Education is prone to fashions.    From phonics to formative assessments, from dsylexia to distributed learning, an idea is extracted from the educational environment, explored, extended to fill our view, only to be exhausted and ultimately expelled.    One has only to map the relative risings and fallings of correspondence, distance, open, distributed, flexible, online, e- and blended learnings to see how fashions bewitch the educational establishment, at least until the next model parades itself down the catwalk.

Such episodes tell us as much about our fears as our aspirations of educational excellence.    So, what is it we fear in 2006?

Plagiarism, apparently.    It’s hard to avoid.    The literature is full of it;   I’ve already mentioned the recently launched “International Journal for Educational Integrity” (quodlibs 197).    Or take the special issue of JUTLP on “academic integrity”.    A few years ago such an issue would have considered a range of issue, like fabricating research results, or bogus qualifications.    Not now.    As the editor says, “the call went out for papers on academic integrity but the response overwhelmingly addressed issues of plagiarism.”    Quite

The media are full of it.    One recent squall emerged from Oxford University where plagiarism is, according to the headlines at least, “rife”.   

“Vigilance is required for the sake of the education our students receive”, says one Oxford don.    So bad is it that there were 10 cases of “intentional or reckless” plagiarism detected last year, and some students were expelled.

It’s not just Oxford.    The next day a survey was published looking across all UK universities and concluding that “one in three students cheat” (or one in six, depending upon which headline you read).    One in six “admitted they copied work from friends”;   whilst “nearly half of male students (45%) said they copied from their friends for group assignments”

It could undermine the value of degrees, claims one academic;   we must make our students sign affidavits to ensure the work they submit is their own.    “Society has to see plagiarism as a real issue”, argues another, “rather like drink-driving.    It is only when the majority see this as unacceptable that it will be brought under control.”

Goodness.    Signed affidavits?    “Reckless” plagiarism?    Akin to “drink-driving”?

Students have always cheated.    They collaborate, copy results and even make them up.    I certainly did, particularly in practicals (which I hated:   all bad smells, rubber gloves and flash fires, but then it was chemistry).    Intentional?    Yes.    Reckless?    Well, put it like this, the chances of my running somebody over and killing them in a paroxysm of plagiarism were as remote as being invited to become prime minister.

And anyway, life is about teamwork, about building on the work of others.    Where would Crick have been without Watson, Michaelson without Morley, Newton without Kepler or Galileo, Mozart without Haydn, Constable without Ruisdael.    The fact that a piece of work has been cobbled together from the internet doesn’t necessarily make it worthless.    A collage is also a work of art.    And as one academic, quoted in THES, put it, “the line between plagiarism and research can be very blurry”.

Much of creativity after all is as much about cobbling together the work of others as it is about true invention.    Even old jokes can be funny:   it’s the way you tell ’em that counts.    Or, to put it another way, there is nothing wrong in standing on the shoulders of giants;   what matters is how much further you can reach when you do.

Not that this will lessen the palpitations over plagiarism.    For our preoccupation with plagiarism as an evil has little or nothing to do with learning, and everything to do with proving that learning has taken place.    Even cheats learn.    But should they also qualify?

Qualifications may yet become the only acceptable form of currency in the jobs market.    That seems to be what the government wants.    So they have to be reliable.    The fact that a bit of cheating did me no harm, forty years ago, is no excuse not to stamp it out now.    After all, the details of my qualifications are irrelevant, forty years on.    And we are, like it or not, living in a qualifications culture.

Hence the recent publication by QCA, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, of two guides on plagiarism, one for teachers, and one for parents.    They’re straightforward tips on how to spot it, and what to do about it;   useful if a little simplistic.    You might even point your tutors towards them if plagiarism is a potential issue for you.

Supplementing coursework with oral questions is sensible, if tricky at a distance.    Of course, you could seek to abolish coursework altogether, or at least lessen or eliminate its impact on the final qualification.    You might feel that would be to throw out the baby with the bathwater;   interesting nevertheless that, according to TES, QCA are suggesting that coursework might indeed be removed from GCSEs, first in maths, then in other subjects.

There are other things you can do.    One is familiarising your self with relevant websites you learners might crib from, though given the number of possible websites out there, that could prove a bit daunting.

What you mustn’t do is take it on trust.    Take your lead from Tony.    He doesn’t trust teachers;   so teachers shouldn’t trust their pupils.    Or anyone else.    Trust, it seems, is an outdated idea;   inappropriate in the 21C.

And whatever your private views on plagiarism, you may have to tow the line eventually.    Teachers are warned by QCA that if they submit work from a candidate that they are “not confident is that candidate’s own [then this] could be considered professional misconduct”.    Trust, it seems, is positively irresponsible.

Harking back to my time at Oxford, the classification of our degrees was based, not on coursework, but on one blockbuster set of exams (finals) at the end of three years, when cheats, in my experience, were just as likely to get firsts as thirds (or vice-versa).    The issue for qualifications is not that they need to be made as watertight as possible:   any system will leak.    Qualifications must make simple, reliable and realisable claims;   what we need is to be sure of in the end is that they do what they say on the tin.

Source:   IJEI
JUTLP: academic integrity issue
plagiarism at Oxford
one in three
THES 17 March pp1, 9:  1 in 6 admits to cheating
Comment on Oxford case
TES 17 March, p4:  Maths coursework may be abolished
QCA plagiarism guides
TES 3 March, p4
Sky News : comment on guides
Independent: comment on guides
Times: comment on guides
BBC: comment on guides
Guardian: comment on guides