An Institutional Self-Study of Text-Matching Software in a Canadian Graduate-Level Engineering Program

Abstract

This institutional self-study investigated the use of text-matching software (TMS) to prevent plagiarism by students in a Canadian university that did not have an institutional license for TMS at the time of the study. Assignments from a graduate-level engineering course were analyzed using iThenticate®. During the initial phase of the study, similarity scores from the first student assignments (N = 132) were collected to determine a baseline level of textual similarity. Students were then offered an educational intervention workshop on academic integrity. Another set of similarity scores from consenting participants' second assignments (n = 106) were then collected, and a statistically significant assignment effect (p < 0.05) was found between the similarity scores of the two assignments. The results of this study indicate that TMS, when used in conjunction with educational interventions about academic integrity, can be useful to students and educators to prevent and identify academic misconduct. This study adds to the growing body of empirical research about academic integrity in Canadian higher education and, in particular, in engineering fields.

Student and faculty perceptions of, and experiences with, academic dishonesty at a medium-sized Canadian university

“…Finally, we wanted to understand whether contract cheating, an increasingly growing concern for educators around the world, and particularly in Canada, where rates of contract cheating are largely unknown but have been previously reported as “all indications are that contract cheating is a problem” (Lancaster 2019 , p. 8) was a problem at our university. This institutional self-study (Eaton et al 2020 ) was a first step into in our efforts to use an evidence-based approach to institutionalize academic integrity as part of the university’s commitment to maintaining a tradition of academic integrity and personal civility within an environment that encourages intellectual exchange, creativity, originality, and discovery (Bertram Gallant and Drinan 2008 ; Eaton et al 2020 ).…”

Contract cheating: an increasing challenge for global academic community arising from COVID-19

“…Plagiarism software does not necessarily capture all occasions of plagiarism and may sometimes produce misleading results (Eaton et al, 2020;Walker, 2010). Forensic linguistic software offers opportunities to detect authorial anomalies; however, it is still being developed and cannot be regarded as infallible (Conlan et al, 2016;Daubner et al, 2020).…”

A Scoping Review of Text-Matching Software Used for Student Academic Integrity in Higher Education

“…After screening 659 titles/ abstracts, 37 studies' full texts were reviewed and an additional 13 articles met the inclusion criteria. In total, 129 articles were included in the final analysis [5,17,18,22,. 3, most of the articles were from English-speaking countries, with 33 countries representing overall.…”

“…Since then, the use of TMS has proliferated and it is now used widely in some countries such as the UK and Australia, with use in other countries, such as Canada, being more limited [4,17,18]. TMS has garnered much attention in mainstream media, though stories in news media can sometimes demonstrate a particular viewpoint, either in favour or against the software [15,16,[19][20][21].…”

“…One reason for this is that the motivations for academic misconduct can be complex, varying from one individual and one case, to the next. Previous research has shown that it can be more appropriate to consider academic risk factors for students that might result in academic misconduct and consider the possibility of multiple compounded risk factors for some students [18,157], as opposed to trying to establish a reductionist or linear cause-and-effect relationship between one factor (e.g., the use of TMS) and increases or decreases in academic misconduct. Our study supports the notion that TMS should not be used or viewed as a single solution to the prevention of plagiarism, but instead, it can be used as one aspect of a comprehensive institutional approach to establishing a culture of academic integrity.…”