Investigation Support

If faculty suspect their student has committed Contract Cheating (i.e. someone else has been paid to complete the student’s assignment on their behalf), they may request an Authorship Investigate report. The software uses linguistic forensics to analyze and compare the student’s current submissions to their previous submissions.

Please note that all assignments being compared must have been submitted to Turnitin. If students are in their first semester, an Authorship Investigate report may not be possible due to lack of comparative material. An Authorship Investigate report will not reveal plagiarism or copying; it can only demonstrate if the actual file handed in by the student may have been created by someone else. Authorship Investigate reports can be part of a larger investigation, but are often inconclusive on their own.

Please email all requests to AuthorshipInvestigateRequest@conestogac.on.ca and include the following information: 

• Turnitin submission ID (this is found in the information icon within the submission)
  •  A report cannot be completed without the submission
  •  These IDs cannot be “cut and pasted.” Please ensure the ID is properly recorded.
• Student name
• Date of submission
• Faculty name
• Course code

Contract cheating is defined as "the act of a student contracting another (for pay, for trade, or a favour) to complete academic work (i.e., assignment, exam, paper, etc.)." Using a Contract Cheating service or having another person complete any academic work is strictly prohibited at Conestoga College.

A useful resource to assess for Contract Cheating is the Contract Cheating Detection for Makers guide. Special thanks to the London and South East Academic Integrity Network - Contract Cheating Working Group.

If Contract Cheating is suspected, best practice is to contact the Academic Integrity Office for support.

If faculty discover course content on a filesharing website, they can forward the name of the assignment or the course code, and the URLs of any discovered documents, to AcademicIntegrityTakedownRequest@conestogac.on.ca. Our support team will request document removal, and follow up with faculty on the status of their request.

IMPORTANT: All course content created by a Conestoga faculty member is protected by copyright, including rubrics, templates, and assessment questions. Student-created content is owned by that student. If there is no Conestoga-created content in the file, third-Party websites will not remove that material.

If the student-created content contains identifying information, and the student is still at Conestoga, the support team will connect with the student directly and warn them that if the material is used for misconduct, they will also receive an incident. Although we cannot force students to remove material, most students will attempt to remove their materials once they understand the risks.

Weekly drop-in hours aim to provide faculty with the opportunity to chat directly with a member of the AI team regarding questions on academic integrity.

Drop-in hours are only available for Conestoga faculty members. Only authorized users can join the Zoom link, so please ensure you log in using your Conestoga account. 

Click here for update-to-date hours and information for the current term.

Email Templates and Coaching Strategies have been created to assist Conestoga faculty in communicating with students during the procedure for academic incidents.

Faculty are not required to use email templates in their communications, and may make any changes to the template that they deem appropriate. If you have suggestions for a template, please email Carla Mangahis, Academic Integrity Specialist.

If a suspicious IP Address has accessed a student’s account, and faculty suspect someone else has completed an assessment on their student’s behalf, Cybersecurity can assist. Cybersecurity can confirm whether the IP address is one not typically used by the student, or if the address is outside of the usual geographical location of the student.

Please note that IP Address confirmations require the faculty member to gather the IPs from the learning system that they are asking for confirmation on. Requests for IP information that faculty cannot access will not be processed. No IP information will be provided beyond what can be gathered by the faculty member.

The response from Cybersecurity will only confirm or deny that the account was compromised. Personal device or account information is not gathered for academic or learning purposes and cannot be provided. IPs are not exact, and there is a possibility of incorrect information. Please take this into account when using this as evidence in any case.

Submit a form to Conestoga's Cyber Security team

The Plagiarism Decision Tree assists faculty when reviewing student written work.

IMPORTANT: Please use this resource with discretion. It does not capture all the complexities of plagiarism, and it is not a "one size fits all" framework for detecting plagiarism.

Decision Tree

The Turnitin AI Detection score is a reflection of how much of the assessment was written in a "predictable" mode, similar to that which might be created by a Generative AI tool. It attempts to show both how much of the assessment is similar to writing that is fully generated by AI, and how much of the assessment is similar to writing (written by a human or an AI tool) that is paraphrased by generative AI. Below 20%, the score is unreliable and should be disregarded. Beyond 20%, there is no magic number above which the score is definitely a sign of misconduct. The detection score has a baseline 1 in 100 false positive rate, and that rate is higher when English is not the student's first language. Use the Turnitin AI Detection score as a red flag that draws attention to the piece. Faculty should then review the paper for further potential evidence of AI. For more information on this process, review the potential evidence of generative AI use.

IMPORTANT: Please note that these are general guidelines, and all situations must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

Best practice is for the Similarity Report to be visible to students. Students should have the option to submit their assignment to Turnitin multiple times, and make changes up to the due date. For assistance setting up Turnitin with these settings, contact eConestoga.

There is no ‘threshold’ where a similarity score is either ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ The score only means that the highlighted parts of the assessment are similar to a previously identified source - whether that be a legitimately cited source, a student's own work submitted (accidentally or intentionally) into another dropbox, or a genuine case of plagiarism. Each Similarity Report needs to be examined to understand whether a student has plagiarized and whether there is a problem. An assignment can have a high similarity score due to poor writing skills, but still not be plagiarized.

If an attempt has been made to cite the source of the flagged text, but the APA format is incorrect, then talk with the student and ideally try to deal with the issue in the rubric (i.e., deduct marks for poor APA formatting). In addition, faculty can also submit a Citing, Referencing and Paraphrasing Education, which will encourage the student to attend the Citing and Referencing Your Work workshop to improve these skills. Please keep intentionality in mind. If a student did not cite and reference properly (or at all), but it appears there was no intention to deceive faculty about the author of the flagged text, an incident still should not be filed. Instead, point students to our APA supports and deal with the issue in-rubric.

Review the Interpreting the Turnitin Originality Report - Staff Guide for additional support.

Reference

• Bailey, A., & Ellam, L. (2012) Interpreting the Turnitin originality report - staff guide.https://cpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.brighton.ac.uk/dist/3/215/files/2012/03/Interpreting-the-Originality-Report-staff-guide.pdf