Tips for Faculty for Preventing, Detecting and Reporting Plagiarism in Student Assignments

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What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is the “submission or inclusion of someone else’s words, drawings, ideas, or data (including that from a website) as one’s own work without giving credit to the source” (from  wit.edu website:  Academic Honesty Policy).

One common example of plagiarism in student papers is copying and pasting text from the Internet sources or full-text journal articles without proper attribution. In some cases, plagiarism is not intentional and occurs because students are not familiar with the proper citation guidelines or come from the environments where such practice is acceptable (e.g. due to differences in cultural norms). However, various types of intentional academic dishonesty and misconduct are also common and may require disciplinary action.

Ways to prevent unintentional plagiarism at Wentworth

Set clear expectations for proper writing etiquette, citation guidelines and academic honesty. Provide information regarding training, resources and support available to students at Wentworth. This can be done in multiple areas, such as in the course syllabus or in Blackboard. Resources to provide may include links to or contact information for:

Success Studio

Douglass D. Schumann Library & Learning Commons

LinkedIn Learning training options (selected)

Note: LinkedIn Learning training can be embedded in Brightspace courses. Contact TLC for more information.

This video is part of a longer course on information literacy.

Unintentional plagiarism self-check

Look for the Turnitin self-check site in Brightspace. Click on the Discover link in the Navbar and then click on the tile for “Turnitin Paper Self-Check”. You’ll have an option to enroll which will allow you to use the site. The site will now be listed under Academic Resources in your My Courses widget on the home page

Turn on Turnitin for your assignment

Ways to Detect and Report Intentional Plagiarism

Using Turnitin in Brightspace

Academic honesty can be enforced by collecting writing assignments via Brightspace and enabling anti-plagiarism tools (Turnitin). This tool checks for text similarities against sources (such as websites, journal articles and previously submitted student papers) in multiple continuously updated databases. Turnitin is integrated into the Assignment workflow in Brightspace and is accessed in the evaluation and feedback section of the tool.

It is important to note that neither tool conclusively determines that plagiarism has occurred, nor does it detect all cases of plagiarism. Rather, both provide originality reports meant to assist faculty in making that determination. The tools can also serve as a deterrent – when students expect to have to submit their assignments to Turnitin, they may be less likely to submit plagiarized work.

For more information on using Turnitin, contact teach@WIT.EDU

Handling incidents of plagiarism

Unfortunately, intentional plagiarism can and does happen. At Wentworth, a set of procedures has been developed to help faculty handle incidents of plagiarism or any other violations of academic honesty. Information about this process can be found on the Academic Affairs website.

Use Gradescope to Save Time Grading

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What is Gradescope?

Gradescope is an online grading platform used to grade homework, quizzes, group projects, and exams. It reduces grading time, increases grading consistency, and provides statistical summary for every assignment. Gradescope helps you seamlessly administer and grade all of your assessments, whether online or in-class. Save time grading and get a clear picture of how your students are doing. With Gradescope, students receive faster and more detailed feedback on their work, and instructors can see detailed assignment and question analytics.

Possible Uses

  • Gradescope supports variable-length assignments (problem sets & projects) and fixed-template assignments (worksheets, quizzes, exams, bubble Sheets similar to Scantron).
  • Grade paper-based, digital, and code/programming assignments in half the time.
  • Quick, flexible grading with the option of providing detailed feedback to students
  • Gain valuable insight on the progress of your students with rubric-level statistics.
  • Deliver Feedback instantly to students
  • Answer Groups & AI-assisted Grading. Grade groups of similar answers at once.
  • How using Gradescope can yield deeper insights into teaching, a Faculty Focus article

Sign In

First sign into Brightspace and launch Gradescope. This will ensure the correct role is assigned. Any subsequent login from the direct Gradescope url will provide the correct level of access.  In Brightspace, you can access Gradescope by adding an existing activity and selecting external learning tools.

Resources

Please take a moment to view the following resources provided by Gradescope:

Contact Teach@wit.edu for more information.

Brightspace Update – June 2021

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This month the changes to Brightspace are not as dramatic as last month but the interface improvements continue. All changes described below will take effect June 16, 2021.

First, there is a new format painter in the text editor. This addition makes it easier to make text formatting match. Along the same line, in the Quizzes tool, LaTex is now rendered inline, no more need to use the LaTex equation option.

For the social media mavens, @mentions are now a thing in Brightspace. Use @mentions to tag other users to draw attention to contributions in discussions or to direct comments. After some preliminary testing we’ll determine when to roll out this functionality.

For instructors using the mail function, copies of all outgoing mail messages will be saved in the system. Clicking on the envelope icon in the minibar at the top of the page and then selecting email brings up the email window. Selecting the “Sent mail” tab brings up a list of all sent messages. Currently, users must check a box to save sent messages. After the update, copies of all sent messages will be saved.

If you use rubrics, you may see some new behavior, should you delete an evaluated rubric from an assignment. When deleting a rubric from an assignment that has already been evaluated, you will see a confirmation window alerting you to the deletion of the completed rubric assessments. Reordinging rubric criterion groups becomes easier in the new rubric experience. Direction arrows will appear to allow moving of groups. Finally, if you use rubrics and grade through the grade book, the new rubric experience will now be part of that workflow.

One final new feature is improvements in handling SCORM content is exported to a package and imported into a new course, the content is relinked so that the content renders correctly. Previously, the imported links would point to the content in the original course and access permissions would cause errors.

Using LockDown Browser in Brightspace

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Do you use quizzes in Brightspace? Are you looking for a way to prevent students from browsing websites or using other applications during a Brightspace quiz? If so, we have a tool for your students. LockDown Browser is a special application that runs on a student’s computer that locks them into a Brightspace quiz. The student can’t browse other websites, other parts of Brightspace, or use other applications on their computer. They can’t print the exam or copy and paste the questions into email to send to other students.

How do you get this wonder for your course? It’s already in your course. We have added this tool in Brightspace and it is available to instructors in the quiz tool area. After you create your test/quiz using the regular Brightspace tools, you will deploy the test/quiz as usual. Up to this point there is no change. To use LockDown Browser, you navigate to the quiz tool area. There you will find a Tab for “LockDown Browser.”

Clicking on the LockDown Browser tab brings you to a list of your quizzes. You can select “Settings” from the dropdown menu to the left of the name of each quiz to set-up the Quiz to use Lockdown Browser.

Once in the LockDown Browser settings you can choose whether students will be required to use LockDown Browser to access the test.

Within the settings for LockDown Browser, you can select LockDown Browser as a requirement and allow access to some tools that might be needed for the exam – such as a calculator, under the Advanced Settings.
Click Save + Close when done and you have made LockDown Browser a requirement for your exam.

But Wait, there’s more… Before having students take their first test with LockDown Browser, you should plan on having students download, install and test the set-up using a practice test. TLC/TechSpot can come to class to troubleshoot any problems in advance of any real tests so that instructors and students can be confident the system will work.

When students take a quiz, they open Brightspace as they usually do, and then they will see a link to open LockDown Browser to take the quiz. If you have used LockDown Browser with Blackboard, this is a different process, students don’t need to open LockDown Browser and login to Brightspace to take a quiz. The integration will launch LockDown Browser from within Brightspace.

If you are interested in using LockDown Browser with your course, please contact TLC at teach@wit.edu and we’ll be happy to schedule a consultation.

Video Updates – Panopto Account Unification

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Over the break between spring and summer semesters, we unified accounts on Panopto — or rather we tried to unify the accounts. The good news is that you have access to all your content. The bad news is it may not be easy to find.

When we first implemented Brightspace as our new LMS and set up the integration with Panopto, we did not realize that the systems were passing different usernames. Because Blackboard and Brightspace use different usernames (the usernames are different even if you log in with the same Wentworth credentials) two accounts were created in Brightspace. Users had to log in via each LMS to access a different set of files. Over the fall and spring, we adjusted permissions and moved content but account unification was the solution, we were told. BUT in order to unify the accounts, we had to have a single username across all systems integrated into Panopto.

On May 4th, we turned off the integration with Blackboard and were able to set the authentication to use the same username as Brightspace uses. Over the next week, Panopto worked to unify our accounts. However, a bug in the system prevented user files in “\Brightspace\Username” folders from being transferred to the “\unified\username” folder. You have access to the “\Brightspace\Username” folder with your “new” unified account. So for now, if you can’t find files you uploaded from your Brightspace created account in your “My Folder”, try searching for your “\Brightspace\Username” folder. If you find the files, you can move them by changing the parent folder location.

Here are instructions on how to move your files. If you can’t find videos you know you uploaded, please let us know and we can help you locate them.

Another side effect is that the mapping of zoom video recordings may have been lost. Some users found that meeting mappings disappeared in the unification. You can remap those meetings following the instructions we provide during the spring semester.

If you are still having problems locating content, Please contact us.