Enhancing Students' Understanding of Plagiarism within a Discipline Context

Widespread concern in the academic literature and the general media indicate that universities face an ongoing problem with student plagiarism in assessments. This paper describes and evaluates a unique assignment developed to provide second year accounting students with an understanding of plagiarism within the direct context of their study discipline. The assignment required students to undertake two key tasks: first, to identify and correct deliberate instances of plagiarism in a pre-prepared essay on an accounting topic; and second, to prepare their own correctly referenced short essay answer to a question on the same accounting subject. Detailed feedback from student evaluation questionnaires for two years indicated that students perceived that the assignment had successfully enhanced their understanding of plagiarism and, at the same time, formed an effective way for them to learn about a relevant accounting issue.