Arthur Marshall Hoyle, the former lecturer who is facing trial accused of touching students and raping one, took the stand on Friday, denying to the jury the accusations against him.
Over the course of two weeks, the court has heard from five complainants, all women, who have said Mr Hoyle, 67, touched their thighs, tried to kiss them and raped one in his campus office.
Mr Hoyle had invited the students to his office to discuss their semester one business law papers, the court has heard. There was media publicity at the time about cheat sites - where students could buy essays for money. One lecturer had found the semester's business law question uploaded onto such a site.
That he invited students to his office in April 2015 to talk about their papers is not disputed, but Mr Hoyle has pleaded not guilty and denies committing any crimes during those meetings.
Related Content
Mr Hoyle, who was a senior lecturer in law and technology at the University of Canberra, and had taught at the university for 21 years, told an ACT Supreme Court jury on Friday he was "extremely concerned" about what he had been finding while looking into possible plagiarism in the students' papers.
He said he had raised his concerns with the university's dean of education, who he said had warned him not to prejudice any future misconduct inquiry when he spoke to the students.
Mr Hoyle said he had invited 11 or 12 students to his office to discuss their papers. On Friday, through questions from his defence barrister Liesl Chapman SC, he explained how those students were chosen.
He said three students, two of whom were complainants in the case, had been referred to him by the lecturer of the same course for undergraduate students.
He said he had looked at other information available to him, such as their tutorial attendance. The court heard that three complainants had attended 3, 2 and zero tutorials respectively.
He had also looked at the percentage scores of the students' papers on the university's plagiarism and text-matching software URKUND.
The court has heard a high score meant the paper more closely matched other documents and previously submitted papers.
Mr Hoyle said of the first complainant that the paper she had submitted was a different paper to the hard copy she had submitted. It had produced an unusually low URKUND score, he said, and had also produced links to pornography sites.
Mr Hoyle admitted he had shown the woman a screenshot of one of the pornography sites in a PowerPoint slide, but said the slide was part of a "brief of evidence" he was preparing for the dean of education. It was necessary to have an image of the site, he said, because the university restricted access to pornography websites on its computers.
He said the student had cried, and he said he took her hands in his. But he denied he had propositioned the student for sex, and denied he had a sexual interest in the student.
The former lecturer faces a total eight counts of an act of indecency and two of sexual intercourse without consent.
The trial continues before Justice Elkaim.