Abstract:

With this paper we wish to share our experience with the work of designing, implementing and maintaining the NoPlagiat tutorial. We also want to discuss how our expectations turned out in reality and the feedback we have gotten from both undergraduate students and teachers.

In January 2014 a self-study tutorial for undergraduate students about how to not plagiarize and copyright issues was launched at Linköping University, Sweden. The NoPlagiat tutorial was developed by the Library in collaboration with the Disciplinary Board.

The reason why we started to create a tutorial was a general experience among library staff that they got more and more questions from undergraduate students related to copyright, plagiarism and referencing. Another reason was that plagiarism was the most common reason, 460 cases of a total of 801, why undergraduate students ended-up in the Disciplinary Board at Swedish universities and colleges 2012 (Kyrk, 2013). This made it clear that there was a need for major preventive measures for students within the field of plagiarism and copyright.

The purpose of NoPlagiat is that undergraduate students at Linköping University on their own can learn more about how to avoid plagiarism and copyright laws and understand how they may use other people's material. The tutorial was created with the web development tool Macromedia Dreamweaver. It consists of five modules and at the end of each module the students’ knowledge is tested with some exercises. The modules are: What is plagiarism?, Referencing, Quoting, Paraphrasing and Copyright.

Our hope was that it would become mandatory in some courses at the university for undergraduate students foremost during their first or second semester. One idea was that the students could do NoPlagiat on their own, for example before a session and during the lesson thereafter teachers and students could then have a deeper discussion regarding the topics in the guide. If all undergraduate students at Linköping University went through the NoPlagiat tutorial they would learn more about what plagiarism is and could thus avoid getting into disciplinary difficulties.

To accomplish this we promoted the NoPlagiat tutorial in different forums at the university during spring 2014. We e.g. presented the tutorial at a library board meeting. One direct effect of this was that the NoPlagiat tutorial became mandatory the same year in an introduction course to university studies at the faculty Science and Engineering/the Institute of Technology. We also sent email to all the program committees and managers on the four faculties of the university were we presented the NoPlagiat tutorial and recommended them to use it in courses in their education programs. A follow-up survey was sent to the program committees and managers during April and May 2015 but had a very low response rate. Unfortunately from the responses we received we learned that the program committees didn’t think that the tutorial would fit in in their courses. I’m sorry to say that no respondent mentioned that NoPlagiat was used or discussed during a session. One program invited us to present the self-study tutorial on their department meeting. Our conclusion of this survey is that we probably need to promote NoPlagiat even better so it will be used mandatory in not only one but all four faculties of the university.

The great challenges right know is promoting, maintaining and assess the use of the NoPlagiat tutorial.

Keywords:

Plagiarism, copyright, undergraduate students, self-study tutorial.