Plagiarism and Google generation under spotlight

Alexandra Smith

More than half of all university students believe their tutors would fail to spot work plagiarised from the internet, a new survey has revealed.

The preliminary results, to be presented to an international conference on plagiarism in Gateshead starting today, also include a finding that, while 52% of students thought they could get away with copying work from the internet, 87% backed the use of electronic detection software.

It is expected that, when the full survey is finished at the end of August, between 5,000 and 10,000 students will have responded, providing a convincing picture of how students view plagiarism and how they think it should be tackled. The conference, organised by the digital education specialists Northumbria Learning, will discuss advances in plagiarism detection software, widely seen as an important means of addressing the latest form of cheating.

Earlier this year, Oxford University warned that the reputation of its degrees was under threat as students increasingly copied slabs of work from the internet and submitted it as their own.

Oxford’s senior proctor and chief disciplinary officer, Professor Alan Grafen, blamed British schools’ acceptance of work that was simply copied from the internet.

Professor Sally Brown, the pro-vice-chancellor for assessment, learning and teaching at Leeds Metropolitan University, will tell the conference that the “Google generation” of students know too little about what constitutes plagiarism.

Prof Brown will tell the conference that the internet has made copying and pasting too easy and personalising assignments would make plagiarism difficult.

In her paper, Prof Brown will say that many students do not necessarily see anything wrong with copying other people’s work. Students, according to Prof Brown, say things such as, “If they are stupid enough to give us three assignments with the same deadline, what can they expect?” and “I just couldn’t say it better myself.”

She describes as “postmodern, eclectic, Google-generationists, Wikipediasts, who don’t necessarily recognise the concepts of authorships/ownerships”.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006