Cheating's Never Been Easier By Kendra Mayfield Sep. 4, 2001 http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,45803,00.html Plagiarists have vexed school officials since the dawn of the term paper. But only recently have students been armed with what might be the ultimate cheating tool. And if the fears of university professors prove true, cheating on papers will rise significantly in the near future. "There is just so much information out there, readily accessible in an anonymous fashion, that faculty (and students) see it as a very strong temptation," said Donald L. McCabe, one of the founders of the Center for Academic Integrity. In a survey underway at the University of Virginia, faculty cited the Internet as the No. 1 societal force leading students to commit acts of plagiarism. "It's not so much that the Internet is causing (cheating), but it enables it and the ease with which it's done versus the way it used to be," said John Workman, an associate marketing professor at Creighton University who is conducting the survey. But while some educators view the Internet as the greatest plagiarism tool since the copy machine, others say that the Web hasn't had a major impact in the rise in cheating -- yet. "My research suggests the Internet is not yet responsible for a dramatic increase in the number of students who cheat but is responsible for a more-than-trivial increase in the amount of cheating done by those who do cheat," McCabe said. In a survey of 4,500 students at 25 high schools, McCabe found that over half of the students admitted they have engaged in some level of plagiarism on written assignments using the Internet. But the number of self-described "new cheaters" who use the Internet is relatively low, McCabe said. He estimates that 5 to 10 percent of students who had not previously engaged in some form of plagiarism from written sources have been attracted by the Internet. That number is expected to grow as students who grew up using computers in high school enter college. "The problem is obviously greater in high school, and this does not bode well, in my view, for colleges," McCabe said. "Students growing up with the Internet as a research tool are going to find it hard to change behaviors they acquire in elementary and high school when they reach college. At least in terms of plagiarism, I would predict that cheating is likely to increase at the college level." The rise in Internet plagiarism can be partially attributed to the ease of downloading essays from online term-paper sites, such as SchoolSucks.com and The Evil House of Cheat. But cut-and-paste plagiarism -- by students who don't attribute sources -- may be an even greater problem than commercial term-paper mills. In McCabe's high school survey, 52 percent said they had copied a few sentences from a website without citing the source, while only 15 said they had submitted a paper obtained in large part from a term-paper mill or website. While technology has made it easier for students to cheat, it has also made it easier for teachers to detect cheating. Some faculty turn to search engines such as Google where they type in key phrases to determine the original source of suspicious essay content. Others use online plagiarism-detection tools such as Turnitin.com, CopyCatch and the Essay Verification Engine. Business is booming for Turnitin.com's founder John Barrie, who calls his service "the ultimate deterrent" and "the next-generation spell-checker." The service digitally fingerprints test papers and analyzes them against an internal database of course papers and millions of other Internet sources, providing an originality report to instructors within 24 hours. The prospect of being caught submitting papers to multiple classes is often enough to deter any undergrad from cheating, Barrie said. "Every high school student, when going to college, will have to face us," Barrie said. Turnitin.com has over 20,000 registered users in 20 countries. In addition to high-profile universities such as Duke and Rutgers, the entire University of California system has signed up to use the service. "By Christmas, we'll have just about every university in California signed up," Barrie said. Recently, incidents of digital plagiarism have gained national attention. The University of Virginia recently expelled one student after a physics professor used a computer program to catch 130 students who turned in duplicate papers. "If cheating is that bad in the school with the No. 1 honor code in the country, it begs the question: What's it like at our school?" Barrie said. "Administrators haven't the slightest idea what's going on. Students are using the Net as a 2 billion-page searchable, cut-able encyclopedia." Honor code schools that use plagiarism-detection software are often met with student backlash. "Some students feel this is a violation of their trust," Workman said. But Barrie insists that even honor code schools have an obligation to use a service such as Turnitin.com to level the playing field. "Most students aren't cheating," Barrie said. "But they know who is cheating. Those people have an unfair competitive advantage to get to the next level." Even so, some educators don't believe that codes of conduct need to be changed to address Internet plagiarism. "This is an age-old problem," Workman said. "The Internet is an enabling technology. The principles of ownership and attribution have remained the same for hundreds of years." Copyright 1994-2001 Wired Digital Inc. All rights reserved.