From the issue dated November 12, 1999

Web Services Help Professors Detect Plagiarism By DAN CARNEVALE Just as the Internet has brought a proliferation of Web sites that help students ALSO SEE: How to Proctor From a Distance Tips for Preventing Cheating in On-Line Courses plagiarize, professors can now fight back by turning to Web sites and computer programs that help detect whether students cheated on their papers. But doing so costs money that may not be easy to find in departmental budgets. Web sites that many professors think of as term-paper mills, such as Schoolsucks.com and Cheater.com, sell or give away term papers on various subjects. Instead of copying passages out of books and journals, students can simply pull up entire papers from the sites and paste chunks of text into their own word processors. Professors know that the sites are out there, but few have the time to search through them for evidence when they suspect a student of plagiarism. "Nobody has time to do it. Nobody's going to do it," said John M. Barrie, one of the founders of Plagiarism.org, a Web site that -- for a fee -- helps faculty members catch cheaters. Plagiarism.org maintains a data base that it says is filled with works available from term-paper mills and elsewhere on the Web, as well as with papers submitted by professors. When a professor uploads a paper to the site, its computers try to match the paper with texts already included in the data base. Professors get back an originality report, which highlights parts of the text that may have been copied from other sources and also cites the source material. Professors can use their own judgment about whether material was plagiarized. The process is intended to detect not only a student who submits a paper entirely written by someone else, but also a student who turns in a paper composed of bits and pieces of different texts. The service costs $20 for the first 30 papers uploaded and 50 cents for each additional one. Plagiarism.org isn't the only company eager to offer professors a way to detect cheating. Integriguard Inc. also allows students and professors to check the originality of a paper against a data base of assignments turned in previously. That service costs professors $4.95 a month (http://www.integriguard.com) for unlimited use. Glatt Plagiarism Services Inc. sells a software program that uses a systematic approach to catching students who plagiarize: It removes every fifth word from a writing sample and then has the student fill in the blanks. "It's based on the premise that we all have a unique writing style, and that acts as a fingerprint," says Barbara Glatt, who is president of the company (http://www.plagiarism.com). Professors can use the program, which costs $300, with every paper that a student submits, or just with the questionable ones, she says. The strength of the Glatt software, she adds, is that when a professor suspects plagiarism but can't locate the original work, the program provides an objective means of determining whether the student did the work. "Ultimately, what I'm doing is determining originality of authorship," she says. "It's sort of like random drug testing." Tips for Preventing Cheating in On-Line Courses Give proctored tests -- either on campus or, if necessary, in a student's hometown with an approved proctor. Require students to use cameras during discussions and tests. Request a written work from each student at the beginning of the course that can serve as an example of his or her writing style if plagiarism is suspected later. Give random quizzes and exams using chat software, which preserves a record of all exchanges. If a paper does not seem to have been written by the student, plug an excerpt into a search engine to see whether the text shows up elsewhere on the Internet. SOURCE: CHRONICLE REPORTING http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Page: A49 Easy-to-print version E-mail this article