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Centre for Environmental Sciences

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Outline of Talk

• Expectations

• Support systems

• Plagiarism explained

• Avoiding plagiarism

• Over to you…..

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• Apply engineering and science skills to problems of importance to society

• Interdisciplinary and not always amenable to traditional technical investigation

• High standards and analytical rigour

• Work with industry and other disciplines to:

• Solve problems

• Advance fundamental knowledge and understanding

• Benefit society

• Protect and enhance the environment

Faculty Vision

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• Academically well rounded

• Sound understanding of key engineering/scientific principles

• Ability to apply key principles

• Critical thinker and problem solver

• INTEGRITY

• High quality personal transferable skills, especially in IT and communication

• Highly employable

• Creative

• Confidence based upon competence

• Independent

• Appreciative of the need for life-long learning

A “Typical” Graduate:

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• Coursework

• Individual and Group

• Field- and Laboratory -based

• Formative and summative

• Penalties for late submission

• Examinations

• Referrals

• Calculators

• Referrals

• Feedback

On Modules - need to complete assessments:

PGR issues often more

complex than this .…..

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20

40

60

80

100

120

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Experimental Integrity:

Can the circled data point be dropped?

1. Yes

2. No

Authorship and Acknowledgement

Should a technician who produced results but had no input to

design or interpretation of results be an author?

1. Yes

2. No

Academic Integrity issues often not easy ….

• Show you have done your research BUT write something

new and original

• Appeal to experts and authorities BUT improve upon or

disagree with experts and authorities

• Demonstrate you ability to write by mimicking what you hear

and read BUT use your own words and voice

• Give credit where credit is due BUT make your own

significant contribution

• Remember supervisors and other readers may not be able to

tell if plagiarism is deliberate or not

• Tools for detecting plagiarism

Duplication, redundancy or self plagiarism

• Sending the same article to more than one journal

• Using the data twice without a significantly different outcome

• Copying your introduction for another piece of work

• Using data generated from one degree e.g. BSc or BEng or

MRes or MSc in another (e.g. MSc, PhD)

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• Personal Tutor / Supervisory team

• Director of Programmes

• Programme and Module Leads

• Disability Support – may be entitled to additional support

• Learning Differences Centre

• e.g. dyslexia, dyspraxia (special exam arrangements etc.)

• Mentor Service – for students who have health problems

• Counselling Service – informal, confidential service

• Students’ Union Advice and Information Centre

• Range of advice – housing, money, immigration, legal, academic difficulties

Support Networks

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• I-Solutions: www.southampton.ac.uk/isolutions/

• Library: www.soton.ac.uk/library/

• Academic skills website: www.academic-skills.soton.ac.uk

• Academic regulations

• It is YOUR responsibility to know the regulations; ignorance is NOT an acceptable excuse

• See regulations on SUSSED

• Student Resource Centre (Tizzard)

Resources

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• Illness or other circumstances

• Documents available from School Office / Graduate School

• Rules adhered to strictly

• Special Considerations Board – fixed dates

• Only ONE person makes extension decisions – Jacqui Graham

• Examples:

• Extension granted

• Car crash on day of exam

• Unwell on day of exam – YOUR RESPONSIBILTY TO DECIDE

Special Considerations

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Who wants to be a Millionaire?

What is plagiarism?

a) Cheating

b) Accurate reporting

c) Helping someone

d) Honestly making a mistake

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Who wants to be a Millionaire?

What is plagiarism?

a) Cheating

b) Accurate reporting

c) Helping someone

d) Honestly making a mistake

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Plagiarism A Warning!

Plagiarism may be defined as:

• The repeated or habitual, intentional presentation or publication of the work of others without any or any proper acknowledgement (i.e. credit) to the source of that work by a responsible, informed individual as if it were that individual's own work

• It is a form of intellectual property theft

DON’T DO IT!!!!!

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Keywords Associated With Plagiarism

• Cheating

• Academic dishonesty

• Copying and pasting

• Intellectual property theft

• Collusion

All defined

in the

regulations

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Who wants to be a Millionaire?

What is academic

honesty?

a) Clearly articulating our own ideas

b) Giving credit to the sources of

information we draw from

c) Accurately documenting sources

d) Presenting research materials in a

fair and truthful way

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Who wants to be a Millionaire?

What is academic

honesty?

a) Clearly articulating our own ideas

b) Giving credit to the sources of

information we draw from

c) Accurately documenting sources

d) Presenting research materials in a

fair and truthful way

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Students - if:

• You have included the words

and ideas of others (including

parents + friends) in your work

that you neglected to cite

• You have had help you wouldn’t

want your teacher/lecturer to

know about

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Everyone does it!

It’s okay if I don’t get caught!

I was too busy to write that assignment!

(Job, big game, too much coursework!)

My lecturers expect

too much!

I’ve got to get into

???XD!

My family expects high grades!

The assignment was BORING!

Excuses…

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Rationale for academic integrity (as if it were necessary!)

• When you copy you cheat yourself; you limit your own learning - possibly the most important reason to not plagiarise is that it robs you of the educational experiences involved in research, thinking, and writing

• It is only right to give credit to authors whose ideas you use

• Citing gives authority to the information you present

• Citing makes it possible for your readers to locate your source

• Education is not an “us vs. them” game - it’s about learning to learn

• Cheating is unethical behavior

• It violates the University’s regulations

• The consequences are not worth the risks!

Is your academic

reputation valuable

to you?

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How serious is the problem?

• “A study of almost 4,500 students at 25 schools, suggests cheating is . . . a significant problem in high school - 74% of the respondents admitted to one or more instances of serious test cheating and 72% admitted to serious cheating on written assignments. Over half of the students admitted they have engaged in some level of plagiarism on written assignments using the Internet.”

Based on the research of Donald L. McCabe, Rutgers University

Source: “CIA Research.” Center for Academic Integrity, Duke University, 2003. Available at: http://academicintegrity.org/cai_research.asp (Date of last Access: July 2009).

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How serious is the problem?

• “The Cheating epidemic at Britain’s universities”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8363345/The-cheating-epidemic-at-Britains-universities.html

• “India students caught 'cheating' in exams in Bihar”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-31960557

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Possible consequences for you:

• “0” for the assignment or module

• Suspension or dismissal from

University

• Note on student record

• Impact on reference and

employability

• Loss of reputation among the

University community

• Embarrassment of telling family

and friends

Is it worth the risk?

Which consequence

is the most daunting

for you?

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Is this important?

What if: • Your architect cheated his way through his maths modules.

Will your new home be safe?

• Your lawyer paid for a copy of the bar exam to study. Will the contract she wrote for you stand up in court?

• The Civil Engineer who built the foundations for a large new soccer stadium cut-and-paste all his coursework from the Internet. Would you take your children to the first game?

• Your GP (doctor) paid a stand-in to take her exams? Does she know enough to treat your illness properly?

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Examples of Plagiarism…

• Copying and pasting text from online encyclopedias

• Copying and pasting text from any web site

• Using photographs, video or audio without permission or

acknowledgement

• Using another student’s or your parents’ work and claiming it as your own

even with permission

• Using your own work without properly citing it

• Turning in the same paper for more than one assignment without the

permission of both lecturers (this is called self-plagiarism)

• Quoting a source without using quotation marks - even if you do cite it

• Citing sources you didn’t use

• Getting a research paper, story, poem, or article off the Internet

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What is Plagiarism?

Types of Plagiarism:

• Intentional and unintentional

INTENT IS IRRELEVANT UNDER THE REGULATIONS

• Direct Quotes

• Paraphrasing

• Original ideas

• Collusion

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Two types of plagiarism:

Intentional

• Copying a friend’s work

• Buying or borrowing papers

• Cutting and pasting blocks of text from electronic sources without documenting

• Media “borrowing”without documentation

• Web publishing without permissions of creators

Unintentional

• Careless paraphrasing

• Poor documentation

• Quoting excessively

• Failure to use your own “voice”

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Direct Quoting

• Quotations are the exact words of an author, copied directly from a source, word for word. If you use someone else’s writing without putting it in quotes, you have blatantly plagiarized. Even if you add the source in your reference, it is still plagiarism. Quotations must be cited!

Use quotations when:

• You want to use the authority of an author’s words to support your argument

• You want to disagree with an author’s argument

• You want to highlight particularly eloquent or powerful phrases or passages

• You are comparing and contrasting specific points of view

• You want to note the important research that precedes your own

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Paraphrasing

• Paraphrasing means rephrasing the words of an author, putting his/her thoughts in your own words. When you paraphrase, you rework the source’s ideas, words, phrases, and sentence structures with your own. Like quotations, paraphrased material must be followed with in-text documentation and cited in your references.

Paraphrase when:

• You plan to use information from notes and wish to avoid plagiarizing

• You want to avoid overusing quotations

• You want to use your own voice to present information

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Original Idea

• Give credit to unique ideas others have thought up

• If you present the ideas of another without crediting them,

you have plagiarized them

• Obvious ideas (common knowledge) does not have to be

credited

• When in doubt, attribute

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Collusion

• Secret understanding for a fraudulent purpose

• “Any action before, during or after an assessment or

examination by which the student seeks to gain unfair

advantage or assists another student to do so”

• Sometimes this is confusing for students

Team vs individual assignments

• In general – NEVER share data or text or files unless

specifically allowed to do so by your lecturer

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Summarizing

• Summarizing involves putting the main idea(s) of one or several writers

into your own words, including only the main point(s). Summaries are

significantly shorter than the original and take a broad overview of the

source material. It is always necessary to attribute summarized ideas to

their original sources.

Summarize when:

• You want to establish background or offer an overview of a topic

• You want to describe knowledge (from several sources) about a topic

• You want to determine the main ideas of a single source

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Do I have

to cite

everything?

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Answer: No

• Facts that are widely known, or information or judgments

considered “common knowledge” do NOT have to be

documented e.g.

• Tony Blair was UK Prime Minister from 1997-2007

• Arsenal won the “double” in 1970-71

• Ian Williams is Welsh

If you see a fact in three or more sources, and you are fairly

certain your readers already know this information, it is likely

to be “common knowledge.” But when in doubt, cite!

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How to Avoid Plagiarism

• Use your own words and ideas

• Always give credit to source where you got your information

• If you use someone’s exact words - put in quotes and give credit using in-text citations; include source in references

• If you have paraphrased someone’s work always give credit

• Take very good notes • Write down source as you are taking notes

• Do not wait until later to try and retrieve original source

• Avoid using someone else’s work with minor (cosmetic) changes

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As you take notes:

• Include any direct quotes or unique phrases in quotation

marks or mark with a big Q and make sure the speaker’s

/writer’s name is identified

• Make sure you note a paraphrase with the writer’s name

and mark it with a big P

• Include page numbers and source references so you can

go back and check for accuracy as you write

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Getting Started

What is a reference list?

• Located at the end of a paper; provides full information necessary to identify and retrieve each source

• Faculty policy: use the HARVARD SYSTEM • You will come across variants

• Do NOT put references in footnotes

A bibliography?

• Cites works for background or for further reading

• Not really used much in science/engineering

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Getting Started

What is a Citation?

• References and citations in text are the formal methods of acknowledging the use of a creator’s work

An In-Text Citation?

• Direct citations and quotations are acknowledged in the body of a research assignment (right in the sentence or paragraph)

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• Source: Zimmer, Carl. Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of

the Brain – And How it Changed the World. New York:

Free, 2004. 7.

• The maps that neuroscientists make today are like the

early charts of the New World with grotesque coastlines

and blank interiors. And what little we do know about how

the brain works raises disturbing questions about the

nature of our selves.

Example: How to Paraphrase

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• The maps used by neuroscientists today resemble the

rough maps of the New World. Because we know so little

about how the brain works, we must ask questions about

the nature of our selves.

An inadequate paraphrase

• Carl Zimmer compares today’s maps of the brain to the

rough maps made of the New World. He believes that the

lack of knowledge about the workings of the brain makes

us ask serious questions about our nature.

An adequate paraphrase

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• AI Officers

• Guidance in student handbook

• Guidance on website

• NO SECOND CHANCES!

Academic Integrity

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In my country, we are allowed

to copy

I’ll never do it again

You don’t understand; I was under so much stress

(Job, money, friends, family, illness etc)

I only copied a little bit

I’m only a first year student

I didn’t read the regulations

I’m so sorry

A STUDENT

After being caught out….

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It is YOUR

responsibility to

know the regulations

Remember:

Intent is irrelevant

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Ian Williams

Enjoy yourselves

Don’t be paranoid about

citation and referencing

Ask if you are unsure

Good luck!

Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences

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Acknowledgements

• Input from/discussions with Simon Kemp, Joy Moloney, Arif

Anwar, Jacqui Graham

• Ideas from/discussions with colleagues from other

universities (e.g. Erika Gavillet, Richy Hetherington)

• Some pictures from BBC website