Personally, I have no experience with anti-plagiarism software. Therefore, I was a little apprehensive as to what the results might prove when beginning this writing assignment. To my dismay, the software found my essay to be completely plagiarized. The findings were proven correct. My second attempt was to add a few original thoughts of my own; however, the rest of the essay underwent only grammatical structural modifications. The second findings were only 72% and I was taken aback. After looking at my essay, the thoughts and ideas behind it really belonged to a different author; all I did was change the grammatical structure of the essay. In an essence, this is plagiarism and it was much easier than I had anticipated.
Anti-plagiarism software is available for instructors to use as a tool to deter cheating. However, it should not be heavily relied upon as the only source. My essay is a great example, depicting the ease of plagiarism by only changing sentence structure. In this new digital age, educators need to take a tougher stance on academic integrity. Educators should not only enforce violation policies but promote student awareness of what digital plagiarism is. This may, in turn, help students transform their ethical belief that ‘because it is available on the web, it is okay for the taking.’
The experiences I have had with plagiarism entail cheating from other students’ work and not necessarily the web. One of my students was compelled to get caught up in class after registering late. She electronically downloaded another student’s work and submitted it as her own. Sometimes, these cases are suspect of plagiarism when the incorrect work is exactly the same; but hard to prove when students work collectively. However, this particular student failed to remove the electronic header with the original student’s name. Another serious example of how easy it is to plagiarize in the digital world, but in a different manner.
However, educators truly intent on eliminating the problem must look to prevention rather than detection if the effect is to be long lasting. (Guliano) Although there is no one fail-safe method of eliminating plagiarism, there are several techniques, that, when combined, may help to reduce the widespread existence of plagiarism, which is particularly important in the age of the Internet. (Guiliano) To discern the good educators from the great educators, it takes one who can challenge their students and motivate them to want to complete original work. I firmly believe this can be done with the integration of technology in classrooms and curriculum.
Bibliography
Guliano, Elizabeth. "Deterring Plagiarism in the Age of the Internet." Inquiry 5.1 (2000): 22-31. Web. 13
Jan 2011. <http://www.vccaedu.org/inquiry/inquiry-spring2000/i-51-guiliano.html>.
I completely agree. I was very surprised with learning about the different types of plagiarism and how widespread it is from students, be it intentional or unintentional. Connie, you wrote about how you didn’t have previous experience with plagiarism detection software, but you analyzed how Safe Assign broke down the plagiarism structure of your paper and how a small change in grammar on your part can affect a score dramatically. To me, this demonstrates that Safe Assign only checks for the copy/paste form of plagiarism and not really the “style” form of plagiarism.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your blog, I couldn’t agree more about there being a need for plagiarism prevention instead of plagiarism detection. I have had quite a bit of experience utilizing these systems from high school and college, and students from my high school definitely bragged to others if they had a passable paper; almost as if they feel triumphant that they “beat the system”. While we do have tools in the 21st century can help detect some forms of plagiarism, however, we also have the same tools on the internet can make it less detectable to try and beat systems like Safe Assign. I believe to achieve prevention and not rely on detection, academic integrity and trust need to be taught throughout their writing careers, as well as teaching students about the multiple forms of plagiarism besides just sentence or phrase copying.
Loved the post!
-Rob Alford
1/17/11
ReplyDeleteSeanne Danielak
Student ID Number: 0000499631
Response to Connie’s Blog on Academic Integrity
EDU 590 – Professor: Mr. Bruce Umpstead
Connie,
I am writing in response to your current blog on academic integrity. It was great to read how much you valued this assignment. I am also an educator who has not had any experience with anti-plagiarism software. Like you, I didn’t realize that the software would actually catch everything that I plagiarized online the first time I submitted it and it did! It seems as though you were as surprised as I was by the results.
The story that you included about your student’s experience with copying in your class really made me speculate about the frequency of plagiarism and how challenging it is for educators to catch. One can imagine how difficult discovering plagiarized content in student work would be when you are in the position to constantly read many student compositions. I am glad that you have a new tool to utilize in the future.
Lastly, I really liked your reference stressing the importance of “prevention rather than detection”. I couldn’t agree more that focusing on this idea is crucial right now. I really enjoyed reading your blog on this subject!
Sincerely,
Seanne Danielak