Education 2.0 & 3.0

Representing the work of those pursuing academic integrity in systematic, innovative, and scaled ways. All 50 projects were nominated for the Professor Tracey Bretag Prize in 2021-2022, designed for prevention, positive staff and student experience, and holistic change.

I started teaching economics in higher education almost a decade ago, and yet the memory of the first time I asked a student to meet with me to talk about plagiarism is still painful. Rather than resolve anything, in the middle of our conversation he abruptly stood up and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

Throughout my career from my bachelor’s degree to my PhD, I had been warned about plagiarism. We learned the dos and don’ts in my undergraduate work and during graduate school when writing research articles for peer-reviewed journals. I remember wondering why anyone would risk his or her reputation. And yet thinking back to that first student plagiarist, the problem made me realize that plagiarism is more complex than simple laziness.

Information cannot always be trusted. Despite popular opinion regarding the devastating impact of the Internet on the modern age, the inherent untrustworthiness of information is not new. Satire, misinformation, and disinformation have been circulating for centuries, even long before the printed word. However, thanks to the relative ease of creating and sharing content online, our students are confronted with publications created solely to entertain, persuade, and incite via incorrect or incomplete statistics.

Checking the papers of your students can take a lot of time.

Depending on the subject and the discipline in question, you may spend hours evaluating the work your class has done. This has always been a typical problem for teachers everywhere, and it might have gotten worse with the advancement of plagiarism. Now you not only have to check papers for their correspondence with your requirements. You need to make sure that the writing is original—otherwise, all your further actions will become worthless.