Visualising Intra-Corpal Plagiarism

This paper describes VAST U prototype Visuulisution und Analysis of Similurity Tool, which tutors cun use to investigute student submissions for intra-corpul plugiurism. VAST displuys U puir of student submissions and U gruphicul representation of their similurity, ullowing tutors to nuvigute directly to ureus of potentiul plugiurism. It improves on the humun eye upprouch by identifiing similurities U tutor might otherwise miss und suving investigative time. VAST is demonstruted using noise-pee synthetic texts und ilctud student submissions contuining intru-corpul plugiur ism. Associuted ideus, including similarity visuulisutions, similurity intersections und the Four-Stuge Plugiurism Detection Process are ulso introduced. 1. Plagiarism By Numbers The media regularly makes reference to the volume of student plugiurism, the presentation of another person’s thoughts or material, for academic credit, as if it were one’s own. The media claim student plagiarism is on the increase and that it threatens to undermine the value of university qualifications. In 1995, Franklyn-Stokes and Newstead suggested that over half of students they sampled committed student plagiarism during their academic course [4]. They said that 66% paraphrased without acknowledgement, 64% copied from other students and 54% plagiarised from texts. Although there is no anecdotal evidence, many academics speculate if the current Web plagiarism was factored in, the figures today would be much higher. Much of this perceived problem has been traced to the growth of the Web, with material available and in a format that can be reused in student submissions with a minimum of effort. In their plugiurism tuxonomy, Culwin and Lancaster defined this re-use, without acknowledgement as Web plugiurism [ I ] . Students have also been known to copy from other reference works, an example of extrucorpul plugiurism, where the plugiurism source is outside a corpus, or collected and related group, of student submissions. Web plagiarism is itself an example of extracorpal plagiarism. Students also copy from one another, a process known as intra-corpul plugiurism. A number of Web based services are able to detect Web plagiarism. Culwin and Lancaster investigated a number of such services and found that they were able to find incidences of Web plagiarism within submissions made to them, but the services varied greatly in the quality of replies and the amount of plagiarism detected [2]. A smaller investigation by Denhart had similar conclusions [ 3 ] . Such Web-bused plugiurism detection services can also be used to detect intra-corpal plagiarism, with each submission added to an internal database and compared with previous submissions, in much the same way that a submission can be compared with a database of Web