A pair of University College of the North (UCN) professors are part in an international research project looking at university plagiarism prevention.
Dr. Joseph Atoyebi, of the UCN Faculty of Arts, Business & Sciences, and Dr. Carolyn Creed, of the Faculty of Eduction, applied for and received a partnership grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to take part in the SSHRC Partnership on University Plagiarism Prevention (PUPP). It involves dozens of universities from Canada, the United States and Europe. Nearly $2.5 million will be distributed among them over a seven-year period until the 2027-28 school year.
"I cannot be prouder of this auspicious privilege to be part of this multinational effort to understand why students plagiarize and find better ways to prevent plagiarism,” said Atoyebi in a UCN press release. “As a linguist, I am interested in exploring the connection between language proficiency and plagiarism."
The project seeks to develop teaching tools to help reduce plagiarism by increasing resources to teach proper referencing and research skills.
“I believe university courses will benefit from concerted efforts to keep students honest and accountable in their use of outside sources,” said Creed. “I hope to develop writing tasks that will add to the digital scrapbook which the SSHRC grant will fund.”
The project marks the first time that UCN is participating in an international research partnership.
“This is an exciting development for research at UCN,” said UCN research manager Dr. Gurusamy Chinnasamy.
