Well we are at the end of week 5 of teaching and I have found my first piece of plagiarism (I was the first in the faculty) and it was a research proposal - I don't know whether to be pleased I found it (although as the plagiarised bits were the only decently written stuff (and the only bits that had references) in the whole piece of work how the student thought I wouldn't notice is a mystery) or whether to despair that if they are plagiarising at the begining of term (and in their final year) it doesn't bode well for the rest of the year.

with the increasing amount of software being employed by universities to detect plagiarism you would have thought the message would be getting through that it is risky and with the different kinds of support. I think with plagiarism it can be hard as well why did they do it etc but if blatant like this seems to be they must know going to risk there future after 2 years work. I guess at least they plagiarized the references as well sure not all would thought ensure had done that.

Plagiarising at any time is a sin but it's really foolish to do in the final year when all the gloves are off and the max penalties are a real possibility. I still find it amazing that some students seem not to realise that voice and tone aren't just physical properties but also manifest in written communication and you can clearly tell the different voices in one piece of work - especially if one is significantly weaker than others!!

Significantly wekaer doesn't even begin to describe this one - the first half page was beautifully crafted with references (all correctly cited) and then the next paragraph went along the lines of "This topic is worth researching because I am interested and I think it would be a good topic to do research about". The only bits that had references were the two plagiarised paragraphs - everything else was entirely unreferenced, was all written in the first person (with a writing age of about 12). The research design included anything and everything but didn't link to the literature or the aims of the study.

I haven't taught this group before about I seriously worry how she has got to third year if this is typical (the two staff who taught this program have left and so modules have been divided up between those of us who are left).

(But on a brighter note the first peice of work I marked was well written, had a good research design which linked to literature, was ambitious but achievable for undergrad dissertation and made me look forward to supervising that research project)