Plagiarism is a major concern for higher education generally and no less for the University of Greenwich. Software can help to detect plagiarism (see Turn-it-in ). There are also steps that can be applied to assessment design to minimize plagiarism. When battling plagiarism it is best to tackle it from multiple angles. Start by trying to understand the students' reason for plagiarism and then educate them about what constitutes plagiarism. Try to make plagiarising more difficult for students by adopting techniques to design it out. Finally, detect plagiarism when it occurs using plagiarism software.
The University of Kent offers a series of case studies (available here) which adopt different strategies to eliminate plagiarism. The strategies employed include:
- Using individualised data sets
- Examples of student-directed assessment
- Asking students to define their own questions