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“ Our assessment processes are designed to minimise the opportunity for misconduct , but we know that the advent of new technologies has led to increasingly innovative methods for students to use , and sadly a small number continue to try and use them instead of applying such innovation to their studies ,” he said in a statement .
Following the announcement , Spence spoke with Campus Review about the taskforce , academic misconduct and what universities need to do to combat this growing problem .
CR : Michael , can you tell me about your decision to develop the taskforce and what this process will involve ?
MS : We last updated our misconduct policies and procedures in 2012 and you ’ ve always got to be one step ahead of the tiny number of students who are involved in academic dishonesty . We think it ’ s about time to look at our policies and procedures again .
Crime & punishment
The few students willing to commit academic fraud have many opportunities ; addressing the problem means keeping up with all of them .
Michael Spence interviewed by Antonia Maiolo
Finding new methods for detecting plagiarism , changing assessment methods and building a culture of academic integrity will be at the top of the agenda for a new University of Sydney taskforce .
The university-wide group , recently announced by USYD vice-chancellor Michael Spence , follows a Fairfax Media investigation last year that raised questions about the methods Australian universities use to detect cheating .
The University of Sydney was one of 16 institutions named in the report , which found more than 1000 students hired online company MyMaster to be ghost writer for their assignments .
Spence , who will head the taskforce , said the entire education sector must contend with this problem .
Student cheating has been found to be rife throughout many of the top universities . The Herald ’ s MyMaster investigation found that it ’ s not just at USYD . How do you believe the taskforce will help solve this and should other universities be doing the same thing ? Rife is an interesting word . For us , the Herald ’ s MyMaster exercise revealed that 60 students , or 60 essays had been purchased . It didn ’ t reveal that the essays had been submitted , but it did reveal that 60 essays had been purchased and we have 53,000 students who are all submitting many pieces of written work every semester . I don ’ t think it would be fair to say we have evidence that cheating is rife , but on the other hand we do know that the forms of academic misconduct are becoming more sophisticated .
For example , our biggest problem this semester has not been with plagiarism or purchased essays … but with fraudulent medical certificates that you can buy online , submitted for special considerations .
There are always new ways of cheating for that tiny minority of students who are involved in that kind of conduct and we need to make sure our policies and procedures are always appropriate . We need to make sure we have adequate academic honesty education , that we ’ re designing assessments so it makes cheating in one way or another more difficult , and that we have effective ways of both identifying cheating when it has happened and dealing with it appropriately .
What did internal investigations of the university ’ s misconduct mechanisms find ? What deficiencies in these protective processes were discovered , such as , for example , with Turnitin ? We haven ’ t started the process yet . I know the Herald made a big deal of the fact that not all our faculties use Turnitin . It ’ s true , Turnitin is not appropriate for some types of assessment . For example , there ’ s not much point in using Turnitin to try to identify where a maths proof may have been copied from somebody . Turnitin is not going to identify purchased material , if the purchased material is in fact original .
Our policy at the moment puts the primary responsibility for identifying plagiarism , even by using software or in other ways , on the people who are organising the course and they are , of course , usually best placed . A lot of plagiarism comes to light because the tutor notices that the first two pages are written in incomprehensible English and then all of a sudden it turns into eloquent prose , in the sort of way that has always been the case .
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