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Source Text Re-Use in Engineering Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations Literature Reviews: A Comparison
- 1. SOURCE TEXT RE-USE IN ENGINEERING THESIS AND DISSERTATION LITERATURE REVIEWS: A COMPARISON Edward Eckel, Engineering Librarian Western Michigan University Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters Alma College March 2, 2012
- 2. WHAT I WILL TALK ABOUT… • Study Motivation • Project Overview • Results • Implications and Suggestions
- 4. OUCH!! • I discovered similar issues with copying in theses and dissertations at my own institution. • Started to wonder whether this is a larger problem within engineering graduate writing. • Decided to use the Google search strategy that I had used to uncover plagiarism at my own institution in a research study.
- 5. MCCULLOUGH AND HOLMBERG (2005) • Used Google to search strings of text from 210 master’s theses from the Web • “Suspected Plagiarism” found in 27% • Highest in engineering • 43.59% in computer science/engineering • 38.1% in mechanical/aerospace engineering
- 6. MY PILOT STUDY 2009-10 • Random sample of 2007 English language engineering master’s theses • Sample: 100 • Published in Science and Engineering Ethics (2011) • http://www.springerlink.com/content/m37x736k8672kl70/
- 7. RESEARCH QUESTIONS • Do engineering master's theses have longer verbatim text matches than doctoral dissertations? • Do engineering master's theses have more verbatim text matches than doctoral dissertations? • Basic hypotheses – yes for both questions.
- 8. METHODOLOGY 1 • ProQuest Dissertations and Theses • Random sample of 2009 English language engineering master’s theses and doctoral dissertations • Thesis population: 937 • Dissertation population: 6562 • Sample: 125 of each [150 eventually] • Literature review/background sections • Searched 30 seven word strings (basically the first seven words from every fifth line)
- 9. METHODOLOGY 2 • Recorded: source name/author, source type, URL, number of words copied, date of posting/publication, Cited or Not • Two measures: • longest verbatim string per thesis/dissertation • Percentage of searches (out of 30) that contained verbatim hits
- 11. MS Summary Mean Number (N) Mean: 103 125 Mean (excluding 69 95 outliers and zeros): PhD Summary Mean: 52 125 Mean (excluding 60 91 outliers and zeros): COMPARISON – MEAN OF LONGEST VERBATIM STRING
- 14. CONCLUSIONS • Master’s and doctoral students have similar patterns in the length of the strings they copy • Master’s students copy significantly MORE strings than doctoral students (p=.001)
- 15. CONCLUSIONS • Overall sizable number of master’s and doctoral students engage in questionable source text copying. Copying that could get them in trouble, whether in graduate school or beyond if they continue with this pattern.
- 16. IMPLICATIONS • Need for more instruction and practice in synthesis skills • Preferably at the beginning of graduate program • More of an issue with master’s students • May not be urgent enough for engineering programs to take this seriously
- 17. SUGGESTIONS • Start discussions with faculty regarding graduate student writing abilities • Work with writing programs to push for better instruction in synthesis skills • Students could use focused practice on borrowing source langauge appropriately (Barks 2001) • Development of explicit guidelines on using boilerplate technical language
- 18. BOILERPLATE TECHNICAL DESCRIPTIONS • “X has developed a model…” • “…an exploratory study was conducted…” • “as a result, there is a need for a method to…” • “…requires a high degree of accuracy and reproducibility…” • “Optical flow is defined as the apparent motion of…” • “PIR sensors are passive devices in that they only detect radiation…” • "A fuel cell operates like a battery…"
- 19. FINAL THOUGHTS (NOT IN ORIGINAL PP) • Now, the thing that I find interesting about this data is that we sort of assume that graduate students are following the rules. But when you look at what they do, a fair number don't. Does this mean that they are bad? Based upon this data, can we say that there is a crisis in engineering graduate writing? No I don't think so. • The examples I show here, with few exceptions, are relatively minor. I think this is what we can realistically expect from novices in the field of engineering, based upon the level of writing instruction and practice they've received up to this point in their educational journey. • So I think getting too judgmental about what graduate students are doing without teaching them what they need to know is kind of pointless. You don't teach someone to avoid plagiarism by getting all judgmental on them. • Based upon the literature on novice writers, particularly ESL writers, and on studies like my own, I think that the only way we can expect students to "avoid plagiarism" is by teaching them to write from sources. You teach them by showing them (with examples) what's acceptable in the discipline and what is not. You give them practice writing from sources over and over again until they master the skill. • If we want to avoid this kind of text reuse, this kind of instruction may need to become integral to graduate programs in engineering, if not other disciplines as well. Otherwise we risk sending these people out into academia and the working world where they will perpetuate this kind of copying.
- 20. REFERENCES • Barks, D. (2001). “Textual Borrowing Strategies for Graduate-Level ESL Writers.” In Linking Literacies: Perspectives on L2 Reading-Writing Connections. D. Belcher and A. Hirvela. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press: 246-267. • Eckel, E.J. “Textual Appropriation in Engineering Master’s Theses – A Preliminary Study,” Science and Engineering Ethics 17(3) (2011): 469-483. DOI 10.1007/s11948-010-9214-6 • Howard, R. M. and A. E. Robillard (2008). Pluralizing plagiarism : identities, contexts, pedagogies. Portsmouth, NH, Boynton/Cook Publishers. • McCullough, M. and M. Holmberg (2005). “Using the Google Search Engine to Detect Word-for-Word Plagiarism in Master's Theses: A Preliminary Study.” College Student Journal 39(3): 435. • Pecorari, D., D. Belcher, et al. (2001). “Plagiarism and International Students: How the English- Speaking University Responds.” In Linking Literacies: Perspectives on L2 Reading-Writing Connections. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press: 229-245. • Tomsho, R. (2006, August 15). “Familiar Words: Student Plagiarism Stirs Controversy at Ohio University.” Wall Street Journal: A1-A10.
Editor's Notes
- I basically will give you a sense of how I got interested in this project, an overview of my study methodology, and then dive into the results. I then will briefly mention the implications for graduate education in engineering.
- I discovered this paper in my literature review reading as I prepared my own Google methodology (which differs considerably from the approach that McCullough and Holmberg used). Their study shows interesting results. Methodology was not great but it did seem to suggest that plagiarism in engineering graduate writing is a problem.
- I conducted a pilot study to test out my methodology in 2011. I modified that methodology a bit for the current study presented here.
- Rationale for hypotheses – From my analysis of master’s theses and doctoral dissertations from WMU 2000-2006, master’s students tended to copy a lot more and longer strings than doctoral.
- At the Michigan Academy conference, I presented the results from a sample of 125 of each. I am hoping to do 150 of each for my complete study. I focused on the literature review sections, Googling 7 word strings of text (basically the first seven words from every fifth line for a total of thirty searches per thesis/dissertation. For each source I found, I would record the source title and type (journal book etc.), URL, # of words copied, date of publication, and whether or not a source for that string was cited. [Often if a source was cited, it was a different source.]
- These gave me some basis for comparison between the two populations (master’s theses and dissertations).
- This chart shows the distribution for theses and dissertations for the longest verbatim string. I've broken down the range into 20 word increments, and compressed the range at the extreme right (outliers) to make it easier to see how close the MS and PhD data appear to be.
- While the mean “Longest verbatim string” for the master’s theses and dissertations look quite different (103 for master’s versus 52 for the dissertations), when you exclude the extreme values (4 master’s theses and 2 dissertations) and the people who copied nothing, the recalculated means for the students are much closer. The Independent samples t-test for means on the full data set were significant only to .10. So I have to accept the null hypothesis - there appears to be no difference between the two populations on this measure.
- Interestingly enough, the data on master’s theses from my 2011 study (which looked at theses completed in 2007) and my current data, shown here, are strikingly similar. This is despite a major methodological difference in how I chose strings to search. For the pilot study using 2007 theses, I chose strings that looked like they might be copied, based on language choice, quality of writing etc. This was a more ad hoc method. For the current study, strings were chosen at random, starting with the first line of the literature review or introduction sections, and selecting the first seven words of every fifth line thereafter. And yet the results look very similar.
- However, master's students copy significantly MORE strings in the sections of their literature reviews than the doctoral students. This was significant to the .01 level.
- Now, the thing that I find interesting about this data is that we sort of assume that graduate students are following the rules. But when you look at what they do, a fair number don't. Does this mean that they are bad? Based upon this data, can we say that there is a crisis in engineering graduate writing? No I don't think so. The examples I show here, with few exceptions, are relatively minor. I think this is what we can realistically expect from novices in the field of engineering, based upon the level of writing instruction and practice they've received up to this point in their educational journey. So I think getting too judgmental about what graduate students are doing without teaching them what they need to know is kind of pointless. You don't teach someone to avoid plagiarism by getting all judgmental on them. Based upon the literature on novice writers, particularly ESL writers, and on studies like my own, I think that the only way we can expect students to "avoid plagiarism" is by teaching them to write from sources. You teach them by showing them (with examples) what's acceptable in the discipline and what is not. You give them practice writing from sources over and over again until they master the skill. If we want to avoid this kind of text reuse, this kind of instruction may need to become integral to graduate programs in engineering, if not other disciplines as well. Otherwise we risk sending these people out into academia and the working world where they will perpetuate this kind of copying.
- As you can see from these examples, use of source text can vary from material that is clearly generic to material that is borderline. Students need help figuring out what is appropriate and what is not. We, working in collaboration with Writing Centers and graduate advisors, can help them with this.
- These were spoken at my presentation, not in the original P
- Not all of these are referred to in the presentation, but you might find the additional references helpful in giving you a sense of this issue in engineering.