Plagiarism prevention is discipline specific : a view from computer science.

Abstract

Many of the good-practice guidelines on tackling plagiarism and collusion are primarily relevant to essays and research projects. In Computer Science, and particularly in undergraduate first-year modules, there is an emphasis on understanding basic principles and standard techniques: students are often assessed by being required to apply these techniques to an example system. Constructing suitable examples is time-consuming, and the range of possible solutions is small, so we find that collusion is as much a problem as plagiarism. This is also true of Engineering and Mathematical disciplines where there is a foundation of laws and theories that must be mastered and sometimes only one right answer to a problem. We suggest guidelines for the design of in-course assessments and the procedures that accompany them that can help to reduce the opportunities for plagiarism while recognising the constraints imposed by limited staff time and large student numbers.