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Online Cheating
A New Twist to an Old Problem - Part 2
Cary
Anderson
Canisius College
Posted: May, 11, 2001 Student
Affairs Online, 2 (Spring)
On-line cheating troubles educators. Easy access to materials and
simple text manipulation can make cutting corners or even outright
plagiarism a possible outcome for the typical assignment. This
article is the second of three installments examining strategies for
dealing with on-line academic misconduct. This article deals with
"higher-tech" techniques for detecting on-line cheating, which can be
utilized after suspicions have been raised about the legitimacy of a
paper. Information on using the initial low-tech screening techniques
is found in Part
1. The next and final installment will focus on developing
methods to address students' underlying values and behaviors.
The most straightforward method of detecting online plagiarism is
to use one or more of the popular Web-based search engines such as
Alta Vista, Google,
or HotBot and simply search for
keywords from the suspect paper. A cautionary note: If you choose too
general of words or phrases to search, you will quickly become
frustrated because of the sheer volume of possible sites you must
sort through. For example, in a student development theories class, a
search for Kohlberg or Moral Development or even "Authority and
Social-Order Maintaining Orientation" will yield an overwhelming
number of possible links. Therefore, when you perform a search, type
in a unique phrase with obscure words to help narrow the
corresponding "hits" or search results. The best keywords to search
are often the ones that tipped you off that the paper in question
might be plagiarized.
Since no single search engine covers the entire Web, you may need
to use more than one. Since your student may have initially used a
search engine to locate the paper or source, start with the ones your
campus uses. Ask your information technology office which particular
search engines are most often used in the labs or by students
connected in the residence halls. What ever your search tactic, be
creative and patient. In the end, however, you must decide how much
time and energy you will personally spend tracking down ill-gotten
papers.
As a matter of fact, you need not perform the search yourself.
There are a number of websites focused on plagiarism detection.
However, many sites are commercial and therefore some sort of fee
payment or licensing agreement is required. Below is a partial list
and brief description of plagiarism detection sites. The list is
meant to be informational and not an endorsement. You will need to
evaluate the appropriateness of any given site to meet your specific
needs.
Plagiarism.org
This is a proprietary, fee-based plagiarism detection
software and paper mill monitoring organization. An instructor
registers his/her class with Plagiarism.org. Each instructor
then requests that his/her students upload their term papers or
manuscripts to the TurnItIn.com web site and the papers are
screened. The fact that a course is registered with
plagiarism.org may deter cheating for fear of detection.
Essay Verification
Engine Home Page
Eve2 (Essay Verification Engine) processes essays in
plain text format (TXT) and returns links to Web pages from
which a student may have plagiarized. It’s marketing
material states that "the program has been developed to be
powerful enough to find plagiarized material while not
overwhelming the professor with false links." A 15-day free
trail of Eve2.2 is available.
Plagiarism.com
This organization produces three different software
programs to help deter and detect plagiarism.
Glatt Plagiarism Teaching Program (GPTeach)
A tutorial program that provides computer assisted
instruction on what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid
it. Includes definitions of direct and indirect plagiarism,
when and how to provide attribution, and a mastery test of
concepts.
Glatt Plagiarism Screening Program (GPSP)
This is touted as a highly sophisticated screening
program to detect plagiarism. The procedure assumes that
each person has an individual style of writing, (i.e.,
writing styles are as unique as fingerprints). Furthermore,
a person knows and can remember her/his own writing style
far more accurately than anyone else. Basically the program
asks the student to rewrite portions of the paper in
question and compares the rewrite to the original. If the
student wrote the original, then the two will be
statistically similar.
Glatt Plagiarism Self-Detection Program (GPSD)
This is a screening program to help detect
inadvertent instances of plagiarism during the writing
process.
Findsame.com
FindSame claims to be a sophisticated search engine
that looks for content, not keywords. You submit an entire
document, and FindSame returns a list of Web pages that contain
any fragment of that document longer than about one line of
text.
Given the dynamic nature of the Web, on-line methods for detecting
plagiarism will continue to evolve and new ones will be established.
However, so too will the methods that allow for cheating to flourish.
Two different scenarios help illustrate ongoing challenges of relying
too heavily on web-based plagiarism detection.
The first challenge to general on-line detection is the explosive
growth of proprietary digital databases that are not found on the Web
and therefore would not be searchable by a search engine or the
aforementioned detection sites (except the GPSP which does not rely
on finding the source). For example, at my institution of fewer than
5000 students, our library provides licensed access to more than 7000
journals and newspapers most of which are not accessible on-line. So,
in addition to conducting a general Web search, you may need to
search the library’s databases to unearth the true source of a
plagiarized paper. Complicating the issue of licensed databases is
the fact that a source could be housed at a public library or any
other library (such as consortia institutions) to which the student
may have access.
The second challenge is scanning devices. For years students have
been able to scan pages of a book or other printed resources. The
scanned material could be quickly manipulated and passed off as
one’s own work. Back when scanners were relatively scarce and
not overly accurate (for example "nn" might scan as "m"), this type
of cheating was limited. However, the technology is improving and
becoming cheaper and more mobile (scanners capable of holding
thousands of pages are now not much larger than a highlighter and
these devises can be purchased for starting at $100). In fact, in at
least one case, a hand-held scanning device was being marketed as a
method to cut corners: The C-Pen was advertised at www.nostudytime.com.
(As of March, the site was no longer functioning, but the not so
subtle point had been made: a scanning device could be taken into the
library where an entire passage or even entire paper could be
scanned. With the press of a button, that passage or paper could be
uploaded onto a student’s computer and would be quite difficult
to trace by current on-line detection methods).
To be sure, technology advances and student creativity will always
result in some cheating that goes undetected. Prevention, therefore,
is the better solution and will be the topic for the next
article.
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