Internet and Plagiarism
The Internet giveth and the Internet taketh away. The Washington Post has an article on student plagiarism today (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16624-2003Nov26.html) that gives a good primer on how they access material to copy and call their own. However, the Internet provides the most effective means of catching students involved in this practice. A service called Turnitin (www.turnitin.com) will take papers and compare them to a vast database of web pages, electronic books, term papers, and other documents and give a detailed report catching word-for-word matches and the original sources. Participating teachers can also submit student work to the database, further developing the value of the service.
On the one hand, it’s really sad that so many students resort to this kind of nonsense, with little remorse. On the other hand, if they find the assignments so irrelevant, what does that say about our curriculum, or how we teach it? What can we do about this mismatch of values?