Newspapers / Elon University Student Newspaper / Nov. 1, 2001, edition 1 / Page 13
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Nov. 1, 2001 Focus Page 13 Web site offers potential solution to plagiarism problems Katie Beaver Reporter Faced with a growing trend of computer- assisted plagiarism, Elon officials are consid ering the installation of a new software pro gram to detect plagiarism in student papers. Equipped with instant Intemet access and a paper topic, more and more students are giv ing in to the ever-present college-time crunch and copying phrases, paragraphs and even whole term papers directly from Web sites. Dr. Mary Wise, assistant vice president of aca demic affairs, has pledged to do something about the increasing use of the Intemet for pla giarism. “Like many other schools, Elon is facing a problem larger than any that we have faced in the past,” Wise said. “The new technology available on the Intemet makes it so easy to plagiarize that we have to ask ourselves how we are going to deal with the problem. All we know for sure right now is that we won’t give up and say it doesn’t matter.” Elon students are not alone in the use of plagiarism. According to a Psychological Record survey, 36 percent of undergraduate students have admitted to plagiarizing written material. With more than 200 “cheat sites” available on the Intemet, plagiarizing is becom ing easier to accomplish and harder to catch. A faculty member notified Wise of acomputer database run through the Web site Tumitin.com. Witii access to this Web site, professors can check their students’ woik for all types of plagiarism, including non-cited quotes or en tire copied documents. Wise says the programs work by scanning papers for similarities with more than 100,000 different Intemet sites. If the program finds any overlapping information, it underlines what was taken from another document and cites the source. Tumitin.com rates each paper on an over all similarity index, showing professors how much of the paper was taken from other sources. A paper with a few paragraphs taken from an online periodical could have a 40 per cent similarity index, while a paper taken en tirely from a term paper site could have a 100 percent similarity index. “I have to ask myself a question each time I think about buying this program,” Wise said. “Whose honor code is this?” The Elon academic honor code, which says students are expected to refrain from plagia rism, could be interpreted in two different ways. CDIU If students .believe the honor code belongs to them and that it is their duty to refrain from plagiarism, a computer program like Tumitin.com would not be necessary, she said. “But if these students see honesty on campus as getting away with whatever they can, then we might want to have this program,” Wise said. “It is a tough decision, because by getting this pro gram it is like the faculty is saying we don’t tmst the students, and I don’t know if that’s the kind of thing we want” Elon honor code violations have increased in the past few years, causing Wise and other fac ulty and staff members to reexamine Elon’s ap proach to plagiarism, cheating and other viola tions. During the 1997-98 school year, eight honor code violations were filed. The next year, 26 vio lations were reported. Last year, 23 incident re ports of honor code violations were filed, includ ing 14 charges of plagiarism. Wise said she believes that implementation of the program could double or triple the number of students caught plagiarizing. “We have a lot of very honest students who sometimes get careless or just panic because they mn out of time,” Wise said. “Sometimes they don’t even know they’re cheating,” Biology professor Robert Vick has seen several examples of accidental plagiarism. ‘ ‘When students woik together in groups, pro fessors sometimes foiget to stipulate that it has to be an individual effort,” Vick said. “I’ll read one paper, then down further in the stack I’ll get to one and it’ll say the exact same thing. I start to wonder if the student tumed it in twice, but then I realize that the two worked together in a group.” Although the program would cost between $2,000 and $4,000 per year. Wise said it could be a help to professors. ‘To report a plagiarism violation, a professor has to find the source,” Wise said. “I’ve seen pro fessors spend five or six hours searching the Intemet because they know the p^r was pla giarized but they can’t find the source. This will defmitely help them save time and effort.” About 15,000 high schools and colleges em ploy Tumitin.com’s services, including Duke University, The Citadel, Boston University and the University of California. “Our responsibility is to help students never get into a position where they have to plagiarize,” Wise said. “The faculty members hate to tum in students but we want to help students think for themselves and widen their minds.” Wise plans to hold several meetings with fac ulty and students throughout the year concern ing the computer program. Internet offers many full-text research papers for purchase JT Bowen Reporter Someone famous once said, ‘Tme artists don’t plagiarize; they steal.” While appreciating the humor to this, there is also a serious tmth behind it The line of what exactly is and isn’t plagiarism may seem a bit hazy, and it also may be inter preted differently by different people. Let’s picture this: It’s late Sunday night You have a five page paper due for your 8 am. class tomorrow, and you haven’t even begun to research, let alone write it AU hope seems lost. Then, you remember a friend telling you about some Web site where you can simply call a number, tell them what you need a paper on, pay a “small” price and within a matter of minutes the paper will be e-mailed to your account Perfiaps this is the point where the little angel and devil pop up on either side of your shoulder, the angel advising you not to buy the paper, that this would be violating the honor code. The little guy with the homs is mischievously laughing, tell ing you that it won’t hurt just this once. Besides, you don’t have to use the paper verbatim; you can just use it as a guide to what you want yours to resemble, and that’s not bad, right? Indeed, this is a hotly debated topic, especially on the college scene. Before getting too deep into the ethical side of it all, let’s take a look at what some of these sites have to offer. A site called “The Doctor^’ promises that each and every term paper is written by college profes sors employed at various colleges and universi ties around the country. It also guarantees that when you call to order your paper, you will get to speak to a college professor rather than a sales person. Hmm...sounds a little sketchy. The Web site goes on to give you the option of ordering stock reports or custom reports. Stock reports are papers that are aheady on file, but the site warns that the sources used may be “old and outdated.” If you are in need of something specific, you can order a custom report The college professors will take time to whip you up something that not only caters to yourneeds, but also uses “the latest books and articles” as reference materials. Another site that seemed a little less shady is www.termpapers-on-file.com. This site offers papers on just about every subject imaginable, ranging fiiom biology to mythology to psychol ogy. It boasts that it has over 20,000 papers digi tized, and the papers can be sent via e-mail or fax injust six hours. Ifyou need it in a hurry, they can send it in three hours, for an additional chaige. The company has people woridng ah)und the clock, so you can always contact a real person. All the papers offered by them are promised to be written by experienced researchers and writ ers. An extra plus is that they can not only send you the p^r in English, but also Spanish, French, Italian, German and Portuguese. Both of these sites have several similarities. First, they can both get very costly. Ten dollars per page for even a five-page p^r is no cheap endeavor. Also, both sites clearly state that even if you’re not pleased with the material presented in the paper you ordered, they will most definitely not give refunds. And finally, they both have dis claimers on them. Termpapers-on-line states, “It is both unethical and illegal to submit someone else’s woik as your own academic credit. Most students use our research as model examples. If you quote from our papers you must cite our pa per as one of your sources.” So is it OK to empty your wallet and order one of these pre-made papers? It depends on your own personal ideals and ethics. Some may argue that it is wrong any way you look at it and if one student has to put in hours of research and writing and editing, so should the next Others say that as long as you just use the par per as a guide and nothing else, it’s perfectly ethi cal. In doing t^, especially on papers that were procrastinated until the last minute, one must be extremely carefiil, because what you think you are using strictly as “reference material” one minute, could end up being almost a carbon copy of your own p^r. On the extreme side, there are students who may decide to copy the paper verbatim and feel no regard whatsoever. One student who wishes to remain anonymous, commented, “I haven’t used one of these sites since I’ve been at college, but I did once in high school. Senioritis had defi nitely hit, and I was having too much fun with everything else to bother thinking about my se nior research paper. Finally, it was the weekend before it was due, and I hadn ’t even opened a booL I realized I was screwed. I had to make the grade somehow, so I hit up one of the sites and found exactly what I was looking for. I didn ’ t even bother making changes on it I just slqjped on my name and tumed it in. I ended up getting a B+, but some of my friends in the class had woiked their butts off and got Cs, so needless to say I felt pretty guilty. My teacher never suspected anything, but I know what I did was wrong.” Sophomore Dan McBride said, “I think pla giarism is OK in art and stuff because the best stuff comes from your life and the people around you, but when it comes to papers for school, pla giarizing is just plain laziness.”
Elon University Student Newspaper
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Nov. 1, 2001, edition 1
13
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