Detecting Plagiarism Using the WWW

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“Gotcha!” Teacher Magazine (February 2001)

http://www.edweek.org/tm/tmstory.cfm?slug=05ethics.h1

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Plagiarism involving the WWW

1. Term papers to order

2. Written assignments in all disciplines, e.g., lab reports, surveys, literature reviews, lesson plans

3. Inaccurate, incomplete citation of electronic sources

4. Downloading information without citation

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Term Papers to Order

UMCP Instructional Technology website lists over 30 sites offering free term papers to download. These include

www.sparknotes.com

www.schoolsucks.com

www.paperwriters.com

www.netessays.net

www.academic-term-papers.com

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Inaccurate, incomplete citation of electronic sources.

In-class lecture, instruction, examples

Discipline-specific style guides

Kuhn Library instruction homepage

http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/reference/instructionhomepage.php3

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Suspicious phrasing

“The Preface to the Canterbury Tales”

“Due to the pervasiveness of Christianity in the psyche of medieval Europe, Hebrew was thought to be the progenitor of all languages.”

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Searching the WWW for Sources:

1. Search engines—Metacrawler and Google are especially good

2. Commercial plagiarism detection sites:www.plagiarism.comwww.turnitin.comwww.findsame.com (free)www.howoriginal.com (free)

Testing the Detection Sites:www.findsame.com

Testing the detection sites

http://www.turnitin.com/

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For Discussion:• Decrease opportunities for plagiarism.

– Course policy defines plagiarism and spells out consequences

– Classroom ethics– Provide guidance to student about when, how, and

especially why to document sources properly– Design writing assignments to foster originality and

creativity– Read rough drafts online; provide in-class and/or

online editing workshops; monitor work in progress