59
In this kind of hearing, evidence will be paramount. "I know I did not cheat" isn't sufficient - that's just a denial. You need more, e.g.:
Can you show that you could not possibly have known about these 2 reports?
Do you have drafts of the report, preferably with time stamps, as you were writing it?
Did you work with anyone else? If so, can they vouch for ...
25
Firstly, use version control. It's quite likely that you've produced your report in either MS Word, Libre Office or Google Docs. All of these programs store old revisions, although Google Docs stores all of the revisions while Word and Libre Office only a limited number. If you're able to produce evidence of partial work, it'll be clear you've produced the ...
16
I've read the above answers, and they seem to give pretty good advice, but I have some more for you that isn't about procedures of college, but on personal etiquette and experience when being questioned by those who have authority.
In the military we say, "He who yells first has lost the argument."
When you go into this, have your facts ready, and find ...
14
Find an advocate to support you. Some universities have an office (ombudsman) for this. In other places a student organization provides help. You may even need a lawyer if you are able to afford one. Another professor who trusts you might be able to help.
Papers were similar. It happens. I assume that whoever did the previous work had the same teacher, ...
13
You don't have the option of resubmitting the reports -- and haven't since the day you handed in the reports. If a hearing process has been started, it will be finished.
68% similarity is a high number, and unlikely to happen by pure coincidence. I suggest you examine your process of writing your lab reports with a fine tooth comb, and be ready to convey ...
11
I studied in the United States (bachelor's and PhD). In my school, it was very common practice to list "TBA" (to be announced) for course professors, especially undergraduate courses. Through my years in the university, including becoming a part-time instructor myself as a PhD student, I got to know that it was pretty much always a logistic issue. Even if ...
7
I am a professor. Even if you don't have any "hard" evidence that you wrote it yourself, one thing that would be convincing to me, if I was on this committee, was that you knew the material you handed in. E.g. you could take an oral exam on the material. So, make sure you really know what you handed in and why you wrote it the way you did.
And as written on ...
5
In addition to other excellent answers, I suggest you use make the following argument:
Rare events are likely in large populations
... to explain why it is reasonable for your version of events to have occurred.
The panel would be thinking: "It's extremely unlikely for independently-written reports to have such a high degree of similarity - @Ballislyf ...
answered Nov 2 at 18:36
einpoklum - reinstate Monica
29.7k2 gold badges47 silver badges158 bronze badges
4
From turnitin.psu.edu:
False Positives
A false positive, that is a paper with a high similarity score that is
not the result of a student committing plagiarism, can occur for the
following reasons.
If a rough draft is stored in the Turnitin repository, you may get a
false positive for a final draft.
If a student submits a paper to ...
4
I will give a separate answer for textbooks and for scholarly papers. The difference is that textbooks normally come with exercises to help solidify the understanding of the material.
For a scholarly work in a technical field, however, a proven method is to read the paper three times, but with a different focus each time.
The first reading is something ...
4
There is a large and thriving community studying what is commonly known as Economics and Computation. This includes
Algorithmic Game Theory: the study of computational strategic agents. A good reference for this is the seminal Algorithmic Game Theory book. This subfield includes routing games (how selfish agents behave in network routing), mechanism design ...
1
The short answer is that it depends. Some will support your visa application others will accept international students only if they already hold a visa (sometimes a specific type of visa).
1
Here's a little more detail on Turnitin's process. It's a little too much for a comment, and offers some hints as to what's going on.
Turnitin (produces a "similarity score" using a black-box algorithm, but the marker can see duplicated passages, and in many cases their sources*. In the reports I marks, a similarity score of around 20% is common for ...
1
Related to your first point, but instead of just writing down whatever you read, you could summarize the material and write down the important points. You could also write them in the form of a blog post (not necessarily public), where you explain the key ideas to the reader. Combining multiple sources (point 3) would be even better -- you might end up ...
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