A recent article in the New York Times argues that plagiarism is rising as a problem. To quote the article:

"many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious misdeed … It is a disconnect that is growing in the Internet age as concepts of intellectual property, copyright and originality are under assault in the unbridled exchange of online information, say educators who study plagiarism."

First off, the misdeed is not as simple as using someone else's words. The misdeed is representing them as your work. Often this can be unintentional, but it can also be done deliberately to secure a better grade.

As an academic, I certainly experienced my fair share of cases of plagiarism. I would probably also say that plagiarism was not the most common form of academic misconduct - in my experience, collusion was probably more common.

The internet runs it a close second, however. The issue is: it is so easy to find, copy, and paste text. In a few minutes, you can assemble, if rather badly, several pages of text on virtually any given topic. I certainly had students submit work that used Internet text extensively and without citation. This can be interpreted in two different ways:

1. An error of omission - the student did not intend to communicate this as their work
2. An error of misconduct - the student did intend to communicate this as their work

The article in the New York Times is implying that the boundaries between these two - and the whole notion of ownership in the digital age - is becoming blurred.

I can sympathize. As an early web developer (before I became an academic) the primary source of web teaching materials was other people's web pages. We used to take them and adapt them to our needs. Is this plagiarism? Is it any more use of someone else's words than taking a phrase and adapting it?

I'll tell one of my favourite stories about plagiarism. I taught at a psychology school where we ran sessions on cognitive modelling using Prolog. One year, a group didn't seem to engage with our project briefings, and just wanted to get started. After a few hours (this was a project that would normal take two days) they had a complete and correct solution. There was one problem: we had changed the syntax (Prolog has several different notations) and their solution was in the previous years' syntax, not the one we had been explaining throughout our two hour briefing. They then wanted us to change the syntax for them, and attempted various other kinds of misconduct to persuade us. It didn't work. It transpired they were vice cops. And cops completing the psychology courses got a significant boost in pay.

At the core of this concern about plagiarism is a somewhat crystalline -- and I'd suggest false -- notion of learning. To quote Mitch Resnick:

"learning is not a simple matter of information transmission. Teachers cannot simply pour information into the heads of learners; rather, learning is an active process in which people construct new understandings of the world around them through active exploration, experimentation, discussion, and reflection. In short: people don’t get ideas; they make them." (http://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/mres-wef.pdf)

But they don't make them from nothing. They make them from what they have to hand. In the digital age, the Internet is a great source of bricks. You can build badly by just sticking bricks together, but to build something well, you need to choose the right bricks, and use mortar, and above all, have a plan for the whole. Without these additional elements, the edifice will fall.

Finally, and perhaps surprisingly, plagiarism may not be increasing at all. Historically, copying was an essential element of the learning process. In 19th centurion US colleges, estimates were that around 2/3 of students cheated (Simmons, S. C.,, 1999, Competing Notions of Authorship: A Historical Look at Students and Textbooks on Plagiarism and Cheating", in Perspectives on Plagiarism and Intellectual Property in the Postmodern World, eds. L. Buranen and A. M. Roy). As Simmons said:

"A primary factor contributing to plagiarism was the canned paper topics which were used. Composition textbooks often provided lists of suitable theme topics, and uniform course materials, including writing assignments, were used in large programs like Harvard's. When large numbers of students are required to write on the same topics term after term, papers can easily be "recycled" from one class to the next, often in fraternity files."

In other words, plagiarism is caused very largely by poor, predictable, assessment.

So, what do we do? Donald McCabe and his colleagues' research has shown that there are many things institutions can do to reduce misconduct, such as an honor code, a 'hidden curriculum' that addresses ethical issues, and even simple and clear communication (McCabe et al., 2001, Cheating in Academic Institutions: A Decade of Research).

As an example of how plagiarism can be reduced by careful assessment design, I tended to use a range of different but specific scenarios, often slightly humorous. If a student did use materials drawn from the Internet, they would have to repurpose it (and therefore understand it) to embed it in the task. This is entirely reasonable. For example, instead of writing an essay about the Great Depression, set the assessment as a report with recommendations to President Hoover. This "goal-based scenario" - to use Schank's term - makes it more concrete, more engaging, and requires a different voice. Straight regurgitation of information is no longer useful -- learners need to go the extra step, and if they don't, it is very obvious.

So while it is technically possible to detect plagiarism, these technologies are not the solution. Applying technology will simply turn into race for undetectable plagiarism, rather like the ever-running battle between anti-virus software and viruses, which can eat a huge percentage of a systems's resources.

We need to help our students understand the true nature of learning; that using sources is legitimate -- and even encouraged -- but that they need to use their own voices and make their own arguments.