The GAP Project (Gaming Against Plagiarism) is a collaborative project between the University of Florida Marston Science Librarians and the UF Digital Worlds Institute. The GAP prototype consists of three mini-games that when played sequentially support understanding and appreciation of the issues involved in ethical conduct related to intellectual property.

GAP was funded as National Science Foundation Grant 1033002.

Synopsis of the Gaming Against Plagiarism (GAP) series

Game 1: Cheats and Geeks
Inspired by the board game Candy Land, the player has to navigate through Peer Reviews, hidden Quizzes about plagiarism, and Funding Opportunities as they race to get the first publication in their cohort. Because of the prevailing lax attitudes toward plagiarism on campus, the player is able to try to cheat their way across the game board to victory. The player can cheat (A) by plagiarizing the position of the other player ahead of them, (B) by falsifying their position on the game board to advance, or (C) fabricating a path on the game board that does not exist.

Game 2
The player goes to work on behalf of the anti-plagiarism corps combating research misconduct around campus. However, they need boots on the ground. In this hybrid management/matching game that builds on the SimCity model, the player navigates a graphical map of a college campus, rushing to and from buildings that have a research misconduct problem. Once at a building where a research misconduct conflict is happening, a player has to identify the type of research misconduct from six types of plagiarism as well as falsification and fabrication, and implement interventions to detect, prevent or resolve issues of research misconduct.

Game 3
To quash the research misconduct problem on campus and return it to normal, the player is tasked with catching an arch-plagiarist in the act. The player acts as a detective, sleuthing through clues and interviewing suspects and witnesses as she tries to discover who the arch-plagiarist is. The player has to construct proofs using an advanced “argumentation constructor interface“ about what actually constitutes plagiarism, thereby exhibiting their ability to analyze and evaluate different types of plagiarism.