How to Recognize Plagiarism:
Tutorials and Tests

Improvements to this Instruction and Certification Tests: 2002-2024

We initially developed these online learning resources for our own students. Our original goal: to help students better understand plagiarism when starting their degree programs in Instructional Systems Technology (IST) at Indiana University. New IST students were (and still are) expected to pass a Certification Test, and to submit their Certificate to the department. If they plagiarize, we do not accept the excuse that they do not know what plagiarism is.

That was in 2002, now 22 years ago!

Since then, usage of these online resources by others has increased almost exponentially. Many instructors worldwide have adopted these resources, often expecting their students to pass one of our Certification Tests and submit their Certificate. We presume that this adoption has occurred through word-of-mouth, or people have found these resources by searching the Web, since we neither advertise nor do we receive compensation. Anyone is welcome to use our learning resources and tests on this site for non-profit educational purposes. We provide these resources free of charge, and have no control over how others may use them. See this news article.

A team of graduate students and faculty has contributed to these tutorials and tests over the years. Content is currently maintained by an emeritus faculty member in IST at Indiana University who donates his time and effort. We continue to do research to improve the effectiveness of these learning resources.

And we continue to present our findings at professional conferences and to publish these findings in scholarly journals and books. We hope that our research advances knowledge of instructional effectiveness during online learning. For example, see this published research journal article.

As others have discovered these online resources in the past 3 decades, worldwide usage has been increasing dramatically. Since 2016, after we had redesigned and significantly improved this online instruction, over 1,286,000 individuals from 227 countries and territories have passed a Certification Test (as of Dec. 13, 2024).

Timeline of Major Changes since 2013

Yes, we know this is a long list, but we provide it for the record. We have made a lot of changes to improve the IU Plagiarism Tutorials and Tests. Based on feedback from college and high school instructors whose students use our online resources, we have made the following revisions:

  • August, 2013: Questions on the original 10-item test were re-ordered, due to evidence of wide-spread cheating. E-mail from several instructors had identified a YouTube video with an answer key to the plagiarism test. Each time that we re-mixed the items, new answer keys were soon posted in comments to that YouTube video. The number of views of that YouTube video nearly doubled by mid-August. Consequently, we started planning for ways to improve test validity and to make it harder to cheat on the test.

  • Sept. 7, 2013: The number of questions was substantially increased to create a very large inventory. Many new questions included more subtle forms of plagiarism.
    • Each 10-item test is a random sample from the large inventory of items.
    • Since there were more difficult items, a minimum of 9 out of 10 correct answers was set as the criterion for passing a test.
    • There are literally billions of different 10-item tests possible with the new item pool.
    • Distinctions between IU and non-IU test takers were no longer made. Instead, once a test has been passed, test takers can supply their name and e-mail address to receive a Certificate with this and other unique information embedded in each Certificate.
    • Certificates were e-mailed in addition to displaying them in the user's web browser.

    These changes were made in order to make it harder to cheat via use of a distributed answer key. We had asked Google several times to remove the YouTube video. Google complied in September, 2013, due to IU copyright violation by the person who had originally posted the video in December, 2012.

  • Sept. 13, 2013: Specific numbers of questions answered correctly and incorrectly on the 10-question tests were no longer provided in test results. This helped prevent obtaining a Certificate by simply guessing answers, using the 'Back' button, making a change, and then getting a new evaluation of the same test to see if the score improved. There was considerable evidence that this strategy was used by many individuals until they passed the test, without actually understanding what plagiarism is.

  • Sept. 21, 2013: Only the first attempt for each randomized test provided results and the opportunity to earn a Certificate on a specific computer. This policy of restricting each test to a single attempt was based on evidence of wide-spread cheating via the "back button strategy."

    All 10 questions must be answered on each test within 40 minutes. Since these 10-item tests are taken anonymously, the IP number of the computer used for each test indicates when that test is attempted and failed at least once. A new test must be taken for another evaluation of answers.

    The IP number was reported on the Certificate, along with the date and time the test was passed, how long it took, and the name supplied by the test taker.

    After someone has failed a test, an error message of "too many failed attempts" occurs when the same test is attempted again at the same computer at that IP address. This can be easily remedied by clicking a button to take a new 10-item test. It also prevents multiple attempts of answering the same 10 questions until that test is passed by one or more individuals at the same computer. This is by design. It is not a technical error with the testing system.

    In summary, the same computer at the same IP address can be used repeatedly if a new 10-question test is taken each time.

  • Sept. 23, 2013: The practice test was enhanced by providing new examples of subtle forms of plagiarism. Specific feedback on each question was given in the practice test, so that students have opportunities to see their mistakes and correct them.

    • Of course, the full tutorial continued to be available for student learning.
  • August 13, 2014: A choice of Certification tests was made available for persons who are:

    • Undergraduate students and advanced high school students
      • less difficult test, large inventory of questions
      • 10 randomly selected items for each test administration
      • must correctly answer at least 9 out of 10 questions to pass
      • primarily for college undergraduates and high school students
    • Graduate students
      • more difficult test, very large inventory of questions
      • randomly selected items administered one at a time
      • number of items vary for each test administration (using a computerized classification test method; test lengths typically vary from 8 to 20 questions)
      • test ends as soon as pass/fail decision is reached at the 95 percent confidence level
      • primarily for college students at the master's and doctoral level.
  • August 23, 2014: Test takers and their instructors can check the validity of a Certificate, if the test was passed after 12 noon (U.S. Eastern Time), August 13, 2014. The unique Test ID, combined with one other specific fact reported on the Certificate, is required to validate a Certificate. A URL for test validation is displayed on the Certificate under the student signature. If a Certificate is questionable, patterns that could indicate attempts to "game the testing system" are reported, so that instructors can judge for themselves whether further action is warranted.

  • August 25, 2014: If a Certificate is determined to be valid (as described above), it can be viewed again in a web browser. This is intended to address the problem of "lost Certificates" (e.g., "My dog ate my homework."). We do not send new Certificates if they have been lost. However, if test takers retain their unique Test IDs, they can retrieve their Certificates themselves.

    Certificates earned before August 13, 2014, are not eligible due to changes in the tests. There will be a time limit for how long after a test is passed that this can be done. The very large amount of test records of Certificates earned will be a limiting factor, but we hope to keep records for several months in each semester (fall, spring, and summer) before archival.

  • August 30, 2014: Computers sharing the same IP number can now take tests at the same time without causing the "too many failed attempts" issue. This had been reported as a problem in Local Area Networks (LANs) where computers share a router and its IP address. Individual IP numbers within the LAN are hidden behind the router's firewall for security--a good practice (e.g.,in a computer lab or home network). Uniqueness of a test is now determined by a combination of IP number and Test ID.

  • September 3, 2014: New examples of 17 patterns of plagiarism and non-plagiarism were created. This was done in response to requests by users for examples in addition to those previously available (5 each on word-for-word and paraphrasing plagiarism). Now there are a total of 25 examples with explanations of how a writing sample can be changed to avoid plagiarism (with side-by-side comparisons) and 2 further examples of appropriate quotation and paraphrasing to avoid plagiarism.

  • September 4, 2014: Feedback on types of mistakes made is provided when a Certification Test is not passed. While feedback on specific answers to test questions is not provided in order to help maintain test item security, an analysis of patterns of errors made on a test is now conducted on each test taken. On the test results page, specific links are dynamically provided based on analysis of types of errors made by each test taker (e.g., to Clueless Quote, Crafty Cover-up, etc.). This was done in response to requests by test takers for better feedback to help rectify their mistakes in identifying word-for-word plagiarism, paraphrasing plagiarism, and non-plagiarism.

  • September 5, 2014. Test items were modified to make it easier to spot similarities in the original source material and student versions. Particularly relevant parts of the source were bolded for each item, so that test takers can better focus on whether the student version is plagiarized, and if so, what kind according to the criteria we use.

    Second, the language on the test buttons and Certificates was changed to clarify the main target audiences (undergraduate and advanced high school students).

  • September 7-11, 2014. Examples and practice sections of the tutorial were improved. As part of the content revision for the examples and practice, inconsistent wording and layout was fixed, and new color cues were introduced to highlight and distinguish important terms.

    Immediately following the changes introduced September 3-7, 2014, the rate of passing a Certification test improved by 141 percent. Over 34,000 new Certificates were issued Sept. 5 - Oct. 31.

  • September 9, 2014. Feedback in the practice test was enhanced. In addition to the previous hints on questions answered incorrectly, specific links to further examples are now provided with the hints for the kind of error made.

  • September 11, 2014. The method of generating unique Test IDs was changed. The test ID is now a long string of numbers, and no longer includes a decimal point, as of 8 a.m. on Sept. 11. The validation service will accept both the previous and current forms of test IDs.

  • March 6, 2015. A public link was provided for test validation, to make it easier for students and instructors to check the validity of a Certificate, as well as for students to retrieve a lost Certificate. Previously, this link was not made public but provided only on a validly earned Certificate itself, in order to discourage robot attacks on the website.

  • August 1, 2015. Registration for the Undergraduate Test was added to make it easier for test takers to retrieve their Certificates by logging in with their e-mail address used during registration and a password they have created. Instructors can also view Certificates as before by entering unique information provided by the test taker.
  • January 2, 2016. Newly designed instruction was made available to the public. The new tutorials are organized by increasing levels of difficulty. Additions and changes:

    • New video cases about plagiarism,
    • New dynamic demonstrations of how to avoid plagiarism,
    • New reflection activities,
    • New practice questions with immediate feedback on recognizing plagiarism,
    • New practice tests with summary feedback at each level of difficulty,
    • Certification Tests for master's and doctoral students that now parallel those for undergraduates and advanced high school students,
    • Retrieval and validation of Certification Test results that continue to be an important feature for students and their instructors, and
    • Improved layout for use on small devices with touch screens (smartphones and tablets).
    • Google Analytics implemented to better understand what users do on the website.

    See summary of improvements in the new tutorial.

  • August 28, 2017. Video cases and demonstrations were modified to play back on more devices and operating systems. Rare problems of videos not playing on certain combinations of device types and operating systems were resolved by moving the videos to a newer distribution platform at Indiana University (Kaltura MediaSpace). Lower resolution videos were ported to YouTube for playback on devices with slow Internet connections.

  • September 4, 2017: A list of frequently asked questions with answers was added to the site. This was done to reduce e-mail from users with common problems in registering, passing tests, etc. This FAQ page has reduced these kinds of e-mail and time spent responding to them.

  • September 21, 2017: Professionally-edited closed captioning was completed for the 9 video cases and 12 screencasts by Indiana University UITS Assistive Technology and Accessibility Centers.
  • Early 2018: The IU plagiarism test item inventory was increased substantially. Now there are trillions of unique tests for undergraduate and advanced high school students, as well as trillions for graduate students.

  • June 11, 2018: The MySQL database for storing student registrations and records for passing a test was moved to a new server environment at Indiana University. While users can see no differences, the "new plumbing" behind the scenes provides a more robust record-keeping system.

  • December 12, 2018: Due to changes in PHP versions (a Web scripting language) at Indiana University, PHP code was necessarily modified for Certification Tests, their validation, and for practice tests with feedback. Since password encryption methods had also changed, users who registered prior to this date are required to reset or change their passwords.

  • January 16, 2019: An explicit privacy policy was posted for this website.

  • May 2, 2019: The 500,000th person passed a Certification Test since Jan. 2, 2016 when newly designed tutorials and tests replaced the legacy tutorial and test.

  • July 24, 2019: Virtual host name created: https://plagiarism.iu.edu

  • July 28, 2019: Legacy tutorial retired, no longer available as a choice.

  • November 16, 2019: This website moved to new web hosting location at Indiana University. Web requests should be automatically redirected to https://plagiarism.iu.edu.

  • Ongoing, since Sept., 2017: Changes and additions to frequently asked questions to further address student concerns and questions.

  • January 23, 2020: Added interactive decision support for determining answers to Certification Test questions.

  • January 22, 2021, in the evening: More than one million individuals have registered their e-mails for Certification Tests since we launched the redesigned Plagiarism Tutorials and Tests on Jan. 2, 2016. Over 764,000 had passed a Certification Test from 225 countries and territories on that milestone achievement.

  • May 11, 2021: Conditional feedback on Certification Tests was modified to address the confusion between types of errors and number of errors, with reference to the FAQ explanation.

  • July 20, 2021: older URL's with the tilde (~) character no longer redirect to https://plagiarism.iu.edu, but may instead result in "not found" errors.

  • July 20, 2021: Book published with research on the effectiveness of the IU Plagiarism Tutorials and Tests in 2019 and 2020: Innovative Learning Analytics for Evaluating Instruction.

  • August 26, 2021: More than 838,000 Certificates have been awarded for passing a Certification Test, since newly designed instruction was implemented on Jan. 2, 2016.

  • January 10, 2022: Empirical study about the effectiveness of the IU Plagiarism Tutorials and Tests was published in prominent research journal as featured research: Analysis of Patterns in Time for Evaluating Effectiveness of First Principles of Instruction.

  • January 22, 2022: More than 914,000 Certificates have been awarded for passing a Certification Test, since Jan. 2, 2016.

  • February 15, 2022: News article published about 20th anniversary of these learning resources.

  • March 21, 2022: More than 944,000 Certificates awarded.

  • July-August, 2022: We had improved the expert level of instruction by providing further examples which addressed misleading or careless writing. We also added a link to each plagiarism pattern which identified specific decision rules used. This in turn made test feedback more helpful which lists respective links to the types of mistakes made on the Certification Test just completed and the corresponding correct answer for each type of error.

  • September 11, 2022, at about 10:50 p.m. Eastern Time: One million Certificates have been awarded since 2016.

  • March 16, 2023: Due to changes in PHP versions, password encryption methods have been updated. Users who registered prior to this date are required to reset or change their passwords in order to login to take Certification Tests and to validate Certificates earned.

  • October 27, 2023: Entire website rebuilt to better accommodate persons with disabilities.

  • February 19, 2024: Cheating occurred by likely use of highly sophisticated hacking software to automatically take Certification Tests and to guess answers by a trial-and-error brute force cyberattack strategy. Our logs indicated that over 55,500 CTs were taken via this automated attack, resulting in 2 passed tests. Since this was abuse of IU computing resources, this user has been banned and their Certificates invalidated. Chances of passing a test by solely guessing answers are theoretically estimated to be about 1 in 20,000 attempts. This is the only documented case of cheating in this manner in the past 8 years. In an earlier, less sophisticated case of cyberattack, a different user was detected and banned in real-time after about 375 failed attempts. Further steps have since been taken to modify the testing system software to help detect and prevent similar attacks in the future. Detailed logs of every Certification Test that is taken are very helpful in monitoring use. We also monitor the rate of passing CTs for unusual variations--i.e., when it increases or decreases from past trends.

  • Dec. 13, 2024: More than 1,286,449 Certificates awarded in the past 8+ years (3,266 days). That's an average of about 394 tests passed per day.

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