Wayne Mackintosh wrote,
When you refer to plagiarism -- are you referring largely to the unauthorised copying of information?
Fascinating -- OER provides the solution -- using open licences our content encourages legitimate plagiarism - -that must be a win for the OERu
You are very focused on the cause, Wayne! I don't think using OER would deter plagiarism by students—as you know, rather than write papers themselves, they cut and paste from the Internet or use essay-writing services. This is mostly a problem in the humanities whereas the sciences have more of a cheating problem with copying/sharing solutions. Computer science, the discipline I work with mostly, has a plagiarism problem with students copying code rather than writing it themselves.
It is a problem in assignment design and also the focus on grades rather than the learning process that both students and teachers fall into. I like to see students working with the materials in ways that promote authentic learning and make cheating irrelevant. The best example I know of is the Wikipedia school and university projects, where a group of students might collaborate on writing or editing a Wikipedia entry with a goal such as creating a featured article. Students are able to develop many needed skills, including higher-order thinking, in a public way that makes plagiarism immediately problematic—an embarrassing situation to be avoided.
I know there are cultural differences with respect to how acceptable it is to copy, but I feel it is especially crucial in disciplines such as nursing and engineering that can have life-or-death consequences that students really learn the content and skills. If principles that support this could be built into the OERu system, it would be a huge gain. This would be a good time to generate ideas on how to do that.