Designing a Plagiarism Review

This page, compiled by Siobhàn Holland , contains a list of questions that could form the basis of a departmental ‘plagiarism review’.

Does the department have a policy statement on plagiarism? How does this relate to any institutional policies in this area (e.g. some compulsory element in each module must be assessed under supervised conditions)?
What is the department’s working definition of plagiarism and is this adhered to in practice (a workshop using anonymised examples from essays might be helpful here?
What are the procedures for detecting and punishing plagiarism?
What is the level of the burden of proof for lecturers and is this reasonable?
Do plagiarism procedures work and how might they be improved?
Does the plagiarism policy cater adequately for sustained, malicious plagiarism and over-use of critics, unacknowledged phrases etc.?

Do staff share definitions of plagiarism?
Are these definitions clear for part-time and postgraduate teaching staff?
Do staff collaborate in the plagiarism detection process?
Is the plagiarism policy explained outside as well as in the student handbook?
Are students taught about plagiarism during lecture or seminar time?
Do students have the opportunity to discuss issues relating to citation?
Are there opportunities for building the discussion of plagiarism into the curriculum (in discussions of issues such as intertextuality, or Romantic concepts of originality, for example)?
What are the views of student representatives on the current state of the plagiarism policy in the department?

Do essay questions make plagiarism easy? How might they do that?
Does the exam represent a plagiarism ‘solution’? How would a reliance on the exam affect the department’s overall assessment strategy? Are there other possible solutions, and is the exam really plagiarism-proof?

For a full discussion of issues such a review might consider, see the JISC Good Practice Guide, to which this web page acknowledges its debt.