Detecting Plagiarism

J. of Acc. Ed. 29 (2011) 142–152

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

J. of Acc. Ed. journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaccedu

Teaching and Educational note

An approach to detecting plagiarism in spreadsheet assignments: A digital answer to digital cheating
Anil Singh a,⇑, George Mangalaraj b, Aakash Taneja c a b c School of Business, University of Texas at Brownsville, 80 Fort Brown, Brownsville, TX 78520, United States
College of Business and Technology, Western Illinois University, 1 University Circle, Macomb, IL 61455, United States
School of Business, The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, 101 Vera King Farris Drive, Galloway, NJ 08205, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Available online 10 March 2012
Keywords:
Spreadsheet assignments
Pedagogical issues
Plagiarism detection
Digital plagiarism

a b s t r a c t
Accounting instructors often experience frustration when confronted by plagiarism in student assignments. Also, they face difficulty verifying and proving cases of plagiarism. Students have increasingly found it easier to plagiarize assignments because of digitization in education. Instructors face an important pedagogical challenge due to digitization based plagiarism. Digitization, however, provides instructors with tools to address this issue. This paper showcases three tried and tested methods built into spreadsheet software to identify and detect plagiarism in spreadsheet based assignments. The first method is a manual method of hiding unique markers in files sent to students. The second method involves hiding a formula that can track plagiarism in more detail.
The third method uses a program code to track issues related to authorship of assignments. These methods along with a compiled list of strategies discussed in this paper can help reduce plagiarism.
Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction
The purpose of a university is to impart knowledge and

References: Abdolmohammadi, M. J., & Baker, R. C. (2007). The relationship between moral reasoning and plagiarism in accounting courses: A replication study Bain, C. E., Blankley, A. I., & Smith, L. M. (2002). An examination of topical coverage for the first accounting information systems course Baker, J. E., & Sugden, S. J. (2003). Spreadsheets in education: The first 25 years. Spreadsheets in Education, 1(1), 19–43. Burke, J. L. (1997). Faculty perceptions of and attitudes toward academic dishonesty at a two-year college. Doctoral dissertation. Butakov, S., & Scherbinin, V. (2009). The toolbox for local and global plagiarism detection. Computers & Education, 52(4), 781–788. Caspari, J. A. (1988). Coping with plagiarism. Journal of Accounting Education, 6(1), 117–121. Chao, C., Wilhelm, W. J., & Neureuther, B. D. (2009). A study of electronic detection and pedagogical approaches for reducing plagiarism Chen, X., Francia, B., Li, M., McKinnon, B., & Seker, A. (2004). Shared information and program plagiarism detection. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 50(7), 1545–1551. Coakley, J., & Tyran, C. (2001). Can e-cheating be prevented? An approach to detect plagiarism in computer skills courses. In Proceedings of the seventh Americas conference on information systems (pp Culwin, F., & Lancaster, T. (2001). Plagiarism prevention, deterrence and detection. Institute for learning and teaching in higher education Etter, S., Cramer, J. J., & Finn, S. (2006). Origins of academic dishonesty: Ethical orientations and personality factors associated with cheating with information technology Goldwater, P. M., & Fogarty, T. J. (2005). Responding to the challenge of academic integrity in distance learning: Using excel to guarantee individual effort Goldwater, P. M., & Fogarty, T. J. (2007). Protecting the solution: A ‘high-tech.’ method to guarantee individual effort in accounting classes Granitz, N., & Loewy, D. (2007). Applying ethical theories: Interpreting and responding to student plagiarism. Journal of Business Ethics, 72(3), 293–306. Hellyer, L., & Beadle, L. (2009). Detecting plagiarism in Microsoft excel assignments. In Proceedings of the 10th annual conference of the subject centre for information and computer sciences (pp Hill, T. G. (2011). Excel grader. Retrieved 04.02.12. Jackson, R. B., & Cherrington, J. O. (2001). IT instruction methodology and minimum competency for accounting students. Jones, K. O., Reid, J. M. V., & Bartlett, R. (2005). Student plagiarism and cheating in an IT age. In Proceedings of the international conference on computer systems and technology (Vol Joy, M., & Luck, M. (1999). Plagiarism in programming assignments. IEEE Transactions on Education, 42(2), 129–133. Kalbers, L. P. (1984). Electronic spreadsheets: Powerful and flexible educational tools. Journal of Accounting Education, 2(2), 163–168. Kulesza, C. S., & Siegel, G. (1997). It’s not your father’s management accounting! (Changes in management accounting). Kumar, A. N. (1998). Detecting and preventing plagiarism in projects. The Journal of Computing in Small Colleges, 13(5), 132–138. Manber, U. (1994). Finding similar files in a large file system. In Usenix winter technical conference (pp. 1–10). San Francisco, CA. Martin, D. F. (2006). Plagiarism and technology: A tool for coping with plagiarism. Journal of Education for Business, 80(3), 149–152. McCart, J. A., & Jarman, J. (2008). A technological tool to detect plagiarized projects in Microsoft Access. IEEE Transactions on Education, 51(2), 166–173. McLafferty, C. L., & Foust, K. M. (2004). Electronic plagiarism as a college instructor’s nightmare – Prevention and detection. Molnar, K. K., Kletke, M. G., & Chongwatpol, J. (2008). Ethics vs. IT ethics: Do undergraduate students perceive a difference? Journal of Business Ethics, 83(4), 657–671. Morris, D. E., & Kilian, C. M. (2006). Do accounting students cheat? A study examining undergraduate accounting students’ honesty and perceptions of dishonest behavior Stoner, G. (2009). Accounting students’ IT application skills over a 10-year period. Accounting Education, 18(1), 7–31. Sutherland-Smith, W. (2010). Retribution, deterrence and reform: The dilemmas of plagiarism management in universities. Teets, W. R., & Desmond, N. (1995). Anti-cheating 201: Preparing multiple versions of accounting exam problems through dynamic linking of word processing and spreadsheet programs Wiedemeier, P. D. (2002). Preventing plagiarism in computer literacy courses. Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, 17(4), 154–163. Wilhoit, S. (1994). Helping students avoid plagiarism. College Teaching, 42(4), 161–164.