Criminal Minds: A Plagiarism Study about Getting Away With It (for Science)

Can we benefit from students cheating? We think so. In the Criminal Minds study, first-year students are tasked with plagiarizing code and evading detection, choosing from a variety of strategies. What began as a collaboration between researchers at KIT (Germany) and KTH (Sweden) to address the shortage of open plagiarism datasets also proved to be a highly engaging pedagogical activity, creating a safe space for students to experience and discuss plagiarism from a radically different perspective. We present the study design and the controlled lab setting. We plan to repeat the study in Fall 2026 and use this poster to encourage educators to collaborate with us on future installments of the Criminal Minds study.