Weaving a wrecked web
Plagiarism is a timeless issue. “When I was assigned my first essay in
college, I panicked. I was so busy with working, playing on the
volleyball team and studying for my other classes, I took a chance and
bypassed the library altogether and went straight to the Internet. Not
for research, but to buy a finished essay. For about $5, I got an ‘A’
paper and I didn’t caught. It was an incentive to continue doing it,”
says Emily, a college senior.
Copying another person’s work is nothing new, but the Internet has
propelled the problem to a new level. Being online makes cheating
faster and easier for the unethical.
“Most online teens see the Internet as a giant homework helper, and
many use e-mail and instant messaging to get their friends and
teachers to help them when they are stuck on assignments,” says Lee
Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The Web
can be a great educational tool, but it is being abused. There are
dozens of sites to aid you with studying, but there is a darker side to
Internet research. Besides not properly documenting Internet
resources, you can surf “cheater sites,” which contain term papers
available to download. All you have to do is copy and paste a prewritten essay, print, then pawn off the paper as your own original
work.
A study of 4,471 students from 25 U.S. high schools conducted in
early 2001 by Don McCabe, a professor at Rutgers University and
founder of the Center for Academic Integrity, found that 52 percent of
students admitted to stealing material off the Internet. That cheating
doesn’t stop once a student is in college.
A survey conducted by the Psychological Record showed that 36
percent of undergraduates have admitted to plagiarizing written
material. And in a test conducted by TurnItIn.com (www.turnitin.com),
a company that supplies high schools and colleges with plagiarismscreening software, 30 percent of a large sampling of Berkeley
students were recently caught copying directly from the Internet.
Cheater.com, CheatHouse.com and Ezwrite.com are some of the most
popular of the more than 200 “term-paper mill” sites available. These
sites add hundreds of manuscripts to their databases each week and
boast tens of thousands of clients. Some, such as www.cheater.com,
are free. Others with more detailed research charge prices per page
ranging from US $4.95 at www.ezwrite.com to a US $35 per-page fee
at www.a1-termpaper.com. But everyone knows that winners never
cheat and cheaters never win, right? Perhaps not.
Some teachers feel it is impossible for them to track down an essay
that has been plagiarized from the Net. And most students know it.
Many have resigned to the belief that cheating is a normal part of
learning.
According to a U.S. News & World Report poll, 90 percent believe that
cheaters are either never caught or have never been appropriately
disciplined. But while some teachers may not bother to investigate a
suspicious paper, there are companies like TurnItIn.com that are
giving teachers the tools to unearth those copy-and-paste assignments
with their own Web sites and anti-plagiarism software. TurnItIn.com’s
software scans a paper, compares it to essays in its database and then
flags instances of copying. The University of British Columbia is one of
several post-secondary institutions that has subscribed to the
company’s software in response to growing concerns of faculty and
students about the ease with which students can get essays on the
Internet.
Neil Guppy, associate vice president of academic programs at the
university, sees TurnItIn.com’s service as a tool to reinforce academic
integrity in the university. But he realizes it is not the only method to
deter would-be cheaters. “There must be more to our approach to
dealing with the issue of plagiarism than merely using technology to
detect, catch and punish,” says Guppy. “We also need to work with
faculty and students to sensitize them to what plagiarism is and find
ways of reducing it.”
Guppy advocates a university-wide approach to providing students
with the tools to become better writers and researchers. This includes
the enforcement of acceptable standards for citing sources and
designing other forms of assessment to minimize the temptation to
plagiarize. Punishments range from a mark of zero on the assignment
to expulsion.
What can you do to prevent falling to the temptation of becoming an
online cheat? Understand the meaning of plagiarism. Plagiarism means
using ideas or works that aren’t yours and passing them off as your
work. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself that you feel you have
to cheat to satisfy parental demands or expectations. Give yourself
time to do work so that time isn’t an issue. Know how to reference
your sources.
Joan Brockman, coordinator of the university board on student
discipline at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, says she
regularly runs into third and fourth-year students who either don’t
know how to reference material or ignore what they have been told.
ALWAYS reference your sources. Knowing when and how to properly
document your assignment sounds basic, but it is something that
many students who are caught cheating claim they do not know how
to do. Internet sources have to be documented the same as print
sources are.
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