Newly Created Assignments and The First Repository Effect on Inter-Semester Plagiarism
Pages 211 - 220
Abstract
The Internet---for all of its benefits---makes it easy for students to share assignments. This creates a serious problem for academic institutions. Common mitigation tactics include discouraging students from sharing their work and routinely checking for and removing solutions shared online. While these strategies can be successful in many cases, they are not always sufficient. In our experience, it can be a challenge if either students or hosting sites refuse to remove solutions. Pursuing legal options can be both time consuming and costly. One approach taken to combat this is to routinely create new coding assignments, but this can still require a significant time commitment. It is worth exploring if this effort is worthwhile.
In this paper, we present an empirical study based on data that we collected over five semesters while addressing plagiarism within our large online computer science graduate program. We compare plagiarism rates between two courses: one integrating new assignments and the other continuing to reuse older assignments.
In this study, we explore the benefits derived from introducing new assignments to counter plagiarism, and how long these benefits last. We then explore the trends that publicly shared solutions have on plagiarism rates, and what those trends tell us about the value of implementing new assignments. Lastly, we explore the effects that the process of detection and intervention have on the frequency of misconduct.
We observed that the benefits gained by introducing new assignments faded quickly. Additionally, we observed that proactively seeking the removal of publicly shared solutions may be ineffective unless all solutions are removed. Lastly, we observed that early detection and notification to students results in reduced misconduct over time.
Our observations underscore the notion that a single solution posted publicly can swiftly erode the advantages gained from creating new assignments to help reduce plagiarism. This raises questions about whether the advantages of introducing new assignments outweigh benefits gained through reusing and refining assignments over time. More mature and well-developed assignments tend to lend themselves to robust, experience-backed rubrics and dynamic autograders which deliver a pedagogical benefit that may outweigh the integrity benefits of frequently developing new assessments.
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Index Terms
- Newly Created Assignments and The First Repository Effect on Inter-Semester Plagiarism
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Published In
July 2024
582 pages
ISBN:9798400706332
DOI:10.1145/3657604
- General Chair:
- David Joyner,
- Program Chairs:
- Min Kyu Kim,
- Xu Wang,
- Meng Xia
Copyright © 2024 Owner/Author.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License.
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Association for Computing Machinery
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Published: 15 July 2024
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