How to learn to prevent and detect plagiarism? Comparison of two teaching methods

Abstract

Introduction: After various conflicts of scientists and public servants, academic integrity has gained greater importance within professional training. One of its base values is honesty, and it is precisely the antonym of this that gives rise to one of the most frequent unethical phenomena: plagiarism.

Method: A comparative and prospective study with mixed analysis was carried out from January to November 2019 and from April to November 2022 in a public tertiary care hospital located in Mexico City, in which two methods of teaching whose plan focused on the theoretical and practical bases for the knowledge, prevention and detection of plagiarism in the health sciences.

Results: A total of 20 sessions were carried out. 228 students were included, of which 107 were men and 121 women; no student was eliminated. The mean age of the participants was 21.32 ± 1.88 years and median was 20 years. The final score (average) in the M1 groups was 5.72, while in M2 it was 7.29 (p = 0.051).

Conclusions: The decrease in power relations and the use of gamification in teaching plagiarism demonstrated better results in its prevention and detection compared to the classic teaching method. Given that various institutions are currently seeking to train their communities to prevent and try to eradicate plagiarism mainly in an online modality, the results of this study offer an empirical approach that generates a disfavoring hypothesis for this type of training.