Fighting Plagiarism
At one time the Internet made it
increasingly easier for students to copy the work of others. Websites with
pre-written essays popped up all over the Internet and for a small fee students
could purchase these papers and turn them in as their own original work.
Teachers were limited on how they could identify these plagiarized papers.
The Internet also made it easy for
students to copy and paste sentences and even complete paragraphs from online
sources. Often times the copied work would stand out from the rest of the paper
allowing teachers to realize plagiarism may have occurred.
Websites have been developed to detect
text that matches other sources. Basically these sites are plagiarism trackers.
A widely used plagiarism detecting
website is Turnit.com. This site checks students' work against the world's
largest comparable database for possible plagiarism. It’s a simple
program. Students submit their paper into the Turnitin website and then the
program goes to work. It checks for text that matches other sources in the
large Turnitin database and highlights all matching text. The checked and
highlighted version of the submitted paper is available for student and teacher
viewing.
Turnitin.com is not perfect. It detects
common phrases and even text parenthesis and highlights it. Common phrases are
usually not a sign of plagiarism. Quotes and in text citations, if cited
properly, are not forms of plagiarism. Teachers have to view the highlighted
material, which is the text that matches other text in the database, and decide
if the material was actually plagiarized. Turnitin.com does not do all the
work, but certainly helps aid teachers in detecting plagiarism.
My Opinion
It’s easy to plagiarize. Websites
selling essays are plastered all over the Internet. But there’s also the more
innocent type of plagiarizing where a student “borrows” a few words or
sentences here and there to fill a paper requirement. No matter the intent,
using someone else’s work as your own is plagiarizing and plagiarizing is
wrong. In a sense it’s stealing. Your stealing someone else’s original thoughts
and ideas and attempting to pass them off as your own, it’s not right.
Plagiarizing isn’t getting any harder but detecting it is getting easier…and
that’s half the battle.
Websites like Turnitin.com help
discourage students from plagiarizing. Students know all copied work will show
up to their instructor in a highlighted document. That’s a scary thought to
most students since a lot of schools have a 0 tolerance policy for high levels
of plagiarism.
Turnitin.com also helps teachers identify
plagiarism. This is beneficial in the grading process and can also lead to
lessons on ways to prevent plagiarism, which is helpful to all involved.
Cheating is easy, but now so is
detecting it.
