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Online Cheating: A New Twist to an Old Problem
Cary
Anderson
Canisius College
Posted February 23,
2001 Student
Affairs Online, 2 (Winter)
Dealing with academic dishonesty is always a challenge, and today
it is even more complicated by students’ use of the Internet. To
be sure, today's easy access to on-line journals and term paper Web
sites, coupled with general ignorance of proper citing of on-line
resources, necessitates action on the part of an institution's
administration. This article is the first of three which examine
strategies for dealing with on-line academic misconduct. This first
article concerns low-tech techniques for detecting on-line cheating,
the first steps if you suspect academic misconduct. The second
article will examine high-tech methods for detection; and the third
installment will focus on developing methods to address students'
underlying values and behaviors. The purpose of all three articles is
to improve your knowledge of the issue and provide ideas, both
practical and theoretical, to ultimately improve how we teach
students to function in cyberspace.
Term paper "mills" have existed for years, usually requiring
advanced planning on the part of the recipient student who would need
to send for the paper through the mail and then retype it. In
contrast, new on-line services make it easy for students to obtain
and prepare class papers. Students can simply download a manuscript
from one of the many paper mill Web sites, make a few edits on a word
processor and submit the paper as their own work.
In addition to the fee-for-service on-line paper mills, there are
also free sites, which serve as repositories for papers. Students are
asked to donate manuscripts that will be archived and made available
for others to use. These sites are akin to the stereotypical
"fraternity house paper file," but are international and are much
easier to access. Because these sites cost nothing to use, they can
make the process more tempting for students to pass off someone
else’s work as their own. Although very few on-line term paper
Web sites outwardly endorse cheating, their tag lines: "Download your
Workload" and "Evil House of Cheat," make it clear that cutting
corners and/or outright plagiarism are likely outcomes of their
services.
Faculty and administrators should take the time to familiarize
themselves with these term paper sites and explore them periodically.
Knowledge of these sites, some of which are listed at the end of this
article, will be useful when investigating allegations of plagiarism.
But also realize that on-line plagiarism is not limited to term paper
mills. There is a tremendous amount of legitimate information on the
Web, including e-journals, e-books, e-reports, newspapers and
governmental reports and databases that are in the public domain,
just to name a few. In fact, in today's courses, Web use is properly
encouraged as our campuses become more digital. Therefore, the
online source of an ill-gained paper or passage is as broad as the
entire World Wide Web, and most cheating will not have its genesis
from the more obvious sites.
Indeed, catching a student after the cheating has occurred may not
be the most developmental approach to dealing with the issue of
academic dishonesty, so I will address more proactive methods in the
coming months. Even so, we're all aware that cheating does occur and
there will be a time when each of us is called upon to determine
responsibility. Therefore, it seems prudent to develop a repertoire
of techniques that help detect Internet academic dishonesty. There
are both high-tech and low-tech methods for revealing on-line
cheating. Low-tech methods do not usually prove that a paper has been
lifted from the Web, but these techniques can raise a red flag and
point to the need for further investigation. Here are a few ideas
that do not require a great deal of Internet expertise and may not
even require the use of a computer:
- Many of the paper mill sites are located outside of the U.S.
and use British-English spellings for words such as colour and
flavour. If these "misspelled" words appear in a student's paper,
further investigation may be warranted, unless, of course, the
student is not an American-English speaker. When this happened at
my own institution, the student readily admitted to his lapse in
judgment once confronted with the spelling inconsistency.
- Furthermore, major publishing houses often have offices and/or
subsidiaries outside the U.S. For example, Prentice-Hall is based
in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. but also publishes in Sydney, London,
New Delhi, and Singapore, among other locations. When a student in
another country writes the paper, it is likely that the version of
the text that student used was published in his or her own
country. So a paper from Australia referencing a Prentice-Hall
text will have Sydney as the publication city instead of
Englewood, which would be the reference location for the same text
found in the U.S. A scan of the reference page may raise questions
about the authenticity of the paper. If the reference states that
the publication location of a particular book is outside the U.S.
but the book in your library or assigned to the class is printed
in New Jersey (which is most likely), then you have reason to
investigate further.
- Odd spacing between words or line breaks is another sign that
a paper may have come from the Internet. Most times, the student
has removed these irregularities and the paper "looks" fine.
However, adjusting the margins in or out may uncover odd spacing
or line breaks that were missed by the student -- who was only
formatting for look. If you suspect that a paper was pirated and
you have an electronic copy of the paper (on a disk or as an
e-mail attachment), do a quick test: highlight the entire text of
the paper and change the margins. Check for spacing
inconsistencies that might point to the need for further
investigation.
- Inconsistent quotation marks may be another telltale sign of
on-line cheating. Quotation marks typed from within standard word
processing programs such Microsoft Word or Word Perfect are
usually in the form of printer marks -- the "curly" ones.
Quotation marks taken from online material often appear in the
"straight" format, like inch or foot notations. Once again
inconsistent or just straight quotation marks do not prove
cheating, but should raise a red flag.
None of these methods are conclusive in and of themselves, but
they can be helpful in an investigation. Once you have completed a
low-tech audit of a questionable paper and there seems to be reason
for further investigation, a more high-tech inquiry is warranted. In
the next issue, these computer-based methods, including the use of
commercial detection sites will be discussed.
Select Term Paper Mill Sites:
http://www.schoolsucks.com/
http://www.a1-termpaper.com/
http://www.termpapersonline.com/
http://www.researchcentral.com/
http://www.papers-online.com/
http://www.cheathouse.com/
http://www.termpaperwarehouse.com/tpw/
http://www.execpc.com/~hppapers/
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