Staff attitudes to dealing with plagiarism issues: Perspectives from one Australian university

This paper reports on the results of an online staff survey at one Australian university on attitudes to plagiarism issues, the use and efficacy of the institutional plagiarism policy and Turnitin system and staff perceptions of institutional resources that were available to assist both staff and students reduce the incidence of plagiarism. The survey was designed to capture staff perceptions, rather than verifiable activity or plagiarism detection outcomes. The survey responses highlighted the need for a common understanding of plagiarism and approaches to the detection and dealing with suspected plagiarism incidents. The responses also signalled a requirement for improved assessment practices that reduce the opportunity for plagiarism. Staff responses indicated that there was a need to publicise more effectively existing University resources for avoiding plagiarism; only a minority of survey respondents were aware of these resources. The majority of staff perceived that the institutional policies and practices were adequate for dealing with suspected plagiarism incidents. Introduction Academic integrity, plagiarism, cheating and collusion are all issues that have been highlighted recently in the higher education literature, as well as in the popular press (Carroll, 2002; CAI, 2005). There has been something of a polarisation of opinion in staff at universities between those who regard plagiarism as an ‘educational and training’ issue, and those who regard it as an ‘honesty and reputation’ issue. For many staff, acts of plagiarism are interpreted as ‘attacks’ on the core tenet of ‘academic integrity’ and the core beliefs underpinning higher education epistemology. For other, acts of plagiarism are more often the result of a lack of practice in performing ‘evidence based writing’, a lack of appropriate feedback on ‘discipline conventions’ or a misunderstanding of assessment criteria. Most universities in Australia now require staff to provide specific warnings to students (especially those commencing higher education for the first time) about plagiarism, the mechanisms in place for the detection of plagiarism, and the consequences for students who have been found ‘guilty’ of plagiarism (Phillips, 2005). Why students engage in behaviour that is deemed to be plagiarism is complex and has been discussed by numerous authors, including Park (2003), Marsden, Carroll and Neill (2005), Carroll and Appleton (2001) and McGowan (2005). Staff responses to preventing and detecting plagiarism will necessarily be dependent on a number of factors, including the policy structures that exist in their particular institution, the cultural and linguistic diversity in their student population, the types of assessment tasks that are set for students and the level of resources that can be applied to prevention and detection. One of the popular software applications used for detecting and preventing plagiarism is the commercial product Turnitin (http://www.turnitin.com). Although the Turnitin International Journal for Educational Integrity


Introduction
Academic integrity, plagiarism, cheating and collusion are all issues that have been highlighted recently in the higher education literature, as well as in the popular press (Carroll, 2002;CAI, 2005). There has been something of a polarisation of opinion in staff at universities between those who regard plagiarism as an 'educational and training' issue, and those who regard it as an 'honesty and reputation' issue. For many staff, acts of plagiarism are interpreted as 'attacks' on the core tenet of 'academic integrity' and the core beliefs underpinning higher education epistemology. For other, acts of plagiarism are more often the result of a lack of practice in performing 'evidence based writing', a lack of appropriate feedback on 'discipline conventions' or a misunderstanding of assessment criteria. Most universities in Australia now require staff to provide specific warnings to students (especially those commencing higher education for the first time) about plagiarism, the mechanisms in place for the detection of plagiarism, and the consequences for students who have been found 'guilty' of plagiarism (Phillips, 2005).
Why students engage in behaviour that is deemed to be plagiarism is complex and has been discussed by numerous authors, including Park (2003), Marsden, Carroll and Neill (2005), Carroll and Appleton (2001) and McGowan (2005). Staff responses to preventing and detecting plagiarism will necessarily be dependent on a number of factors, including the policy structures that exist in their particular institution, the cultural and linguistic diversity in their student population, the types of assessment tasks that are set for students and the level of resources that can be applied to prevention and detection.
One of the popular software applications used for detecting and preventing plagiarism is the commercial product Turnitin (http://www.turnitin.com). Although the Turnitin system is often described as 'anti-plagiarism software', it neither detects nor prevents plagiarism per se, rather it produces 'originality reports' in which written text submitted to the Turnitin system is compared to existing written text in the Turnitin database, as well as cached material from the Internet and a selection of publishers' texts and journals (Frazer, Allan & Roberts, 2004). Whether written text contains plagiarised material is a judgement made by the teacher. Nevertheless, tools such as Turnitin may be helpful in allowing teachers to construct formative assessment activities that may improve evidence based writing (Sutherland-Smith & Carr, 2005) and does allow ready identification of the source of duplicate text in some cases.
Background on staff attitudes to plagiarism issues East (2006) has posited that university staff do not necessarily question the prevailing 'western' academic culture and its 'handling of text and the ideas of others'. Much of the current debate about academic integrity rests on particular views on 'who owns the words' and all students in Australian universities are usually expected to adopt the prevailing 'western' cultural view when submitting written work of their synthesis of the thoughts of others and themselves in the form of a summative assessment task. McGowan (2005) has put the case for a deeper appreciation of the complexity of the statement 'using your own words', especially in the context of international students for whom English is an additional language. Many such students commence their university studies with a limited appreciation of English grammar and a limited vocabulary range.
The 'i-Map' approach reported by Walden and Peacock (2006) illustrated how staff may initiate changes to assessment practices that could reduce the incidence of plagiarism and the motivation for students to plagiarise. This pedagogical approach reinforces proposals by a number of scholars that concentrating solely on plagiarism detection via technical means will not necessarily develop students' skills in areas that will be valued by employers (Carroll, 2005). Universities appear to be concentrating on creating coherent programs for dealing with plagiarism issues; programs that will assist both staff and students achieve a common understanding of why 'evidence based writing' is valued and how it can be developed (Frazer et al., 2004). Dordoy (2002) reported on the student and staff survey conducted at Northumbria University in the UK, and highlighted the result that the ready availability of suitable content on the Internet was one of the reasons for student plagiarism. Pickard (2006) highlighted that institutions should provide more explicit definitions of plagiarism and be promoting the concept of 'academic integrity' with students in a systematic manner. Mainka, Raeburn and Earl (2006) have reported on the outcomes from the introduction of a coherent program for dealing with plagiarism issues in one UK University. This particular study highlighted the need to cultivate a more consistent understanding among staff and students of what constitutes plagiarism and of the practices associated with dealing with incidences of suspected plagiarism. Pickard (2006) echoed this recommendation in reporting on the results for the staff and student survey at University College Northampton. Sutherland-Smith and Carr (2005) also reported on a site-specific case study that investigated the perspectives of seven teachers across five faculties at a UK University about the effectiveness and usability of the Turnitin system. Staff indicated that the use of Turnitin certainly assisted in detecting text matches from other sources in students' written work, but the software itself did not indicate whether plagiarism had occurred; that remained the decision of the staff concerned.
This paper reports on the results of a staff survey at the University of Adelaide on attitudes to plagiarism issues, the use and efficacy of the institutional plagiarism policy, and staff perceptions of institutional resources that were available to assist both staff and students reduce or eliminate plagiarism.

Methodology
This university was chosen for the study because it had recently revised the institutional plagiarism policy, had been using the Turnitin system for the previous two years, and had completed a series of staff seminars to raise awareness of the relationship between assessment practices and the likely level of plagiarism incidents. The University of Adelaide has an approximately 20% international student population, the majority of the teaching is conducted in a face to face mode and the majority of students are recent school leavers.
An online survey of staff registered in our Turnitin system was conducted. This group was selected as it was assumed that they were actively engaged in detecting and reflecting on suspected plagiarism incidents since they had used 'originality reports' generated from Turnitin. At our institution, staff request access to Turnitin and an account is created for them. Individual staff decide how the Turnitin 'originality reports' will be used in their particular course(s). Minimal direct training in the use of Turnitin was provided, although an extensive set of online resources was available, as were individual consultations with academic developers with experience in evidence-based writing and the University plagiarism policy. One of the aims of this study was to determine if the use of Turnitin 'originality reports' had any impact on staff approaches to dealing with plagiarism issues. In terms of this study, it must be acknowledged that some staff would deal with plagiarism detection through means other than the use of Turnitin, but no data was collected in relation to alternative methods. The author is involved in academic development and played a significant role in the implementation of the Turnitin system and the development of the institutional plagiarism policy. The goals for this survey were to obtain feedback on how staff used Turnitin, whether this use of Turnitin had any impact on staff assessment practices, and whether staff perceived that Turnitin had any impact on the standard of students' written work. The survey questions are included as an Appendix to this paper.

Results and discussion
A total of 144 staff were contacted by email and invited to fill in the online survey consisting of 19 questions. We received 39 valid responses (27%) and Table 1 summarises the demographic characteristics of the respondents.

Table 1. Characteristics of respondents to the staff online survey on plagiarism issues and use (n = 39)
Full-time staff represented 69% of the respondents to the survey, with 82% being classified as academic staff (including sessional tutors and demonstrators) and 18% professional or administrative staff (Table 1). The majority of the survey respondents came from the Humanities, Health and Science disciplines, followed by the academic development and language support areas. Table 1 also summarises the number of submissions of students' work in the University Turnitin system for the period 2004-2006 from these same broad discipline areas. This data was collected to compare the spread of discipline use of Turnitin with the discipline representation of staff respondents in the survey, and the data reported in Table 1 indicated that the match was reasonable. Table 2 summarises the responses to Questions 5, 6, 9 and 10 of the survey (see the Appendix for the full questions). Questions 5 and 6 were to be answered only by those who had used the University Turnitin system (82% of the survey respondents), whereas Questions 9 and 10 could be answered by all participants in the survey. Table 2. Staff responses to survey questions 5, 6, 9 and 10 (n=39) For Question 5, 23% of respondents indicated that the use of Turnitin made no difference to their assessment practices, whereas 21% indicated that the use of Turnitin led to a significant improvement. A total of 54% of survey respondents indicated that the use of Turnitin led to a positive improvement in their assessment practices, whereas none of the respondents indicated that the use of Turnitin had worsened their assessment practices. In terms of the appointment level of staff, those at Lecturer Level C and above were divided equally between those who indicated that the use of Turnitin afforded no difference and those who indicated it led to a positive improvement; staff at Levels A and B indicated mostly a positive improvement. The absolute numbers for the remaining staff categories were too small to make meaningful comparisons.
For Question 6, 46% of respondents indicated that the use of Turnitin afforded some positive difference to the quality of student work, but 31% thought that no difference was observable. There was no strong correlation between the appointment level of respondents and their responses to Question 6..
The University has a number of online resources on plagiarism prevention for both staff and students. In particular, the Blackboard Learning Management system (called MyUni at our institution), has a course 'Writing and Speaking at University' that is automatically available to all students. This course provides resources that assist students with essay writing and oral presentation techniques, examples of writing methods that reduce plagiarism, as well as techniques for thesis writing. The course provides numerous online interactive quizzes, including a number of discipline specific sections. Only 36% of the survey respondents directed students to this course, whereas 41% were not aware that it existed, despite the fact that the course had been available for three years and was highlighted in general and program specific student information packs (Table 2). Additionally, the course appears automatically on the front page for all staff and students when they log into the University Blackboard Learning Management system.
The staff and student development unit (CLPD at our institution) also has a number of plagiarism prevention resources available for both staff and students. 59% of respondents directed their students to these CLPD resources, whereas 31% were not aware that these resources were available. Since staff requests for access to the Turnitin system, and the instruction manuals on how to use the software were available through the CLPD, it was likely that staff should be more familiar with these plagiarism prevention resources. Of the 14 respondents who indicated they had directed students to the MyUni plagiarism prevention course, 13 also directed their students to appropriate CLPD resources. Of the 17 respondents who were not aware of the Blackboard plagiarism prevention course, seven also directed their students to the appropriate CLPD resources, but 10 were not aware of these additional resources. Table 3 presents responses from the survey about the processes staff used to minimise plagiarism. The most frequently used technique was the requirement for a signed cover sheet (87%), followed by explicit statements about plagiarism detection in information booklets (79%).
These two approaches to plagiarism prevention are aligned strongly with the institutional 'Policy on Plagiarism' (Policy, 2007), which emphasises that students need to be provided with appropriate information, and that there are severe consequences for students who do not abide by the rules. The first mechanisms, although important, are more punitive than educative, as they rely on the student signature to provide 'proof' that they have understood the expectations and conventions applying to 'appropriate' referencing and the acknowledgement of the work of others. Only 41% of staff indicated that they used an assessment cover sheet containing assessment criteria; however, 74% of respondents used assessment tasks that rewarded appropriate referencing. This latter mechanism indicates a more pedagogic approach to reducing plagiarism in that it provides a positive incentive by rewarding behaviour that is considered important. It is interesting to note that only 64% of the respondents to Question 13 indicated that Turnitin was used to minimise plagiarism, although earlier in the survey in response to Question 4 which asked if respondents had used the Turnitin system, 82% indicated that they had used it. The difference in responses to these two questions may simply highlight that some staff have used the Turnitin system but did not feel it reduced plagiarism. Only 38% design

Technique %
Signed statement on assessment cover sheet 87 Explicit statement in course handout or information booklet 79 Assessment tasks that have specific marks associated with appropriate referencing and citations 74 By using Turnitin to detect plagiarism 64 By providing explicit guidelines for students on the requirements for evidencebased writing 59 By allowing students to submit formative assessments and providing specific feedback on referencing and citations 44 Marking criteria on assessment cover sheet 41 Assessment tasks are set in such a way that students are not able to plagiarise to answer the question 38

Technique %
Signed statement on assessment cover sheet 87 Explicit statement in course handout or information booklet 79 Assessment tasks that have specific marks associated with appropriate referencing and citations 74 By using Turnitin to detect plagiarism 64 By providing explicit guidelines for students on the requirements for evidencebased writing 59 By allowing students to submit formative assessments and providing specific feedback on referencing and citations 44 Marking criteria on assessment cover sheet 41 Assessment tasks are set in such a way that students are not able to plagiarise to answer the question 38 the ability to plagiarise out of the assessment, although this has been discussed in the literature as a key factor in reducing plagiarism (Carroll, 2005). Table 4 summarises the staff responses to Questions 8, 11, 12, 14-18; these questions relate to staff experience with current practices and policies associated with plagiarism detection and prevention. Of all the respondents to the survey, only 28% allowed students to use Turnitin to check their work for correct referencing and acknowledgements before submitting it for summative assessment. This is interesting, since this activity could be used as a powerful teaching tool as students could practice paraphrasing and referencing in a formative mode before having their work summatively assessed and subjected to the conditions of the University's 'Policy on Plagiarism'. Informal conversations with teaching staff about this use of the Turnitin system indicated that staff assumed that students would use the opportunity to copy work from another source and make iterative changes until the Turnitin system indicated that the work was 'original'. Analysing the distribution of responses to this question further showed that of the respondents who indicated that the use of Turnitin made no difference to the quality of student work, only 17% allowed students to check their written work before summative assessment, whereas 83% did not. Interestingly, of the respondents who indicated that the use of Turnitin made a positive difference to the quality of student work, 44% allowed students to check their written work before summative assessment, and 56% did not.
Significantly, 72% found that the Turnitin originality reports were useful, with 56% indicating that staff training was required in how to reduce student plagiarism. Respondents were equally divided on the question about how serious the level of plagiarism was at the University. Mainka et al. (2006), in their study at a UK university, highlighted the need to cultivate a more consistent understanding of what constitutes plagiarism, and we are aware at our University that staff can have significantly different definitions of what constitutes 'serious plagiarism'. Academic staff at the Senior Lecturer and above tended to regard the level of plagiarism as a more serious issue compared to academic staff at other levels. Interestingly, the overall responses from the quantitative and qualitative discipline areas were equally divided on this issue. Overall, the responses indicated that staff felt that both their discipline area and the University had appropriate strategies in place for assisting students to avoid plagiarism, and that students had an understanding of what plagiarism meant.
A number of the Yes/No survey questions offered respondents the opportunity to make open-ended comments. These responses have been organised into specific themes and summarised in Table 5. The themes were determined by reading all the responses for a particular question, and defining the key issues contained in the comments. Table 5 has been divided into the themes highlighted by those respondents who answered either Yes or No to the original question, with the actual number of respondents (n) providing an indication of the level of consensus.  For those respondents who thought Turnitin originality reports were useful (Q8), the major themes highlighted were the ability of the system to provide a quick visual check on likely problems, the fact that the use of plagiarism detection software provided an opportunity to engage students in a dialogue about plagiarism issues, and the realisation that plagiarism detection software does not necessarily detect all instances of inappropriate referencing, poor paraphrasing or inadequate acknowledgements. From the open-ended comments it is apparent that some staff are using the Turnitin system as an educational tool to allow students to develop their skills in paraphrasing and evidence based writing. Although plagiarism detection software may be used as a punitive tool, it is much more powerful if it is used as an educational opportunity.
The most common comment in relation to staff training in plagiarism issues (Q11) was a reinforcement of the need for a common understanding of what constitutes plagiarism; this is consistent with the findings of Mainka et al. (2006). Informal discussions with staff have highlighted some significant differences in definitions of what constitutes 'commonly accepted knowledge' or disciplinary 'common phrases' which may be used without specific referencing or acknowledgement. Some staff appreciated that cultural issues also needed to be discussed more explicitly when dealing with plagiarism prevention, and some staff indicated that it was fairly obvious what was required to reduce student plagiarism and that staff training was not necessary. Some staff thought that the level of plagiarism at the University was a significant issue (Q12) because of their personal experience and the fact that it is 'apparently' relatively easy for students to copy or cheat. On the other hand, an equal number of staff had no personal experience of widespread plagiarism, and thought that most plagiarism was unintentional or resulted from a lack of experience or practice in evidence based writing.
At the discipline or school level (Q14), staff thought that adequate resources and warnings were available to assist students in avoiding plagiarism, although a smaller number felt that staff still lacked experience in being able to detect some forms of plagiarism. Staff were divided on whether local assessment practices were adequate to prevent or inhibit plagiarism. At the University level, the majority of staff who entered open-ended comments to Question 15 felt that the policies and software system were adequate in assisting students to avoid plagiarism. Those who felt that the University strategies were not adequate were divided in their reasons, including that it appeared to be a token effort, was too complicated, or did not cater for international students or did not emphasise the educational approach sufficiently.
Quite a few staff commented that students did not understand what plagiarism was (Q17), especially international students, although only 28% of respondents indicated 'No' to the original question. Staff commented that more effort could be expended at the course level to discuss evidence based writing and acceptable standards of referencing and acknowledgement. Only 13% of respondents answered 'No' to Question 18, and the only open-ended comments came from these respondents.

Conclusions
The survey was designed to capture staff perceptions, rather than verifiable activity or plagiarism detection outcomes. About half of the survey respondents perceived that the use of Turnitin was beneficial to improving their assessment practices and students' written work, but only a minority were making effective use of institutional resources for plagiarism minimisation. This finding indicates that there is a need to publicise more effectively existing University resources for avoiding plagiarism. The use of Turnitin by students during formative assessment activities is not currently promoted by teaching staff, yet this approach to developing students' skills in evidence-based writing is likely to reduce the incidence of plagiarism by allowing students to practice paraphrasing and acknowledging the works of others and gathering feedback on their efforts through Turnitin originality reports.
The majority of staff perceived that the institutional policies and practices were adequate for dealing with suspected plagiarism incidents. However, staff training in the effective use of Turnitin and appropriate assessment practices, and a more common understanding of what constitutes plagiarism were all issues highlighted by staff.
I am not familiar with the University of Adelaide Policy on Plagiarism If 'No' please describe briefly how it could be changed: Q19. Any other comments?