Monitoring and Reducing Plagiarism: A Case Study at South East European University, Macedonia

Abstract

AbstractMost teachers of English language and literature are aware of the widespread prevalence of plagiarised student work and most responsible teachers use measures todetect and deter plagiarism in their classes. However, without clear institutional supportand guidelines, the efforts of individual teachers may appear insufficient, especially in theage of 'copy paste' plagiarism from the internet.This paper uses a case study from the English Department of South EastEuropean University to explore this issue and it describes the development of an antiplagiarism strategy at departmental level. By using a plagiarism report form to enable teachers to report cases of plagiarism to a departmental committee, an effort was madeto quantify the extent of the problem. This paper analyses the data thus gathered with reference to several international studies on plagiarism. The paper explores student and staff attitudes to plagiarism, their level of understanding of the rules of citation andmakes recommendations for institutional policies in this area. The paper concludes thata collective and ongoing effort is needed at all levels of the University in order to have ameaningful impact on student behaviour.