Student plagiarism: a bothersome and time-consuming bane for teachers.

So you have your suspicions that a student has plagiarized their work, whether that be in its entirety or just a fraction. What do you do? You're afflicted by inconclusive evidence. Do you confront the student and risk your student-teacher relationship based on your presumptions alone? Or do you regrettably dismiss the possibility?

Internet access has made stealing another person's work just a google away. Nowadays the temptation of plagiarizing is prevalent among students. They think, why write my own paper when I can just cut and paste off the Internet, throw a few smatterings of my own in, and pass it off as my own creation? Besides, how will my teachers ever find out?

Well, now they can. The Internet offers a shrewd counterblow to the plagiarism outbreak with a multitude of online plagiarism tools. Truly, a student's worst nightmare alongside 8:00 am lectures.

Below are some plagiarism tools – both free of charge and moreover, simple to use. To ensure a more confident result, I suggest using more than one:

Plagiarism Detect – Just paste the text in the provided box or upload the document. You are given the option of either light or deep analysis. Registration required: Yes.

DupliChecker – Simple in operation. Just paste the extract into the box and search Google, Yahoo or MSN for copied content.

CopyScape – Allows users to detect online plagiarism.

Doc Cop – This plagiarism detector is web-based, meaning the searches operate online and require no additional software. Registration required: Yes.

Plagiarism Resource Site – You can download WcopyFind – a free detector. It compares the content of downloaded documents with each other. However, it cannot compare documents to online content.

Plagiarism Checker – Detects online plagiarism doing a text search, website checks, using Google alerts to notify users if the text shows up anywhere else on the Internet.

SeeSources – Aimed at educators, this online tool detects plagiarism by pasting text, HTML uploading, and an analysis of Word or text documents. Registration required: No.

Article Checker – Detects plagiarism using website addresses and pasted text.

Source:
Websters Online Dictionary
http://internet.suite101.com/article.cfm/free_online_plagiarism_bus...

Tags: cheating, checker, copying, cut, detect, duplicating, paste, plagiarism, software

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Might also be good to include a few sites that show examples of learning activities that require more than copy and paste.
;)
What do you mean ICT?

Learning activities where different types of plagiarism are born out of?

That could be anything - a book report, an assignment with a partner, a presentation, interface design. Mostly everything is open to copy infringements. And the teacher is responsible for laying down the specifications and conditions of the activity so that students are clear on what plagiarism is.

If you're looking for the different types of plagiarism, you can find a comprehensive list with definitions here: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/academicoffice/1-4-1-2-2.html
There are still many activities along the lines of "Construct a poster on Widgets. You must include "What a widget is, where they are found and how they work"
So kids go to google go to widgets.com and copy and paste the "answers" into a poster. So we can use the tools described to simply check that they have done exactly what they were always going to do. Copy and Paste.
Instead of having to spend time checking/policing the authenticity of the kids work, it is far better and WAY harder to construct an assessment piece that requires the students to demonstrate learning in a manner that circumvents the copy and paste problem.
Seconded. I really don't see how giving students nightmares (sic) aids the development of young minds.
I agree - get the students to use higher order thinking skills - as well, the research process is so important - if you are monitoring students along the way you know where their final product is coming from - and you can give them feedback to make their end project better.
Good point Megan. I don't think these tools are a comprehensive solution, but the reality is is that not every assignment is going to have an assessment piece that is designed in a way that requires students to demonstrate their learning. That's ideal and a great workload for the teacher. For example, what about essays, book reports, or in the case that Megan mentioned with standardized tasks.

I agree with Greg. If it can't be controlled by the design of the task, monitoring and breaking down an assignment into stages is a good way of discouraging copy and paste.
> ...the reality is is that not every assignment is going to have an assessment piece that is designed in a way that requires students to demonstrate their learning

If it is a tradeoff between spending time teaching and spending time grading, then I agree. But I don't think it needs to be.

There are many solutions around peer assessment and automated assessment that let you have your cake and eat it. If we start by eliminating the massive inefficiency of every teacher having to create his or her own assessments from scratch, then squaring this particular circle becomes an entirely feasible task.

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