International News
Support our students in the plagiarism cases
MONDAY 19/09/2011 9AM - OUTSIDE THE SOCIAL SCIENCES BUILDING - SUPPORT THE STUDENTS IN THE PLAGIARSIM CASES
On Monday, representatives from NUSA along with around ten of the affected students will be meeting with the PVC Business and Law concerning the plagiarism cases we have been working on.
Over 30 students have been accused of plagiarism in one class and after coming to see us most have received a second allegation from the same lecturer.
These students are in the Faculty of Business and Law and these allegations began in August. None of the students have yet received a decision on their case from the SACO (Student Academic Conduct Officer). There are a number of problems with these cases as outlined below.
1) Students are accused of colluding with each other
Student A is accused of colluding with student B, whilst student B is accused of colluding with student C. Collusion in not a one-way process, if student A is accused of colluding with student B, then logic would dictate that student B should be accused of colluding with student A.
2) Reference to turn-it-in originality report scores
The letters received by students from the SACO detail collusion based on turn-it-in scores. For example, "Student A shows a 15% direct match with Student B". Turn-it-in scores are not indicative of plagiarism, they are purely a tool used to ascertain areas where text matches are found. From the original cases, only one student had their originality report, which we have looked at and there is no evidence of colluding with another student in our opinion, or the opinion of a "friendly" marker in another University.
3) The students do not have access to the evidence
Students have received letters but do not have their own turn-it-in originality reports because they did not print them at the time of submission. Veronica and I have met with the boss of SACO which seems to have resulted in subsequent allegations including the turn-it-in originality reports.
There are some students who have not received any official letters yet but have instead been informed that they cannot access their marks because they have plagiarised. Some have waited 3 weeks and still do not have an official letter.
4) The students are finishing, this has gone on too long
These students are trimester students and they are finishing their degrees. This is impacting upon their lives, for example, some of the affected students that had planned to return to their country of origin now must remain in the country, even though their rental leases are soon to expire.
We are deeply concerned about the students and the affect this is having on them. Students are deeply distressed, some despairing over the situation. We have been working on this case. We are deeply concerned about the welfare of some of the students, though I cannot go into individual case details.
Most of these students have upcoming assignments and they do not have the time to fight this and complete these assignments.
This began over a month ago, the students need to know what is happening now.
5) Our concerns
5.1) We are concerned that the problem lies with the responsible member of academic staff. Reporting over half a class for plagiarism on the alleged basis of turn-it-in scores is not appropriate.
5.2) Only one SACO can view cases in one class, and there are too many cases for this SACO. If this officer was to go through all these cases, these students could easily be waiting another month or two before they have a result.
5.3) The students have not been trained to use turn-it-in effectively. Turn-it-in is a tool which can potentially be used by students to prevent accidental plagiarism, but only if students understand how to use it.
5.4) The students have lost trust in this lecturer. They predicted that after they came to talk to us that they would receive a second allegation, and they did.
5.5) These students are all international students and we are concerned that there is a lack of cultural competence shown here. These types of allegations in the Chinese culture are taken very seriously and as such the students are very distressed.
5.6) The second assignment for which many received an accusation was a case based assignment. In the directions on the assignment, it stipulates that students do not need to reference. This raises the question of why the lecturer is using turn-it-in at all for this type of assignment.
5.7) Turn-it-in scores are being quoted as evidence of direct matches. The students were told to include the assessment cover sheet, and so every student will have a certain percentage of direct match with every other student based on that alone. This has caused unnecessary inflation of Turnitin scores and distress regarding the scores.
6) What have we done to date?
The NUSA grievance officer, Veronica, has raised the issue with the responsible SACO officer.
When we realised the extent of this Veronica and I prepared a submission which we sent to the VC (Nick Saunders), the DVCA (Kevin McConkey) and the SACO responsible. Kevin McConkey sent this issue down to the chief of SACO who we met with on Wednesday. It seems that as a result of that meeting the students are now receiving the turn-it-in originality reports attached to their notices of suspected plagiarism. However, we do not believe the problem lies with SACO, but rather with the academic staff.
We have alerted the media.
International students will be supporting these students on Monday morning outside the Social Sciences Building.
Academic staff have a responsibility to use turn-it-in as a tool and to check it's output. From the allegations made it seems clear that this is not the case.
Yesterday (Saturday) we met with a group of students who will attend the meeting on Monday.
7) What can you do?
Join the students on Monday outside the social science building. Stand with students to ensure these students are treated properly. In our submission we requested an independent marker re-mark all the papers, this was refused. The students no longer trust the lecturer, and as such will be making this request again.
So, MONDAY 8:50 AM OUTSIDE SOCIAL SCIENCE BUILDING. SUPPORT OUR STUDENTS.
PLEASE INDICATE IF YOU CAN ATTEND SO WE HAVE AN IDEA OF NUMBERS! THANKS!
People working on this:
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| Veronica Meneses | Heather Richards | Eduardo Carvajal |
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