What information does "INFO" provide?

[Gregory_Conestoga]

When I mark student papers I look at the "Info" section of File Properties.  Some things that always confuse and bother me me are:

1. How is it that a student can submit a large document (several thousand words), but only have a few minutes of "Editing Time"?
   I speculate the document has been copied and pasted from some other document. Is that a correct assumption?
2. What does "%username%" mean in the Author section?

Thanks, hope someone can shed light on this for me.

Greg

[#2]

Hello @Gregory_Conestoga ,

having been a student myself and writing theses in several versions myself, the editing time can be very short - especially for the clean and final copy I wanted to send out. So your assumption is essentially correct, but the assumption of plagiarism behind it may not be justified.

For more information, these articles might be helpful:
How to Tell How Long You’ve Worked on a Microsoft Word Document (howtogeek.com)

This one also mentions the privacy infringement connected to this information:

What does "total editing time" track in Microsoft Word? - Microsoft Community

To your next question: I assume this might be due to the fact that they worked on computer that doesn't have the "author" or the "owner/administrator" account set-up and therefore it shows the generic code.

[#3]

@Gregory_Conestoga 

I second the information provided by Lenka_Kerumova. The information revealed by File Properties cannot be relied on.  However if you see something like the following where the Last Saved by name is that of the student, but the author is someone else, you might question why that has happened.

[#4]

Well spotted! @Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP 

In my opinion, all this looking into computer information is a road to a disaster. There are so many variables. Just the assumption that every student has their own personal computer is dubious, or that they don't work on each other's machines...

There are better ways of proving whether they are authors.

One of them is machines (softwares, Plagiarism Checkers) which actually test texts for plagiarism. You upload the text, it is compared to whatever is on the internet (mostly in academic sites), and give you a report.

Or, more time consuming, let the students write a shorter thesis in a class, or in an hour, and then compare the language, syntax, structure of arguments, etc.

I was once warned that my text might be considered plagiarism just because I didn't put quotations - although correctly and clearly marked in the text - in quotation marks. 

L.