ENVIRONMENT CONSERVATION MOVEMENTS-BY CLASS 10 STUDENTS CFA HIGH SCHOOL

Plagiarism Case 1: Research Methods I Course, May 2011

A student’s final assignment (first draft of the thesis proposal) exhibited highly heterogeneous writing, with clear and well-written sections interspersed with less-developed sections and poorly presented arguments. In addition, some of the cited material was unrelated to the sources quoted, and the text included uncommon terminology (e.g. general practitioners were referred as “generalist physicians”). The coordinator searched the suspiciously-written sections in Google®, as described by Rojas-Revoredo et al. (2007). Several paragraphs were found to be unacknowledged verbatim fragments of published articles. The next day, the course and program coordinator met at the student’s workplace to discuss the incident with the student in private. After initial denial, the student finally accepted committing plagiarism, and was failed in the course and separated from the program for the rest of the year. The university authorities were informed and a misconduct report was filed in the student’s permanent academic record. In addition, the student was warned that consideration of future readmission was conditional on preparing an RCR guide for future students. The incident was discussed with the class at the beginning of the second term and substantial knowledge gaps and ambivalence towards plagiarism were noted. Plagiarism was thoroughly discussed, and five writing workshops were added to each term, at the class’ request. The student contacted the program coordinator in 2012 and was readmitted to the program after completing the required material. Prior to the event, the student had poor performance (ranked 29 of 30). After readmission, the student completed all the required courses under close monitoring and intensive counselling, exhibiting average performance (ranked 16 of 30), and without evidence of any further incidents. After this incident, a paragraph describing plagiarism and its potential sanctions (including course failure) was added to the syllabi of all courses.