Issue Date: 12/5/05
Internet plagiarism rampant in colleges
By Michael Shaw
KRT News Service
KRT News Service
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Macellari's lawyers are representing her for free, McCabe said. They called him before filing, telling him to expect calls from reporters.
"Someone screwed up," he said, evaluating what happened with Macellari's paper. "Whether there was a mistake, legally, that can be argued forever, but clearly, there was a mistake."
Lawyers representing the defendants did not return calls seeking comment, but they have filed answers to Macellari's complaint. They suggest that their clients aren't liable for breaking copyright codes because a student is not a competing business interest.
Advertisements for paper mills used to be relegated to postage-stamp-sized appeals in the backs of magazines, but the services they offer are now easily accessed over the Internet.
Universities now have tools to uncover Internet cheating.
Hoffman said faculty at Truman State use a service called turnitin.com, which matches a student's paper with text found on the Internet, whether cut and pasted into the student's own work or purchased wholesale. The service costs the university between $3,000 and $4,000, he said.
The service has uncovered several instances of cut-and-paste plagiarism at Truman State. But Hoffman said when a case of cheating comes to light, educators generally want to work with students to correct the behavior rather than punish them outright.
"We have small class sizes and focus on student development. We don't have the Wal-Mart heiress going here," he said, referring to Paige Laurie, who returned her degree from the University of Southern California after cheating allegations surfaced earlier this year.
McCabe favors tailoring assignments to make it harder for students to copy parts of generic essays and hand them in as original work. He regards that as better than relying on services such as turnitin.com.
He credited the anti-cheating services with starting a new trend: old-fashioned plagiarism from books found in a library.
"We're starting to see the first rumblings of that now in our survey," he said
"Someone screwed up," he said, evaluating what happened with Macellari's paper. "Whether there was a mistake, legally, that can be argued forever, but clearly, there was a mistake."
Lawyers representing the defendants did not return calls seeking comment, but they have filed answers to Macellari's complaint. They suggest that their clients aren't liable for breaking copyright codes because a student is not a competing business interest.
Advertisements for paper mills used to be relegated to postage-stamp-sized appeals in the backs of magazines, but the services they offer are now easily accessed over the Internet.
Universities now have tools to uncover Internet cheating.
Hoffman said faculty at Truman State use a service called turnitin.com, which matches a student's paper with text found on the Internet, whether cut and pasted into the student's own work or purchased wholesale. The service costs the university between $3,000 and $4,000, he said.
The service has uncovered several instances of cut-and-paste plagiarism at Truman State. But Hoffman said when a case of cheating comes to light, educators generally want to work with students to correct the behavior rather than punish them outright.
"We have small class sizes and focus on student development. We don't have the Wal-Mart heiress going here," he said, referring to Paige Laurie, who returned her degree from the University of Southern California after cheating allegations surfaced earlier this year.
McCabe favors tailoring assignments to make it harder for students to copy parts of generic essays and hand them in as original work. He regards that as better than relying on services such as turnitin.com.
He credited the anti-cheating services with starting a new trend: old-fashioned plagiarism from books found in a library.
"We're starting to see the first rumblings of that now in our survey," he said