from a session with Shirley Ann McDonald from the Symposium 2018 held on October 24, 2018 in Vancouver. B.C.

1. Stopping Plagiarism Before it
Starts Through Enculturation
MCDONALD • ADL

2. Plagiarism on the Rise!
◦ Studies reveal increases in plagiarism at universities...
◦ ...partly due to open source media and Internet sources that
offer information without crediting authors. (Gilmore, 2008; Wilson
and Ippolito, 2008)

3. Changes in Students’ Ethical Perspective
◦ Yu-Mei Wang (2008) states that “77% of the students surveyed did
not think that copying sentences from various sources on the
Internet was a serious issue.”

4. Partly due to changes in student population
◦ There is a rapid increase in the “number of international students”
in British universities (Leedham 2015)
◦ In North America, there is “increasing diversity of the student
population,” including students with disabilities and “English
language learners (ELL)” (Day in Howard and Robillard 2008)
◦ The Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies saw a dramatic increase
of international students between 2014 and 2018.

5. Initial Concerns
◦ Students have inadequate skills in documentation.
◦ International students lack familiarity with North American
academic conventions.
◦ A rise in inadvertent plagiarism in student work.

6. Research Question
◦ How do we best provide first-year students with foundational skills
in documentation and reduce inadvertent plagiarism?

7. Universities Penalize Students for Lacking Skills
◦ Currently, universities employ “quasi-legal” language to warn
students that plagiarism is a “misconduct” for which “punitive
action is the result.” (Wendy Sutherland Smith, 2011)
◦ Instructors assume that there is “one definition” of plagiarism and
that “one set of solutions apply in all circumstances” (Howard and
Robbillard 2008).
◦ However, “one size does not fit all” (Howard & Robbillard)

8. Detection has not Stemmed the Rise of Plagiarism
◦ Fear tactics and prescribing penalties has not proven to reduce the
number of plagiarism cases. (Sutherland Smith, 2011; Power, 2009;
Wood, 2004; Anson, 2008)
◦ Nor have “solutions” such as commercial “plagiarism-detecting”
products like “Turnitin.com” (Howard & Robbillard 2008)

9. Students are Unfamiliar with Academic Values
◦ Scholarly values are not inherent in students at the start of their
university education, they are “imposed on them by authorities”
(Lori G. Power, 2009).
◦ We should consider the vulnerability and lack of knowledge of
students who come from countries where intellectual property is
not taken for granted (Thompson and Pennycook 2008).

10. Students Resent Being Punished for Making Errors
◦Students believe they should not be “punished because the
plagiarism was inadvertent as they did not know or understand
the academic writing conventions of the institution” (Sutherland
Smith, 2011).

11. Enculturation
◦ Wang (2008) advocates enculturation as a means of preventing
plagiarism.
◦ Enculturation, an anthropological term, means welcoming
students to become members of the community and embrace
academic values.

12. Enculturation as a Solution
◦ Chris Anson promotes “activities that support the learning of good
writing practices and a heightened understanding of issues of
copyright and intellectual property” (in Howard and Robbillard).
◦ Such assignments are “driven not by the goal of subverting
plagiarism but by good teaching practices” (Anson 2008).

13. Beginning Enculturation
◦ Thoroughly familiarizing students with documentation forms and
usage is essential to making them cognizant of the ethical and
logical reasons for recognizing the work of other scholars (Jamieson,
2008; Maddox, 2008).

14. A Practice-Based Approach
◦ Our approach shifts the focus in plagiarism management from
detection to prevention.
◦ Our approach is systematic enculturation: we embed instruction in
documentation as a core part of the course curriculum.

15. Methodology
◦ Context-specific modeling of documentation forms.
◦ Application of documentation in low-stakes exercises with
feedback and revision loops.

16. Learning through Practice
◦ Practicing documentation in low-stakes writing exercises.
◦ Students gain some understanding of the reasons scholars cite
their sources.

17. A Customized Instruction Booklet
◦ Examples are drawn from the course readings.
◦ A series of scenarios create authentic contexts to assist students’
learning.
◦ Scenarios increase in complexity.
◦ We combine grammar, vocabulary, writing, and documentation
exercises based on course texts. “contextualized teaching” –
(Myhill, Jones, Lines, and Watson 2012)

18. Low-Stakes writing exercises: inksheds
◦ Inksheds: 10-minute directed free-writing exercise (Sargent and
Paraskevas, 2005).
◦ Students first write a draft analysing the course reading.
◦ They employ the models in the booklet to support their analysis with quotes and citations.
◦ Students hand in their inksheds, which receive feedback.
◦ Inksheds were worth 1% each.
◦ Inksheds are foundational to low-stakes assignments worth 5% each.

19. Feedback: nonverbal pointers (Elbow)

20. Authentic practice
◦ Inksheds and low-stakes exercises used in conjunction with the
booklet help students to build skills in documentation and prepare
them to write their formal assignments.

21. Study Results

22. 46.9
10.0
0.0
5.0
10.0
15.0
20.0
25.0
30.0
35.0
40.0
45.0
50.0
Control Test
% of Cases of Inadvertent Plagiarism

23. What did you like the most about the low-stakes
writing exercises?
◦ “They gave me pressure free assignments! Gave me the chance to
try citing without any major consequences! ... Gave me lots of
chances to improve!”
◦ “The low-stakes writing exercises helped me to get started on the
formal writing assignments ... It’s a good way to get your ideas
down on paper and to find out if you have a good understanding of
the text ...”

24. What did you like the most about the booklet?
◦ “The booklet gave great examples, guided learning and work-
checking opportunities. It was a well-developed systematic guide
that finally taught me MLA in a way high school had not. In other
language courses it would be a highly useful and effective tool for
any student who wants to not cheat.”

25. UBC Okanagan Research on 1st Year Composition
◦ UBC Okanagan writing instructors, Cathi Shaw and Jordan Stouck,
are conducting research on the effectiveness of ENGL 009:
Preparation for University Writing.
◦ Categories include students’ perception of their skills in writing,
critical thinking, and documentation.
◦ Their preliminary results are promising.

26. 46.9
10.0
0.0
5.0
10.0
15.0
20.0
25.0
30.0
35.0
40.0
45.0
50.0
Control Test
% of Cases of Inadvertent Plagiarism

27. UBC Okanagan Research on 1st Year Composition
Shaw and Stouck also examined the success rates in ENGL 112 (first
year composition) and found a 96% pass rate in 112 for students who
had taken ENGL 009 in comparison to 91% for students who had not
taken ENGL 009.

28. 46.9
10.0
0.0
5.0
10.0
15.0
20.0
25.0
30.0
35.0
40.0
45.0
50.0
Control Test
% of Cases of Inadvertent Plagiarism

29. Mock Documentation Booklet
◦ Model on “The Function of Writing” (from The Story of Writing,
Robinson 1995)
◦ Models of low-stakes exercises (contextualized teaching)
◦ Models of quotations and citations

30. Activity
◦ Revision exercise on sentence fragments & run-on sentences
◦ Inkshed on Robinson’s “The Function of Writing”

31. Questions?