'Extreme plagiarism: The rise of the e-Idiot?' International Journal of Learning in Higher...

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Extreme PlagiarismThe Rise of the e-Idiot?

ZENA O'CONNOR

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Extreme Plagiarism: The Rise of the e-Idiot?

Zena O’Connor, University of Sydney, Australia

Abstract: The last decade has witnessed considerable change in higher education. These changes include the pervasive

nature of the Internet and its impact on teaching and learning; the impact of economic rationalism as a consequence of the global financial crisis in 2008; and the growth in student numbers that reflect variations in population and migration

patterns. In conjunction with these changes, a new form of plagiarism has emerged and, while plagiarism has been

problematic in higher education for some time, this new form of extreme plagiarism brings serious implications. Defined within the context of this commentary, extreme plagiarism is a behaviour that is practiced by a yet to be quantified cohort

of students. The extent and degree of extreme plagiarism, which becomes evident during regular grading of assignments,

is extremely disturbing. Dubbed the “e-Idiot” for dramatic effect, this paper discusses the propensity among some students to engage in extreme plagiarism; a behaviour that seems to indicate a desire to short-circuit the learning

process. Displaying a lack of understanding about the learning process, some students appear to be keen, in true

Machiavellian style, to pass their subjects by any means possible. While research is yet to quantify this cohort in detail,

anecdotal evidence indicates that this behaviour is thriving among a small cohort of students. This commentary

highlights some of the ways in which the students who engage in plagiarism are aiming to undermine the generally robust

assessment practices in higher education, and discusses some of the factors that may be contributing to the emergence of this student cohort. Recommendations are presented that may inhibit or counteract extreme plagiarism. In addition, while

many higher education institutions have policies relating to graduate attributes, academic integrity, and plagiarism

(often accompanied by implementation strategies,) these policies can become meaningless without satisfactory performance and real accountability on the part of students and lecturers alike. Hence, a call-to-action is assigned to

academic boards to address the gaps between policy and strategy implementation in regard to academic integrity and

graduate attributes in general and extreme plagiarism in particular.

Keywords: Plagiarism, Academic Integrity, Graduate Attributes, Learning

Introduction

n the sixteenth century, “the book was literally a teaching machine” and its role reigned

supreme in scholarly learning (McLuhan 1962, 144). The widespread circulation of printed

media in later centuries offered a “consumer’s paradise of applied knowledge,” bringing

knowledge to a far wider population and effectively democratising information and learning

(146). The Internet has now made an enormous quantity of information accessible, the quality of

which varies from scholarly knowledge to any manner of information from learned to

uninformed and ignorant.

The emergence of the Internet has also made the process of searching for and finding

scholarly information incredibly easy, provided certain protocols are followed. However, the

downside of a Google search is that the search engine does not discriminate between sources of

information. Some sources provide current, reliable, scholarly information; while others, such as

personal blogs websites, may provide dated, unreliable or uninformed personal opinion presented

as reliable information. Previously, students seemed to be able to distinguish between The

Australian Women’s Weekly, for example, and scholarly articles better than they can distinguish

between scientific writing and garbage on the internet

Graduates attributes expected of higher education students include academic integrity, a

scholarly attitude towards knowledge, the ability to analyse and synthesis information, and an

ability to identify and evaluate quality, reliable information and discriminate this from poor

quality, unreliable information and pollywaffle. Most higher education institutions provide

guidelines such the ‘REVIEW’ technique provided by Sydney University, a simple tool to

quickly evaluate the quality of information which involves the following:

a. Check Relevance to topic: broad overview or a more specific conceptual linkages;

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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

b. Identify the Expertise of the author in terms of their qualifications, experience and

record of publications and citations in the field;

c. Identify the Viewpoint of the author and whether the piece is objective and

unbiased or subjective and biased; or written to inform, entertain or persuade;

d. Identify the Intended audience: scholars, peers (peer-review process), general

public, potential customers or clients;

e. Identify Evidence that the author provides to substantiate their claims or back up

their theories and conclusions;

f. Identify the publication date and whether the information is current or perhaps

superseded by further developments in the field (Arndell and Goodfellow 2010).

While there is an abundance of reliable, scholarly, informed knowledge available to students

via the Internet, some students fail to explore beyond a basic Google search or to assess and

evaluate information in a scholarly manner. Furthermore, some students ignore academic

integrity and go straight to web-based services to purchase essays and then cut-and-paste this

‘information’ directly into their assignments. This latter group of students, dubbed e-Idiots for

the purpose of this commentary, don’t even bother to conduct a basic Google search for relevant

information, as evidenced by the lack of bone fide references in their assignments. While the

term “e-Idiot” may seem harsh it is used here to dramatically draw attention to isolated examples

of student behaviour among a small and as yet un-quantified student cohort. Among this cohort,

actual learning appears to be an irrelevant side issues of their university studies and their motto is

clearly ‘pass at any cost’ thereby exhibiting a level of competition, aspiration and individualism

that is divorced from academic integrity.

McLuhan and Drucker: The Writing on the Wall

In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan spoke of “competitive individualism” and the negative impact

this can have in respect to a world in which people reconfigure themselves from a world of roles

to a world of jobs (McLuhan 1962, 12). In the economic rationalist, post-GFC world, jobs have

clearly become paramount and the notion of roles and their associated values have become

subordinated, and witnessed the rise of Machiavellian individualism. Just as the “portability of

the book...added much to the new cult of individualism,” the easy accessibility of the Internet has

added to the cult of Machiavellian individualism (206).

Just as McLuhan foretold, we now exist in a world that represents a “new electronic

interdependence [that] recreates the world in the image of a global village” (McLuhan 1962, 31).

McLuhan’s “‘Gutenberg galaxy’ was concerned with showing why alphabetic man was disposed

to desacralise his mode of being” (69). So, too, in the 21st century, the ubiquitous nature of the

Internet has in effect desacralised the significance of books and scholarly publications. Just as

“print altered not only the spelling and grammar but the accentuation and inflection of languages,

and made bad grammar possible,” the Internet has made bad knowledge not only possible but

widespread (231).

The Machiavellian individualist, otherwise known as the e-Idiot, appears to have minimal

capacity for identifying different types of information or discriminating between knowledge and

unsubstantiated nonsense. Unable to distinguish reliable sources of information, the e-Idiot

happily includes information that has been cut-and-pasted from Uncle Fred’s blog or cites

Michael Corleone from the Godfather as a reliable author in the field of marketing (see below).

Perhaps this is due to the inability of universities to keep pace with factors driving change in

learning and education, as foretold by Peter Drucker.

A contemporary of McLuhan’s, Drucker foresaw the demise of universities in 1997. Hailed

by Steve Forbes (editor-in-chief, Forbes Magazine) as the most influential management guru of

the modern era, Drucker prophesied: “Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be

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O’CONNOR: EXTREME PLAGIARISM

relics. Universities won’t survive. It’s as large a change as when we first got the printed book”

(Lenzner and Johnson 1997). Higher education was in deep crisis Drucker suggested, mainly to

the cost of education and the apparent lack of visible improvement in the content or quality of

education. In the same year, Drucker foresaw the rise of online learning: “Universities won’t

survive. The future is outside the traditional campus, outside the traditional classroom. Distance

learning is coming on fast” (Gubernick and Ebeling 1997).

Drucker (1993) suggested that imparting knowledge needs to be about both substance as

well as process, and his prediction that “in the school of tomorrow, the students will become their

own instructors” has come to pass and has profound implications in relation to the current

generational cohort of students.

Drucker was so right. The 21st century student, also known as the digital native, has largely

turned away from books and predominantly turns to the Internet as a key source of information

(Hunt 2007; Livingstone 2006; Prensky 2001). However, there may be other factors that have

influenced some of the more extreme changes in the occurrence of plagiarism. In Australia,

higher education students comprises approximately 10% International students and, while it is

not suggested that cultural background, age or gender have any statistical relevance to the

practice of plagiarism, the literacy of some International students does have some relevance to

this commentary.

Domestic vs. International Students

Extreme plagiarism tends to say more about an individual’s personal values in terms of honesty

and accountability, and their ideas about their own ability, their aspirations and their level of

competitiveness. As such, cultural background or gender or age have little or no bearing on

whether a student engages in extreme plagiarism. However, it needs to be noted that among

International students, a lack of adequate English skills is widely acknowledged to have a

negative impact on the learning experience. While many universities require an International

English Language Testing System (IELTS) score of 6.5, this score may be too low if a specific

course requires a good grasp of English and assessment tasks involve lengthy written essays and

detailed presentations (Dunn 2011).

In Australia, there is no doubt that language issues for International students prompted the

Victorian Ombudsman to conduct an investigation in 2010; an investigation that noted that the

number of complaints from International students who struggle to communicate in English had

tripled in the four years to 2010 (VO 2011). The investigation found “serious problems related to

international students and English levels, including academics feeling pressure to pass students

whose performance was inadequate due to poor language skills, and students resorting to

plagiarism or bribery in their desperation to pass” (Dunn 2011). The report also highlighted

academics' concerns that some students were admitted with inadequate English because of

universities' reliance on the revenue they bring in.

International students have been seen as cash-cows by some universities, a number of whom

charge these students more than local students for the same subjects and courses. In addition,

there exists an unwritten rule in some faculties not to fail International students except in extreme

circumstances. Despite this, a small proportion of International students who face the prospect of

failure become highly emotional and will implore their lecturers to ‘change their mind’ and

change their grade irrespective of the impartiality, transparency and fairness of the assessment

process.

While it is important to avoid cultural stereotyping, it has been noted that the cultural values

in respect to academic practice and plagiarism tend to vary (Sowden 2005). Sowden points out

that in Japanese culture for example, words of wisdom from philosophers and revered authors are

considered to be matters of fact, and therefore a part of common knowledge negating the need for

citing the original source. Similarly, Confucian heritage is said to influence teaching and learning

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in China where a traditional teacher-centred learning style often involves respect for authority

and notions such as ‘good’ students both of which inhibit questioning, and where copying from

an expert plus a relatively high proportion of rote learning without a great emphasis on analysis

of knowledge is the norm (Cortazzi and Jin 2013; Starr 2012; Wang 2013). In addition to

Chinese notions of filial duty and respect for authority, Confucius declared that in respect to

knowledge: I transmit, I do not create, and this may help to explain a preference for rote learning

and a relative reluctance for original or creative thought (Confucius, Analects 7:1, cited in Starr

2012, 8). However, Ha (2006) points out that while respect for authority is strong in Vietnam:

however, while there critical thinking may not be strong and widespread, plagiarism is not at all

acceptable in Vietnam.

While some consider issues of individualism and collectivism to have an impact on levels of

plagiarism, it has been found that no significant differences in levels of plagiarism exist between

Asian and Caucasian students (Martin 2011). It is likely that other factors play an important role

in terms of increasing levels of extreme plagiarism.

Factors that Provide Conditions for Extreme Plagiarism

Some of the factors that inadvertently create the conditions that allow for extreme plagiarism to

occur include the impact of economic rationalism, the all-pervasive and accessible nature of the

Internet, the establishment of websites devoted to assignment assistance, and an educational

culture that has perhaps become too permissive in regard to plagiarism.

Economic rationalism has encouraged some fundamental changes in higher education.

Firstly, the proportion of full-time academic staff members has decreased and the proportion of

sessional staff members has increased, to as much as 70% in some higher education institutions.

Sessional staff considered more cost-effective because their contracts are of short duration,

usually as short as twelve weeks, and they deliver teaching programs with much lower on-costs

than full-time staff (superannuation payments, long-service leave accrual, etc.). It should be

noted that it is the systemic issues relating to sessional staff and not sessional staff members

themselves that are problematic. These issues relate to the balance of power whereby sessional

staff members are often reluctant to highlight issues or problems that may impact on their

chances of being hired in the next semester. In addition, if there is a high proportion of

plagiarised student work, sessional staff may be reluctant to reveal this is in case it reflects poorly

on them. Thirdly, sessional staff members are paid by the hour and it isn’t in their economic

interests to spend too much time marking beyond the allocation of twenty minutes per student.

To pursue a case of plagiarism requires additional unpaid time to gather evidence and report

plagiarism, attend additional unpaid meetings, etc. Finally, a communication disconnect between

and among full-time and sessional staff means that students identified as ‘at risk’ by one lecturer

may not be recognised as such on a broader scale by other staff. As a result, students deemed ‘at

risk’ may not benefit from interventions that could help them. For some of these students, for

whom failure is not an option, the temptation to short-circuit the learning and assessment process

across a number of subjects is no doubt persuasive.

Aside from academic issues, economic rationalism also has an impact on students, many of

whom have to work to support themselves. While students have always been economically

disadvantaged and time-poor, there is likely a proportion who look to easy options in an effort to

meet assignment deadlines. With attendance no longer a strict requirement for higher education

students, there is also a small proportion of students that opts out altogether, wherever and

whenever possible. For this small cohort, they put themselves at a greater disadvantage in regard

to assignments and perhaps have no way of completing their assignments without cheating on a

wholesale basis.

The emergence of extreme plagiarism is also due to the pervasive nature of the Internet and

search engines in general, and the establishment of online assignment assistance websites in

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particular. Previously, such websites offered relatively benign online assistance with

assignments, study guides and old test papers. Examples include eNotes, established in 1998 and

based in Seattle, Washington, and Cramster, which has now become Chegg Study and was

established in 2003. Transweb Educational Services, established in 2007 by Aditya Singhal and

Nishant Singha, has five associated websites offering online assignment help. While such sites

tend to defend their existence by suggesting that they replicate typical study group session

behaviour and that there’s nothing new in making old test papers available, some sites are

offering much more for a price (Chaker 2009).

Higher education institutions have perhaps become too lax in regard to their graduate

attributes and the policing of plagiarism. Specifically, many institutions have a wish-list of

graduate attributes and strict policies about academic integrity and plagiarism. However, in

reality there is a relative absence of responsibility and accountability in regard to these policies

and whether they are actually implemented. While the dedicated academic takes whatever steps

are possible in regard to these issues within their area of responsibility, there doesn’t appear to be

mechanisms in place to quality-control these issues on a broader scale. Unfortunately, these

conditions have contributed to the emergence of a cohort of students who think it’s OK to use

any form of plagiarism to pass assessment tasks and who may in fact graduate with a distinct and

disturbing lack of basic research skills.

Extreme Plagiarism

Plagiarism is generally considered to be a form of theft where a student presents another’s ideas

as their own without due acknowledgement. Extreme plagiarism is defined as student work that

comprises more than 80% unacknowledged, copied material; where content, which is

predominantly description, shows little evidence of analysis and synthesis of information, and

with citations and references that lack relevance to the content.

A number of examples of extreme plagiarism are presented below. These have been drawn

from various disciplines of three different higher education institutions based in Sydney: The

University of Sydney, The University of NSW and a private Institute of higher education. Each

institution offers higher education degrees duly accredited by relevant governing bodies and has

published policies on academic integrity and plagiarism. The examples are drawn from subjects

delivered either face-to-face or online during 2103 to a mix of local and International students.

The first example came to light when a university lecturer Googled an unusual reference that

appeared in a student’s essay. The Google results included a site called Best Essay Writers that

replicated the assessment task in full as outlined in the subject outline and provided a complete

essay for students to view online or purchase (BEW 2013a). It was immediately obvious that the

student had cut-and-pasted their entire essay directly from the website. The following Figure

features the website page and the assessment task with answers below.

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Figure 1. Design and visual literacy content created for an assessment task.

Another example relates to an assessment task that required students to prepare a marketing

plan for a business in the creative industries. One student submitted a marketing plan for a chain

of hotels and, via a quick Internet search, the lecturer found the same marketing plan and

discovered that the student had cut-and-pasted the entire plan, with the only change made by the

student being the name of the hotel chain (S-M 2013b). The marketing plan that had been cut-

and-pasted can be found on the Study Mode website and is illustrated in the following Figure.

The level extremely high level of plagiarism in this assignment was brought to the attention of

the student, who subsequently submitted a second version that was a summary of the first

assignment. It is unfortunate that the screen grab of this website also carries advertising for the

University of Western Sydney.

Figure 2. Marketing plan content created for assessment tasks.

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A third and perhaps more worrying example comes from a food toxicology subject. The

assessment task replicated an on-the-job scenario and required students to conduct an Internet

search to find information relevant to a typical food toxicology analysis. Upon marking the

assignments, the lecturer identified six students who had copied from each other, and a number

of other students who had copied directly from a website that provided the assessment task

details and four pages worth of information for students to cut-and-paste into their assignment

(A-H 2013). In the information provided by the website, a large number of references were

incorrect, inappropriate or irrelevant to the assessment task. Many students had therefore

unwittingly copied incorrect information about food toxicology into their assignments, a practice

that one would hope they didn’t follow in later employment. The assignment, which can be found

on Assignment Help’s website, is illustrated in the following Figure.

Figure 3. Food toxicology assessment task answers.

While checking out the Assignment Help website, the website had been open on my laptop

for some time when ‘Peter’ started a chat room conversation and I proceeded with the chat to see

what a typical response might be, as follows:

Peter: Hi, do you need assignment help or online tutoring?

ZOC: Are you able to help with a masters subject? It’s hard to do an assignment when

you miss too many classes. I have no idea about blood toxicology. Can you help?

Peter: Can you email me your assignment to [email protected] and let me

know when you send it.

ZOC: Can you give me a rough idea of price and how long it takes?

Peter: Ten dollars for one thousand words. Please email your assignment to

[email protected] and let me know when you send it (O'Connor 2013).

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To arrange extreme plagiarism has become that cheap and that easy. Sadly, the urban myth

of essay-writing websites has become the reality and websites such as those detailed above sell a

range of generic as well as specialised, commission-written assignments, essays and dissertations

for a range of subjects including Engineering, Pharmacology, Law, Health and Medicine.

Websites such as Assignment Help has offices in the UK, USA and also Australia.

The taglines on the homes pages of these websites suggest that they are offering assistance to

students: “Inspiring better grades” (S-M 2013a); “High quality, affordable and reliable results. ...

Claim your academic success now” (BEW 2013b). However, one webpage is perhaps quite

honest in suggesting: “Changing the way we learn” (BEW 2013b). The changes websites such as

these are bringing to learning and higher education, and the ethical issues relating to such

websites are beyond the parameters of this commentary but clearly deserve a full exposé and

investigation in regard to their future impact.

The term ‘e-Idiot’ is not to be taken literally; it has been used for dramatic effect to draw

attention to a small cohort of students that engages in extreme plagiarism. While there is no

doubt that the vast majority of higher education students are genuinely engaged in their studies

and aim to increase their knowledge, acquire new skills and apply these in a meaningful way,

there is an unquantified proportion of students that do not share these aims. This small student

cohort seems to think that it is acceptable to short-circuit the learning process and would rather

cut-and-paste information found online than engage in a meaningful way in the learning process.

Given that this cohort is unquantified, it is impossible to know their motivations (beyond the

obvious) and if they engage in extreme plagiarism for all assessment tasks across all subjects, or

are somehow selective in the abrogation of their responsibilities as students.

Recommendations and Conclusion

Many lecturers in higher education set the same assessment tasks semester after semester,

thereby providing the conditions for plagiarism to occur on an ongoing, systemic scale. Students

are able to recycle assignments from semester to semester and, without an adequate checking

system for such practices, lecturers may be none the wiser.

Key recommendations, which include encouraging greater engagement between academics

and students, and constantly changing assessment tasks, include the following:

Introduce a ‘participation’ component with a value of at least 20% of overall grade.

This component, which can include short answer and multiple choice tests, case

study analysis, etc., can be conducted in-class throughout the entire semester on an

ongoing basis. In practice, this methodology encourages greater engagement, and

provides timely and effective feedback for students and lecturers alike;

Introduce ‘critical analysis of information’ exercises in the first weeks of every

subject, every semester. Repeat the exercises as assessment tasks throughout the

semester to encourage students to acquire and improve their information-evaluation

skills on an ongoing basis;

Replace take-home assessment tasks with in-class assessment tasks including short

answer tests and exams designed to provide effective feedback on student learning

and progress;

Introduce student presentations as a means by which students can demonstrate their

learning through preparation, presentation and question-answer sessions;

Change take-home assessment tasks every semester to ensure that assignments are

not recycled among students and to minimise the possibility of answers being

provided by websites;

Understand the characteristics of the iGeneration and ensure subject content and

assessment tasks match their characteristics (O'Connor and Rourke 2010).

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Write assignments where data or information is provided by the lecturer, and the

student is required to interpret or analyse data or information. Provide

new/alternative data or information each semester;

Use plagiarism checking sites such as Turnitin which can be used by the student or

lecturer. While such sites have been accused of violating student privacy, these

concerns have been dismissed in the USA on the grounds of fair use in the grading

of student assessments (Foster 2002; Turnitin 2013).

In the longer term, it is recommended that the issue of extreme plagiarism and its impact on

learning and teaching is thoroughly investigated. For students to think it’s acceptable to refer to

dodgy websites for information about visual communications design or marketing contravenes

graduate attribute policies and is relatively harmless in terms of their post-study employment.

However, in respect to e-Idiots who think it’s acceptable to buy their assignment answers online

for subjects like food toxicology, or subjects that ultimately could have the potential to cause

harm in post-study employment such as medicine or civil engineering, extreme plagiarism is

clearly unsafe and completely unacceptable.

There is no doubt that the vast majority of higher education students are genuinely engaged

in their studies and aim to increase their knowledge and skills; however, there is a proportion that

does not share these aims. For the purposes of this commentary, this small student cohort have

been dubbed ‘e-Idiots’ and they appear keen to short-circuit the learning process, cutting and

pasting information found online rather than acquiring and applying knowledge and skills. Their

essays tend to be full of description and recycled ‘facts’ with minimal attempts to analyse,

synthesise or critically evaluate information. Higher education institutions need to address the

issue of extreme plagiarism and because a small but disturbing cohort of unscrupulous students

appears keen to buy their educational qualifications by purchasing online their assignment

answers. Let’s just hope that these e-Idiots don’t find jobs building bridges or delivering health

services in their post-study employment.

Acknowledgement

Thanks are due to the lecturers who provided information about recent examples of extreme

plagiarism for the purposes of this paper. It should be noted that student privacy was maintained

at all times and information was provided in such a way as to maintain confidentiality of student

identity.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Zena O’Connor: Associate Lecturer/Consultant Researcher; Faculty of Architecture, Design,

and Building; The University of Sydney; Sydney; New South Wales; Australia.

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The International Journal of Learning in Higher Education is one of ten thematically focused journals in the collection of journals that support The Learner knowledge community—its journals, book series, conference and online community.

The journal offers studies of learning at college and university levels, including teacher education.

As well as papers of a traditional scholarly type, this journal invites presentations of practice—including documentation of higher education practices and exegeses of the effects of those practices.

The International Journal of Learning in Higher Education is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

ISSN: 2327-7955

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