Cheryl-
Dani mentioned Plagiarism.org as a possible source. It may have some
value, but I would not use it as my sole source. I recently tested it by
submitting some original papers and some papers taken from popular cheat
sites (schoolsucks.com, chuckiii.com, etc.). Their analysis engine found
ALL of the papers had a low probability of being plagiarized! On the
plus side there seems to be little concern about that site reporeting
false positives. A good resource on plagiarism that has been mentioned
before is the Gretchen Pearson web page:
http://vc.lemoyne.edu/seminar/plagiarism.html
A technique that I use frequently that works well is the CLOZE
method. Whenever I suspect that a paper is plagiarized I make a photocopy
of it and then black out 30 or so key words. I then invite the student to
my office and ask them to read their paper aloud to me instructing them
that when they get to the blacked out words they should just insert the
wordsthat they probably used originally. I silently read along and see whether
their memory matches the original. Since most the the students who
submit plagiarized work don't even bother to read the paper before handing
it in there is usually very little correspondence between a student's
guess and the original word. Cheaters usually confess early on in this
exercise. I have never had to go all the way through the paper with
anyone.
Hope this helps. -Don.
On Thu, 13 Apr 2000, Cheryl B Schwartz wrote:
> Hi All!
>
> A collegue believes one of her students may have gotten a paper through
> one of those "services" and would like to check it out. I recall some
> discussion about this previously, but does anyone know of a website a
> professor can use to try to track down potential cheaters' sources?
>
> Thanx ahead of time.
>
> --Cheryl
>
>
> ************************************************************************
> * Cheryl Schwartz, Ph.D. *
> * [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
> * OR *
> * [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
> * - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - *
> * If logic is in the eye of the logician, *
> * then is wit in the eye of the wittician? *
> ************************************************************************
>
>
>
>
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Don Allen email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Dept. of Psychology voice: (604)-323-5871
Langara College fax: (604)-323-5555
100 W. 49th Ave.
Vancouver, B.C.
Canada, V5Y 2Z6
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