FEBRUARY24_UNIKUM_WEB

equired straight away in Norwegian, but not when trying to
navigate the UiA website in English. She had to Google-translate
the English term into Norwegian, before searching the native
language version of the website to solve the problem. Anderson
reports, however, that this issue was resolved by the end of the
Spring semester last year. UiA are currently working on a new
website, which, by happenstance, your reporter gave a usability
test as a new student for the International Activities taskforce in
early September. Regarding the new website, Hilding explained:
‘UiA‘s new website will go live in the second half of April
2024. There will be a longer period which both the new
and the old website will be available, but the duration of
this has not been determined. In the long run, much of the
content on the old websites will not be available on UiA‘s
new website, as not all content will be carried forward. UiA
does not aim to have all Norwegian content on the website
available in English, but will ensure that important and
relevant information is available in both languages.’
Ouriginal, formerly Urkund, is a plagiarism detection tool, for
which UiA holds separate licences for staff and student usage. As
Anderson explains, “when [faculy] are checking [assignments],
the teacher has a special function [where] they can upload for a
plagiarism check without uploading the actual text but students
don’t have that same option.” With the student licence, Ouriginal/
Urkund saves the document uploaded by the student to its
programme, exposing them, wittingly or unwittingly, to the risk of
self-plagiarism when submitting the assignment proper since their
‘check’ can be classified as ‘publishing’ now that it exists online for
the algorithm (through Inspera and the Ouriginal/Urkund teacher
licence) to cross-reference. As such, students are advised against
using it.
‘[t]he use of sources is permitted in many exams, and often
absolutely necessary. The problem is not disclosing which
sources have been used and how they have been used. Here,
both UiA and other institutions provide good information
on their websites, among other things, and “details”
such as quotation marks and the like are crucial for the
examiner‘s understanding of the student’s performance.’
Khrono also published pieces on plagiarism at UiA in May and July
2022 and June 2023. In the latter report, data from 13 universities
and university colleges across Norway found that UiA has expelled
37 students for self-plagiarism (11 of these were for plagiarism
proper, also) since 2018 while the University of Tromsø excluded
none. UiA prohibited the most students for the above violations by
more than half of all the responsive institutions, with the University
of Oslo and University of South-Eastern Norway removing 17 each.
Unfortunately for Duncan, who did disclose which sources had
been used, citing each in-text to introduce the quoted material,
he didn’t explicitly state how they had been used, by the absence
of quotation marks. Unfortunately for UiA, if ‘good information’
As Anderson highlighted multiple times during our meeting,
Duncan’s research was (with great irony) so thorough it made
UiA “aware of information flaws that were in the system.” For
example, the links to kildekompasset (or, in English, citation
compass) that were allegedly available on Canvas, but, during his
appeals process, weren’t, as highlighted to the Appeals Committee
through screenshots illustrating no results. His research prompted
discussion on plagiarism within the student parliament on whether
the severity of punishments should be expanded from three to
seven levels to allow for more nuance within the disciplinary
process. Despite the help Duncan gave UiA, it wasn’t reciprocated.
One would conclude, therefore, that with the mistakes made by the
university and no history of cheating by the student, an annulment
of the submitted assignment (the lowest level of severity) would’ve
been administered. Instead, an annulment and two semester
exclusion were decreed by the institution and its Court of Appeals
without witness testimony even when three other students on the
same course were also accused of plagiarism.
Speaking to independent news outlet Khrono in August last year,
UiA Rector Sunniva Whitaker wrote, in an article entitled ‘Cheating
and “self-plagiarism” at UiA’:
Jason Duncan was a potential full-degree master‘s
student at the University of Agder
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