What plagiarism detection software is
available to online instructors?
One of the first
ones that come to mind when we think of stopping plagiarism in online classes
is TurnItin. Turnitin is an Internet-based plagiarism-prevention service
created by iParadigms, LLC. Typically, universities and high schools buy
licenses to submit essays to the Turnitin website, which checks the documents
for unoriginal content. The results can be used to identify similarities to existing sources or can be used in formative
assessment to help students learn how to avoid plagiarism and improve their
writing (Turnitin, n.d.) .
Another service
that I use that has greatly improved my writing, and also checks for plagiarism is
Grammary. It is simple to use and attaches itself to Microsoft Word so that it
can correct your writing, grammar,
contextual spelling, punctuation, Sentence structure, style, vocabulary
enhancement, as well as plagiarism. Grammarly's proofreading and plagiarism-detection
resources check for a writer's adherence to more than 250 grammar rules.
Grammarly carries out more than 250 grammar checks; it proofreads and detects
plagiarism in the process and finally provides users with a list of possible
errors for correction. During its text review, Grammarly presents potential
errors one at a time, with commonly confused words or faulty sentences highlighted in light red and a text box below
offering an explanation that provides good and bad examples and suggests
corrections. Grammarly also provides citations when it detects plagiarism. Users
can click on a "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" icon to let
Grammarly know whether the result was helpful (Grammarly, n.d.) .
How can the design of assessments help
prevent academic dishonesty?
Preserving
academic integrity is an ongoing challenge for traditional face-to-face,
blended, and entirely online courses (McNett, 2010) . I think that when we get away from lower degree
programs such as in Bachelors programs and move into more thoughtful Masters programs where there are fewer questions, quizzes, testing, assignments
to turn in for grades, even concrete questioning that requires solid student input,
then we require a more careful eye for
academic dishonesty. Already the pressure is on when we think about online
learning, it is only a short eight weeks, so students are often pressed for time. We graduate sooner
because of this eight week time crunch, and that puts a level of discipline for
the work of the students to complete on time. Requiring incremental submissions of a topic statement, outline, annotated
bibliography, and rough drafts both prevents procrastination and deadline-hysteria
and, more importantly, allows you to get
to know the student’s writing style and spot any sudden changes in topic (McNett, 2010) . The course is
sometimes developed to aid the teacher so that we have those guidelines, framework
and structured syllabus in place. Student rarely have a reason to say “my dog ate my homework” because we have the
homework accessible and ready. Sadly, the only thing that would be an excuse is
if you do
not have an internet connection, and even then, that is a complete cop-out, because wifi is everywhere these days.
In an effort
to reduce the opportunity for plagiarism or cheating, what facilitation
strategies do you propose to use as a
current or future online instructor?
I'd like to run all my students work through Grammarly or use the schools plagiarism
tools available. It is also important to know that some papers students can
download over some paper Academic cheating site. There are many out there, and
they offer students services on the papers they need and some even write their
papers for them right out of India, or England. It is important to check the
properties of your Word documents or any file for that matter. A student's name should match up to whatever is in their properties file. One way
I learned to do this is to save my file and
look at the Author name, if it says my name, I am good to go. If someone else's
name appears here, it means that it came from another
person's local computer, and the student simply downloaded it and turned
it in.
What additional considerations for online
teaching should be made to help detect or prevent cheating and plagiarism?
Students who want to cheat will continue to cheat online or in a
traditional classroom. Students who want
to learn and better themselves know that cheating will not help with long-term
goals. Cheating is not a new problem for
universities, but the growth in online courses – particularly massive open
online courses – has forced academics to search for new ways to ensure honesty
and protect academic integrity. The causes of plagiarism are the same,
regardless of where or how students are learning. Stress, tiredness, and pressure to perform are all
common factors (Slater, 2014) .
References
Grammarly.
(n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammarly
McNett, M. (2010). Curbing Academic Dishonesty in
Online Courses. Retrieved from Pointer and Clicker Article University of
Illinois:
http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/Resources/pointersclickers/2002_05/index.asp
Slater, H. (2014, March 14). How can universities
stop students cheating online? Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/education:
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/mar/14/students-cheating-plagiarism-online
Turnitin.
(n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnitin
