Preventing plagiarism - guidance for teachers

What is your responsibility?

As a teacher, you must make sure that the work submitted for examination or moderation is the candidate’s own work. Candidates must understand that they cannot submit someone else’s work as their own, or use material produced by someone else without citing and referencing it properly. A candidate taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as his or her own is an example of plagiarism.

It is your responsibility as a teacher to prevent plagiarism from happening and to detect it if it does happen. We need to be confident that the work we assess is the candidate's own before we can award a grade. You are responsible for the supervision of candidates when they are completing coursework and you are responsible for authenticating the candidates' work before you submit their marks for external moderation.

If you discover plagiarism in a candidate's work during the course, you may resolve the matter internally.

If you discover plagiarism in a candidate's work at the point of submission to us, you should identify or highlight the plagiarism and submit the work to us for external moderation, even if it would not otherwise form part of the sample. You should also report the malpractice case to us using Form 9c, found within the 'Exam day' label of the administration forms web page. You should submit a mark for the candidate which reflects the performance demonstrated in the parts of the work without the plagiarised content.

How should candidates reference their sources?

Whether the information is in the form of a diagram, an image, a quotation or a passage, if it has come from another source this must be cited at the point it appears in the candidate’s work, and included in the bibliography or list of references section at the end of that work.

Candidates must clearly show:

• exactly where and how someone else’s work has been used within their own submission 
• whose work it is, and the source it came from.

When candidates use the work of others, they must ensure that they are not trying to present this work as though it is their own. In this guide we explain how sources should be referenced in candidates’ work.

You should encourage candidates to record details of each source they consult as they prepare their coursework. They should use either ‘single’ or “double” quotation marks accurately and consistently around the text quoted when recording material taken from sources. This will allow them to use these quotations accurately within their own work.

What are acceptable and unacceptable approaches to referencing?

Please read the acceptable and unacceptable approaches to referencing guide.

What referencing system should be used?

Please check the syllabus document as we do sometimes specify a preferred system. If one is not specified in the syllabus, you may select the system to use. Whichever system you teach your candidates to use, it must be clear and consistent within the work and should include, at a minimum:

• the author(s), photographer or artist
• the title
• the date and place of publication (where stated)
• (for electronic resources) the URL and the date it was accessed, as the content may change over time.

When students are using videos from the internet, the following information should be included in the reference:

• the name of person posting video
• the title of film or programme
• the year video was posted
• the URL for the location of the video and the date it was accessed, as the content may change over time.

References for personal communications via conversation, phone, Skype, FaceTime, email, text message, letter or fax should include the following information:

• the sender/speaker/author
• the year of communication
• the medium of communication
• the receiver of communication
• the day/month of communication.

When a student is referencing leaflets or business cards, it may not be possible to include all of the information below, but the student should include as much information as possible. It may also be useful to include a copy of a leaflet in an appendix to the student’s work:

• the author (individual or corporate)
• the date (if available)
• the title (in italics)
• the date obtained.

Will the use of sources improve a candidate’s work?

Many types of coursework and creative work can and should use the work of others to influence their work, illustrate points, provide a contrast or explore ideas in further detail. The use of others’ work is also an important part of research and it is legitimate, provided that the source is appropriately cited and referenced so that the reader can see what it was and where it came from.

Different syllabuses and components will have different requirements for the content of the work, as they are assessing different things; however, if a candidate simply quotes others’ material at length without commentary or discussion, they are unlikely to achieve high marks. This is because it is not their own work, nor are they using it to explore their ideas.

How can I identify plagiarism in a candidate’s work?

As well as including others’ work without properly citing it, candidates may also commit deliberate misconduct by buying the work of others, usually online. Such attempts are often detected by antiplagiarism software after the work is submitted to us, but teachers also have a responsibility to verify that each submission is the work of the candidate. You can detect misconduct of this type by comparing the material presented for submission to work that is verifiably the candidate’s own (e.g. work produced in class).

Look out for obvious deviations in fluency or style from the candidate’s other work, and for substantial amounts of work produced which you have not seen in previous lessons. You may find that typing some of the suspected text into a search engine within “speech marks” helps to identify whether it comes from an existing website or not.

Some candidates attempting to pass off others’ work as their own use so-called ‘article spinners’. These are web-based tools that disguise copied material by replacing key words with their synonyms, producing material that is structurally identical to the original but features subtly different vocabulary. As demonstrated in the example below, the prose generated by ‘spinning’ can seem superficially impressive at a glance, but clearly lacks coherence when read attentively.

An example of text produced using a ‘spinning’ tool is provided below.

Look out for candidate work that displays unusually grand or overstated vocabulary (‘progressions actuated’), especially alongside awkward or faulty phrasing (‘there is additionally prove for’). 'Spun’ text of this type is still plagiarism. It is not acceptable in material submitted for assessment. You will already be familiar with your candidates’ usual standard of work, so be wary of any inconsistencies in their usual style and level of performance.

How to prevent plagiarism through your teaching of the course

Topic selection

Depending on the type of component that you teach, you may have the opportunity to set the questions or the topics that candidates use as the basis for their coursework. If so, try to vary these from year to year, so that there is less opportunity for candidates to use material written by a candidate in a previous year. It may also be appropriate to encourage candidates to select their own topic and to relate their work to their own personal experience, or to specify that candidates use one or more source written in the last 12 months.

Check the progress and content of candidates’ work regularly

Where the rules of the syllabus allow it, you may find it helpful to see and check candidates’ work regularly, looking at the sources they are using at regular intervals. Encourage candidates to annotate their source material to make it clear how they are using it in their work.

Check candidates’ understanding of the material they have used

Asking candidates to explain verbally what they mean by a certain phrase or paragraph in their work is an effective way to check whether they understand what it is they have written. You could take this further by asking them to deliver a presentation about their coursework topic. You could also consider asking them to write a sentence or two about a source they have cited in their bibliography.

Find out more

You can find further information on preventing and identifying plagiarism in the University of Cambridge referencing guidance

Notes

^1. 'Learning' from the English Wikipedia (accessed 5 July 2018)

^2. Generated using Spinbot (accessed 5 July 2018)