Need advice

mtlarson

I need advice on the systems they use at universities to determine if someone is cheating when the work is done and submitted online. How do they work? What is the accuracy? What are some common systems?

Brenda Ross

Oh oh, maybe Rachel Hawe can help with that.

rlh2000

My department has used TurnItIn. It doesn't give a plagiarized or not final ruling, but gives a percentage that was not original. It is then up to the prof to set a threshold that is acceptable. We've had a tough time with this. Obviously if a research paper is totally copied- bad. But I recall an assignment where students basically made wikis on different diseases, where there ended up being large amounts of matches, because you can only list symptoms, prognosis, etc in a set number of ways.

Not sure why you are asking, but the problem varies based on application. In more paper writing classes, I've seen that students might not copy directly, but are just rephrasing someone elses ideas (still bad!). Where I've really really gotten angry is with engineering classes. I found in one class I was a TA for, over half the class copied a code directly from the internet when their assignment was to write a code. They had no clue (or claimed not to) that this was unacceptable (and these are college juniors at northwestern, but that is a whole different topic...).

In my experience, even if a department accuses a student of cheating (which is generally too much of a headache to do), as soon as it goes above and lawyers might get involved, everyone turns a blind eye. Seen it countless times, and it infuriates me. End rant. Let me know if there is any specific info you want.