Study Help - A Guide to Essay Writing

Plagiarism and Collusion

(Adapted from materials developed by the School of Education, Murdoch University)

A Caution

Students coming in to the university from other educational institutions are sometimes surprised at the serious view that is taken of certain practices relating to the submission of work for assessment.

For example, having perhaps been encouraged at school or in some other institution to build up essays by stringing together quotations from such sources as reference books and encyclopedias, they find that in a university not only is more emphasis placed on personal critical analysis, but failure to identify the source of every quotation used is regarded as a serious offence.

Another mistake is to submit as one's own, work which has been a joint effort between students and others. If detected it will not be treated lightly.

The two examples given above are cases, respectively, of plagiarism and collusion. The university takes a serious view of both and imposes penalties which, dependent on the level of seriousness, can be severe. The following comments will help you to understand why, and will indicate how you can steer clear of these offences.

What are plagiarism and collusion? Isn't it reasonable to get help from others?

We shall use the word co-operation to refer to any form of joint effort, between students, or between staff and students, which a particular unit of study permits or encourages. It can be a valuable way to learn. It may even be acceptable to make joint submissions for assessment, if the tutor has clearly specified conditions which allow this. Co-operation, where the rules permit it, and where it is practiced openly and honestly, is not an offence but a good thing.

Collusion refers to any form of joint effort, between students, or between students and other persons, intended to deceive an assessor as to who was actually responsible for producing the material submitted for assessment.

Plagiarism refers to the practice of borrowing from the work of another scholar without indicating by a reference, and by quotation marks where exact phrases are borrowed, when the ideas expressed are not one's own. This can sometimes occur unintentionally, but it is more frequently a deliberate attempt to deceive.

It should be noted that in the cases of both collusion and plagiarism it is because an individual fails to acknowledge the help obtained from another person that these practices are considered offences. The attempt to claim credit for work that is not your own is the enemy of true scholarship.

What's so wrong about collusion and plagiarism?

Students sometimes ask: why does the university treat these things so seriously? The answer has to do with what universities see their functions to be. In particular, they are charged to advance knowledge by sound scholarship. This requires, amongst other things, the correction of error and the exposure of falsehood.

Academic staff who might otherwise be tempted to produce dishonest work are usually restrained by the knowledge that their work will be publicly reported in academic journals where both their methods and their results will come under careful scrutiny. Cases where academics have cheated make headlines, but the reason for this is precisely because they are fairly rare and widely condemned.

Universities are expected to teach in a way which helps and requires students to master the skills of intellectual inquiry, and are expected to assess their students to see whether this expectation has been met. By the awarding of a degree the university is guaranteeing to the public, amongst other things, that the graduate has achieved a certain level.

Where students attempt to deceive their assessor, this is not only immoral but puts the university's reputation at risk. It is therefore in the university's interest to treat such offences severely. Part of the immorality in such behaviour, incidentally, is that it is unfair to other students who have done honest work.

Staff members at Murdoch University have been asked to make the university's expectations quite clear to students and to report instances of such deception to the university administration for further action.

If you are unsure of what really constitutes plagiarism or collusion, these examples may help you to recognise them.

Examples of plagiarism

Consider the following. Three students are writing essays on the subject of school discipline. Each discovers a definition in the 1972 Dettman Report on school discipline. This is what they put:

Student A: 'Discipline' refers to the state of order or good behaviour in a school.

This, with the omission of two words and minor changes to the last three, is taken directly from the Report. It is bad writing because the student gives no sign of realising that there could be other ways of regarding school discipline. But it is also dishonest, because it involves presenting the words as the student's own, i.e. plagiarism.

Student B: The discipline of a school is 'the state or condition of order or good behaviour among the students.'

The quotation marks indicate correctly that the definition has been borrowed, although the quotation is inexact because the word 'discipline' was underlined in the original, and the source of the quotation is not given. Since quoting from other sources is not the only reason why writers may put quotation marks around words, the present example is therefore ambiguous, and open to the charge of plagiarism.

Student C: One definition says that 'The discipline of a school is the state or condition of order or good behaviour among the students' (Dettman 1972, p. 7). This definition emphasises the external signs of control, but makes no reference to the state of mind of the students...

Correct. This student has quoted accurately and acknowledged the source. She has also given signs of independent thinking by stating what she considers to be a shortcoming of the definition. She has not assumed that the mere fact that it is printed in a book makes it right.

It is surprisingly easy for assessors who know their subject to detect instances of plagiarism, sometimes running to long quotes which the student takes from a work not cited by the lecturer. Most assessors regard the offence as sufficiently serious to warrant their searching for the original in their own time to confirm their suspicions, which they are legally bound to report. It often leads to an automatic fail in that subject or even exclusion from the university.

Examples of collusion

It is one thing for close friends who are studying the same unit to investigate and discuss a topic together. As was said earlier, this is co-operation, and can be a valuable learning experience. It is another thing, however, for them to submit separate essays which are almost identical or mostly the work of one of them.

Whereas plagiarism is occasionally unintentional, collusion is always deliberate. To repeat, it involves the submission for credit or work that is not your own. Unauthorised collaboration ('collusion') constitutes joint effort between students, or students and others, in preparing material submitted for assessment, except where this has been approved by the Unit Coordinator. Students are encouraged to discuss matters covered in units, but when writing an assignment, computer program, laboratory report or other pieces of assessed work, the recording and treatment of data and the expression of ideas and argument must be the student's own.

Written assignments test skills which formal exams miss, and have an important place in assessment. If a lecturer discovers cases of collusion, then this puts pressure on that lecturer to revert to the more traditional, and often less effective formal exam. This, again, is unfair to the honest students.

Alert assessors usually find this sort of thing easy to pick up, and they are then obliged to take disciplinary action. Whatever help you get from discussing your topic with other people, write up your own thinking in your own way.

Refer to the Code of Practice - Assessment for more information about Plagiarism and Collusion.

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