Plagiarism officer

 It had been decided I would be the next plagiarism officer of the school. Jaco, who would still be doing the role for the remainder of the year, had given me all necessary documentation, and we had had a meeting to talk through that. He had also suggested we do the cases coming up before the official handover together. That sounded like a good idea. 

Little did I know there would be a flurry of activity. One case after the other came in! And some of them were quite complex. A few serious penalties were in order. And at least one student was quite upset.

I was glad the timing worked out that way! Jaco would ask me what I would do, and after I’d answered him he would say what his judgment was. If needs be an explanation followed. 

He sorted it all, and I was glad we had had that short period of overlap. It had been a bit of a crash course, but at least I go into this new function with a reasonable idea of what to expect. I hope very few cases will be flagged to me, but I am confident now I can deal with whatever is flagged up in an appropriate way! 

An example of the output of the similarity-checking software