01 October 2009, 5:53

Hello,

One thing that has not been discussed in the forums (unless "plagiarism" is not the right term to use in the Google Search") is plagiarism when copying a view. I really like being able to copy a view, e.g. from a group to individual portfolios, but it can also be a potential source for fraud.

It is great that blog posts are not copied when another user copies a few. But that may not be enough.

What is the opinion of others on this topic in relation to portfolios? As we just switched to the new version of Mahara where copying views is possible, we do not yet have any experience with it.

Our students do not have an assessment portfolio, but a developmental one. Still, some may want to find a shortcut (which doesn't help them in the long term, but...).

Have you thought of using Ephorus (they have a Moodle plugin) or a similar software to check for similarities / plagiarism in portfolios? Or is it a concern thatis un founded?

Kristina

01 October 2009, 23:43

Hi - nope, I don't recall this having been discussed before.

Regarding Mahara's view copying feature. The users have to approve any copying (including blog copying), so from that respect, Mahara keeps things under control. Although there is no way to prevent a student from going to a View that they can see (but not copy), and copy/pasting text out of it.

If this was happening and was a serious problem (or if they were copying too much from wikipedia ), then potentially a module might be useful. I must say that I have a philosophical objection to them, given that my writings get sent off to some server in the cloud regardless of my copyright. But I can appreciate that people want help marking things  

02 October 2009, 11:13

I think this is a social/cultural framing issues not easily solved by a technological fix.

More work for those deploying Mahara because we have to examine and stay current as we can with what's going on with users.

This is perhaps easier in my situation as the  teacher candidates working to develop their professional knowledge and philosophy have very unique perspectives that I encourage them to rely upon as they engage with what is being studied. So what they produce is unique, it's the meaning making that is important. 

Just my thoughts...each situation is different.

best regards,

tm 

02 October 2009, 16:05

Hello Nigel and Tim,

Thanks for your answers. How can I approve blog copying? I did not see it and when another user copied a view that had blog posts in them, it did not work.

I would also like to think that everybody keeping a developmental portfolio brings in their own voice that is distinguishable. However, there may be exceptions to the rule. I am not saying that we have had any such cases. It had just come up in our discussions as our students switch tutors during their studies.

Kristina

03 October 2009, 14:20

This is not easy territory to traverse and it seems always the exceptions that get us having to worry about rectifying a situation.

This topic actually opens up a whole landscape of discussion concerning where knowledge and knowing exist which has been commented on by cognitive scientists, of whom some suggest knowledge/knowing/mind exists in the relationships among people. It's never decontextualized nor unsituated, as is implied in Nigel's observation about things going out into the cloud. 

Maybe it's more about how we access such knowledge and not about if we "own" it in our "brains" so to speak. Which doens't mean we can't be asked to demonstrate an understanding or skill/ability etc. But I guess that is the point how do we know it is that person demonstrating what they know/have access to etc... which brings us back to your question, "How canI approve blog copying?"

I guess you can't. I have no ideas about numbers of people you are dealing with or the intimacy of interaction. In my situation I have about 32 people typically in a class, who I actually interview at the end of the semester. The interviews do help in a few ways.

1. students know they will be accountable to me in a face to face conversation  so I believe they might be less bold to "bluff" their way with using other peoples' ideas. On that note if they do use other people's ideas then they have had to engage in thinking on them because they have to explain them and in effect they take ownership of that knowledge. Which I guess is learning

2. A conversation with a person can quickly reveal what they actually have faciility with and if they didn't create materials I think that would become evident fairly quickly.

As I see it this is social framing activity around the actual technical implementation, that safe guards the fairness of what occurs.

This of course is "work" and in some cases "extra work" that often teacher/professors etc...just  don't seem to have the time and energy for (which of course is why we might have started relying on something like an eportfolio..to help us along).

 Not sure this is of any help. Take from it what you will.

best

tm 

 

05 October 2009, 16:50

Hello Tim,

The practices of how deeply a tutor is involved in a student's portfolio during the semester varies. Usually, students and teachers meet twice a semester (beginning and end) to talk about the portfolio work. Now that we have Mahara, there can be more possibilities for tutors to give feedback also throughout the semester if that is wanted by both sides. As our student portfolios include certain mandatory items (though not in a prescribed format), there might be some potential for copying.

However, that is the worst case scenario. There may be a black sheep who plagiarizes in his portfolio, but that would be the exception to the rule. I did not raise the question to tackle an existing problem in our portfolios, but to learn more how others see this topic.

I had not brought plagiarism and portfolios together because the reflection process is a very personal one. However, as soon as I mentioned "copying of views" during one of my workshops for our tutors, some jumped at it and I wanted to find out more about it.

Kristina

04 October 2009, 18:43

Disregarding the pedagogical reasons over whether you should copy one, you can actually say that copying is allowed in Mahara, if you configure a blog block and look in the advanced options . So the user can decided whether that's allowed, but by default, it's off.

05 October 2009, 16:29

Thanks, Nigel. I had missed that entirely.

12 October 2009, 6:54

Hi Nigel,

Now I know why I had missed the blog copying functionality: It is only visible when the view copying is turned on. Makes sense, but is a bit tricky, in my opinion. If you are used to the blog block (and you always start out creating a view with the default setting "copying not allowed") with copying disallowed, then you would not know that you can decide to allow copying of blog posts if you do not happen to change that block after allowing copying and chancing upon the advanced settings.

Thus, it would be clearer, I think, if the view access page had information on what is copied (in general terms, i.e. which blocks, or what can be left out / configured. Is the blog block the only one that can be left out (looks like that to me)? If so, could there be check boxes on the access page for (wording open for improvement):

• allow displaying all blog content of this view in the copied view
  
• allow copying of all blog content displayed in this view
• check each blog block individually to allow copying 

Kristina

12 October 2009, 16:16

Hi Kristina - yes, that's an interesting idea. In theory, more things than blogs can be copied or not copied according to the user's choice. Even though we haven't written another plugin yet that has this behaviour, something like your glossary plugin may well behave exactly like this too 

It does seem like the ability to control copying on the access page is a good idea, as that's where the user would probably go if they were asked to allow that blog to be copied. Maybe worth filling a feature request for? When we come to redesign the view access page, we should be able to take this into account.