Plagiarism detection and prevention techniques in engineering education

Plagiarism seriously damages the education process in a number of ways, where it prevents students from developing the skills of creative thinking and critical analysis and it undermines the trust between lecturers and students. Furthermore, if plagiarism is undetected, it can impact the reputation of the academic institution and devalue its degrees. In this paper, we present two techniques for plagiarism detection and prevention. The first method is based on the allocation of a unique assignment for each student, while the second approach is based on the use of individual presentation of coursework findings. These techniques are applied to three courses at the Master level in the University of Southampton, where we show that they are effective at reducing plagiarism and improving students' understanding.