Profiles of students who plagiarise:
Evidence from the chalk face

This paper will examine the levels of plagiarism detected through the use of Turnitin plagiarism checking software. We will utilise a body of raw data resulting from the examination of over 1,000 student assignments by the authors and colleagues in the College of Business at the Palmerston North campus of Massey University, New Zealand. The data from these assignments will provide a rich source of information on what students actually do as opposed to the mainly self reporting of opinions by staff and students that is found in the literature. In the paper we will examine differences between modes of teaching (internally versus extramurally), levels of papers (undergraduate versus postgraduate), ethnicity of students (domestic versus international), and gender (male versus female).

Included in our paper will be a discussion on the on-going trials and tribulations we were experiencing in attempting to utilise the results of our use of Turnitin software for detecting plagiarism for research purposes. We have now received Ethics Committee approval for the research. The paper will examine issues surrounding this question of the use information collected for teaching and assessment purposes being used for another purpose, namely the source of material for research. In particular we wish to engage participants at the conference session in a discussion on the question that "Access by the researchers to individual results of students in classes other than their own would breach the privacy of students".