Plagiarism = Cheating Too
In grading papers, I find a great deal of Internet plagiarism. Sometime it is obvious as students cut and paste to produce an ungrammatical result. Sometimes I can Google a phrase from the paper and find the source. I sometimes check references as well. Most of these are very time consuming, however. What do most other teachers do in this circumstance?
Student need to understand the importance of listing their references even if it came from a web sight.Using references when done well can enhance a paper with out limiting the students own thoughts or ideas. Turnitin is a great sight and easy to use.
TurnItIn is so helpful and saves so much time! Having said that, it is certainly not perfect and does not catch everything.
Hi Luiz,
I have also heard that a lot of other instructors will run the paper through turnitin to determine if plagiarism has taken place.
Patricia Scales
I think you're on the right track. We use TurnItIn, which simplifies the instructor's efforts. The key is to explain to students, before the assignment, what plagiarism is. Most students already know that they shouldn't use other people's words without documentation, but many don't realize that it's plagiarism to use other people's IDEAS without attribution (and TurnItIn doesn't catch this).
