I also have used Google as a quick acid test and have found a few plagiarized papers that way. As everyone has mentioned Turnitin.com. I used to work on a campus and saw students attempting to cheat on their online classes in computer labs. It is wise to monitor that area so there isn't an opportunity to cheat. Also students can buy answer keys online these days so monitoring for answers to questions that look too perfect or just like your answer key can help you find cheaters.
Use the many tools available, i.e. Turnitin. There are other tell tale signs such as writing above their level, sudden shifts in tone/mechanics, writing that is too good to be true. It is very easy to catch cheaters if you school really wants them caught.
Great ideas John. Thank you for sharing.
I am intrigued by your comment "It is very easy to catch cheaters if your school really wants them caught." Can you elaborate a little more on that?
Programs like Turnitin are a big help. This program will point out similarities with information in a very large data base. Where it can get a little difficult is when a student cites their own work. Technically, they should have the right to use their own intellectual property. In order to determine whether or not a student's submission with a high similarity rating is their own is sometimes difficult to do. Often it requires the instructor pursuing permission to view the original paper and that may take considerable effort. Nevertheless, programs like Turnitin are a big help.
However, my favorite way to ensure original work is to give assignments that require analysis and processing of data. Lab simulations lend themselves to this kind of analysis. Since each student is working with a unique set of data (normally generated by them in the course of the lab), they must understand the concepts to successfully complete the work. Since understanding is one of our key goals, this kind of testing is very powerful.
I agree that the more we create assignments that are specific to the student and the course being taught, the chances of cheating are reduced. Certainly having students analyze the data that they generated is a great way to do that.
In reality, if someone wants to circumvent the online environment to cheat, it would indeed be easy to do. So if Joe Smith solicits or gets Bill Brown to complete all of his online assignments there really isn't a way to know or detect that.
Our institution subscribes to Turnitin plagiary software which is an excellent tool to ascertain "original" vs. "copied or plagiarized" work.
Until and unless there are additional safeguards created utilizing fingerprint or retina scan technology or similar facial imaging capture tied to a session/pc/keyboard interface, I believe we need to rely on the principle of academic honesty.
It's not a perfect system, nor is it a perfect world, but hopefully honesty will enter into the equation as opposed to surrogate students performing classroom participation and/or submissions on behalf of another.
Presuming this becomes a problem of some magnitude, I am sure some enterprising company or entity will create solutions to solve it technically.
Yes, I am sure a future Bill Gates of the world can create a great system to deal with this specific challenge for online learning!
The tools can help you detect plagiarism. However, they do not detect plagiarism themselves. If students cite the information correctly, the tools cannot pick up on that. The tools can also be great teaching tools since it they can show students where they may need to paraphrase better or synthesize material more.
There is a difference between cheating and plagiarism, which many of the previous posts do not address. While plagiarism is a serious offense in itself, it can be intentional or unintentional. Based on the students that I have worked with, about 80% of them, do not have the skills to write well right away. They often cite material wrong and do not paraphrase enough. I do not consider this cheating since the students are attempting to do the work on there own. As an instructor this is a perfect "teaching moment". Tools like Turn It In detect similiarity, which does not always mean plagiarism. It is up to the instructors to differential them.
In an all online environment, it is very hard to tell if students are doing the work themselves. If the student typically does not receive good grades and then improves drastically, it creates questions in my mind such as how is the student improving so much and what happened in the past that he/she was not submitting work of the same quality.
I think discussing academic honesty is important to cover in any class. While the university that I work at does not have an honor statement, I feel that students who have to write on the paper that they certify that it is his/her own will help. Often times, as instructors we have to take the word of the students that it is his/her own unless we have concrete evidence that it is not.
By the way, I didn't mention it before, but the way students generate their own data is through online laboratory simulations. There are some really good online labs out there. Because they each have unique data, there really can't be any cheating on the analysis part. If they collaborate, I don't mind. Because collaboration is a good skill. They still must understand in order to do the analyses properly, and understanding is what we really would like to evaluate.
Can you tell me a little bit more about how use the plagiarism detectors as teaching tools? That is certainly intriguing to me.
I agree that students sometimes struggle with what plagiarism is and in many cases do not even realize they are doing it. Spending time working with the students to teach them what plagiarism is and how not to do it is a great idea.
The truth is we can never truly be sure if the students are completing the work for themselves. However, one of the tools we use in our online environment is a "similarity score" - the higher the score, the more likely it is not original work. It also cites the potential source it is most similar to. My question is: how high of a similarity score warrants the student having to re-submit, eg is it 70%? And if the score is 90-100% similar, do I take this as a "teaching moment" to help with learning to paraphrase better? I have done this the first time it happens, but the second time, I feel less inclined to do so, and more inclined to believe it is an act of plagiarism.
To prevent cheating, I try to equip students with a multitude of sources to draw information from and explain things several different ways to help ensure that the material is so understandable that they feel confident about answering questions and assignments in their own way. I try to make myself as available as possible to help if they are confused by the material.
I haven't worked with the tool that you are referring to so I don't think I can answer your questions. Has anyone else on the discussion used such a tool and could answer Dania's questions?
I will be teaching a visual online course where students will be submitting individual designs based on the software they are learning. While there is no online tool to detect plagerism of a visual nature (other than your own eyes!), I keep digital copies of all student work as when there are similarities between designs I ask the students to complete an assignment in real time so I can assess their skillset.
Hello Dania-
I believe I know what tool you are referring to. I do not accept scores of higher than 25% without penalty. If their orignality verification score is less than 25% great and no points are taken off. If it is higher depending on what the score is I will either knock points off for not enough orignal content or make them redo it. If there is lack of in-text citation and the OV score is very high like over 55% it may be plaigarized and take the next steps that my school has in place for plaigarized work.
That is a good tip Adam. Thanks for sharing it with our group.
I make every effort to detect plagiarism, such as using TurnItIn and looking for writing style changes. I also have the solutions to the assignments in the courses I teach that can be purchased from online sites, such as BrainMass.com. Plagiarism cheapens everyone's education because when graduates get to the workforce, they will be unable to complete the tasks expected of them as college graduates, giving the university a bad reputation. Furthermore, students who plagiarize have character flaws that may lead them to behaving unethically, and perhaps illegally, a signficant issue in business, and particularly, in finance.
You are right, unethical behavior happens everywhere, unfortunately. Because it is assumed that it is easy to cheat on your online class, online learning has struggled with establishing credibility. Fortunately, I think there are enough students and teachers that take online learning seriously and are dedicated to learning and teaching in this format.
