Poly, varsities use software to spot copying from Net

octega SG

From the Strait Times Webby:-

Ngee Ann Poly tries out anti-plagiarism software that dons at 3 varsities are using to spot text students lift from websites

By Lynn Lee

BLITHELY, the group of undergraduates lifted a chunk of text from the website of a Singapore bank's branch in Thailand and passed it off as their own.

THE SOFTWARE KNOWS...

IN THE future, artificial intelligence may be used to distinguish one student's essay from others.

German academic Joachim Diederich, 46, in Singapore last week to talk about his research on new technologies to fight plagiarism, aims to produce such a software.

Professor Diederich, who disclosed his research at the International Conference On Educational Technology, has been conducting his research on the topic since 1999.

He teaches at the faculty of applied sciences at Sohar University in Oman and is also an honorary professor in information technology at the University of Queensland in Australia.

Prof Diederich, who has conducted four trials so far, used about 2,600 articles written by at least 200 journalists over a nine-month period from a German daily, the Berliner Zeitung. He found the software could accurately recognise which author had written a particular article nearly 100 per cent of the time.

The blatant plagiarism happened two years ago in one of the classes at Singapore Management University taught by Dr Themin Suwardy.

But their misdeed was exposed swiftly by Turnitin, a software which matches student work against millions of documents on the Internet.

Said Dr Suwardy: 'Previously, I would have to rely on my own observations of the student's writing style and calibre to see if he was indeed handing in his own work.'

A Straits Times check found that besides SMU, anti-plagiarism software is also being used at the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University and Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

But its use is not compulsory. At NUS, about 220 faculty members are doing so, since it was implemented two years ago. p> NTU began using an anti-plagiarism system called SafeAssignment in July while SMU implemented Turnitin in January last year.

Ngee Ann Poly is the latest to jump on the bandwagon, with about 15 lecturers now doing a 10-week trial of Turnitin.

At all four institutions, students are informed that the software is being used to check their work.

Said educational development officer Murray Bourne, who is spearheading the trial at Ngee Ann Poly: 'We're not looking to trap students, but rather to make them more careful when writing papers.'

Faculty members also hold writing workshops, with course websites and student handbooks showing students how to cite references from different sources, such as the Internet.

Penalties, which range from written warnings and failing the particular course to fines and possible expulsion, are also made known.

Although professors point to plagiarism as a growing problem, they say they have caught few serious cases.

NUS Business School professor Lim Kwang Hui, for example, recalls hauling up fewer than five out a class of 100 for plagiarism.

'My personal strategy is to assign work to students in smaller bites, instead of lengthy papers. Less stress would make them less likely to plagiarise.'

For example, written papers in his undergraduate classes make up around 10 per cent of the final grade, with the bulk coming from classroom participation and examinations.

But even in courses where essays are a must, anti-plagiarism software has its limitations.

Turnitin, for example, will highlight all phrases or words which are found to match those in online sources, regardless of whether they were placed in quote marks by the student.

The professor would have to manually review each paper to determine if it has been properly referenced or copied.

Still, knowing that her philosophy professor uses such a method has made NUS first-year student Lim Qingru, 19, more conscientious in her work.

'I wouldn't copy text wholesale to begin with, as my professor has read quite widely and would be able to spot it. But now I'm more careful about putting in quote marks when they are needed.'

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Personally, I dunno what is the big deal with this. Because Programming languages uses fixed syntax system. People are bound to write the same programs, same flow, same structure, etc. It is inevitable.

Instead of scrutinize every single line of code using some program, the lecturers should adpot another approach. I my opinion, implement a Q&A session, where the lecturer throw questions to the student on his code. In this way, the student must really know and understand his code, no point just copying, he must understand or else he cannot answer the question pose by the lecturers.

FireIce SG

take one line from here
take one line from there

put together, change the sentence structure, change a few words.......

ORIGINAL!!!!!

chunyong SG

dats wat i have been doing for my past 2 sems...so far so good. Twisted Evil Razz Laughing Very Happy Smile Mr. Green

Ito_^ SG

take an existing idea, put some flaws in it -> original! Laughing

eutjin SG

hmm .....

that's actually accepted by some ..... afterall, like for programming, often it's combining other ppl's code anyway

and ..... you need to read before combining them ...

chunyong SG

the software basically uses a hash function to 'size down' a chunk of text, if the hash of the chunk is the same as the hash of yours, then it means the text are the same. this saves processing time alot and there is also sub-hashes so that is 1 of the sub-hash tallied with urs, then a more detailed check will be done.

the hashing is similar to the hash used in digital signatures in email.

paperchicken SG

Mr. Green v

ditzy SG

My professor prefer hand written reports, less leh cheh. Very Happy

Kismet SG

To avoid plagarism, just quote the source where the idea / sentence came from.

The reason why people are caught is because they deliberately pass off other people's ideas/works as their own without proper reference or citation to the original source, in the hopes that the professor will give them more credit for something "original."

That is the wrong way of thinking. The purpose of a research paper especially one for poly students / undergrads is to test their research skills. You come up with an idea / a thesis (term used loosely here), and then do research to find evidence to support your idea / thesis.

At the poly / undergrad level, the professor is not asking the student to come up with some deep, groundbreaking topic in their field of study.

As it is, the professor marking the papers are usually quite aware of what books / research sources are available, so there is no point for any student to try to pass of something copied from somewhere as his/her own.

In a nutshell, for students out there, there is no shame in quoting or referencing your sources. Just take a look at all good research papers / articles written by people at the top of their fields. You will find that they too would have cited works from their peers if they had used the information for their articles.