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Detecting Academic Dishonesty: Plagiarism
Plagiarism and cheating are typically easy to detect. Students who plagiarize often do not proofread a paper that they have downloaded from the web or copied from a book. Thus, many plagiarized papers contain distinctive spelling mistakes, footnotes that the student has not removed, and other clear indicators.
Common Clues:
- Dramatic changes in the quality of a student's work from one assignment to another or in different parts of the same assignment.
- Sudden changes in style, grammar, or spelling.
- Work that is "off topic."
- The use of old or outdated quotations or facts (particularly common in papers bought from paper mills).
- Footnotes that refer to material the student is unlikely to have heard of, make extensive use of a language that the student does not know, or that make references to "previous chapters," "other articles," etc.
- Papers that seem to be piecemeal may have been put together from multiple sources.
- Last minute requests to write on a different assignment or an original topic.
Copying and Pasting
An increasingly common form of plagiarism is copying and pasting papers or articles from the Internet, or simply purchasing prewritten papers from paper mills such as schoolsucks.com or 123helpme.com [note] and others like them. The Kimbel Library of Coastal Carolina University also has a site that lists the over 200 paper mills that are currently operating.* Fortunately, this sort of plagiarism is also increasingly easy to detect. There are several companies that specialize in detecting Internet plagiarism and their services are typically easy and cheap to employ (see http://www.plagiarism.org or http://www.canexus.com/eve/index.shtml for examples). If you don't want to use such a company, it is often possible to locate the source of plagiarized material simply by copying and pasting passages from the paper into a search engine such as Altavista or Google. You can do a simple search by enclosing the material in quotation marks [" "], or an advanced search in which you ask the engine to locate this exact phrase.
What to Do if You Suspect a Student of Plagiarism
One of the first things that you should do is talk to the faculty member in charge of the course about the proper course of action. Some faculty members may prefer to deal with the situation themselves from the outset. If you are to address the issue, however, it will be helpful if you can talk to the student in order to ascertain whether or not the student has plagiarized and, if so, whether or not it was done intentionally. It is important to respect the student's rights and to respect the fact that a sudden improvement in the quality of a student's work may simply reflect an increased effort. It is also important to remember that much plagiarism or cheating is unintentional.
When you meet with students DO NOT ACCUSE THEM OF PLAGIARISM. Even if you have found the source from which they have drawn their material, you should avoid inflaming the situation by using provocative expressions such as "plagiarism," "cheating," "theft," etc. An interview of this type is already emotionally charged and inflaming it further is unlikely to be productive. If the plagiarism is obvious and/or you have located the original source, simply present your findings to the student, explain why they present a problem, and ask the student for his or her explanation. It is important to listen to the student's explanation. The student may not have plagiarized/cheated intentionally, and even if they have done so, the student may suggest a solution before you need to take any further action.
If you suspect that the student has plagiarized/cheated but you cannot detect the source, or you are unsure, there are several strategies that you can employ. In many cases, it is possible to get the student to admit that the work was not original, or to clearly demonstrate that it was. Here are some such strategies:
- Ask the student to summarize his or her paper. (However, be aware that this is often very difficult to do if you wrote a paper several weeks ago and have written several other papers in the interim. Be patient, give the student some clues if necessary. If the student didn't write the paper, he or she is unlikely to have any clear idea of its content even when prompted.)
- Ask the student what he or she meant by some of the more sophisticated or unclear passages in the paper. If students flounder, they will very often admit to having "drawn the material from a secondary source" when asked.
- Ask the student to describe how he or she researched the paper and, perhaps, to bring you his or her rough notes.
Other Strategies:
- Ask other GSIs in the same course if the paper looks familiar. Sometimes two students will write a paper together and submit it to different GSIs.
- Ask the professor if any of the material in the paper looks familiar. The professor is likely to be well acquainted with the secondary literature, and recognize something you may not.
Of course, finding ways to prevent plagiarism may be the most helpful at all. The newsletter Writing Across Berkeley devoted a special issue to writing assignments and prevention of plagiarism.
Once you have determined whether or not a student has plagiarized/cheated, the next step is to determine how to deal with the situation.
*Outside links open in a new window. [top]
Dealing with Academic Dishonesty Links:
Teaching Resources Links:
- Creating Ground Rules for Discussion Sections
- Using Group Work in Discussion Sections
- Strategies for Variety in the Classroom
- Developing Critical Reading Skills
- How to Teach Lab Sections
- Award-winning Teaching Ideas (Teaching Effectiveness Award Essays)
- Theories of Learning
- Dealing with and Preventing Academic Dishonesty
- Grading Students' Written Work
- Understanding & Using Instructional Technology
- Five Ways to Improve Your Teaching
- How to Write a Letter of Recommendation
- Campus Resources
- FAQs
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