Three Things Teachers Need to Spot—and Stop—Plagiarism

By Olena Sokolovska     Oct 8, 2018

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-10-08-three-things-teachers-need-to-spot-and-stop-plagiarism

According to the International Center for Academic Integrity, 58% of more than 70,000 students surveyed say they have plagiarized someone else’s ideas in their writing.

Plagiarism-detection software can address the most pressing needs of classroom educators faced with assessing students’ written work. Here’s how:

1. Teachers Need More Time

The Challenge: The larger the class is, and the more students that are in it, the longer it takes to review each written assignment—checking grammar, style, originality of ideas, etc. This is especially important when screening for plagiarism.

My note: this is NOT true. If the teacher is still lingering in the old habits of lecturing, this could be true. However, when a teacher gets into the habit of reviewing papers, s/he can detect as soon as in the first several paragraphs the discrepancies due to copy and paste of other work versus the student’s work.
In addition, if the teacher applies group work in her/his class, s/he can organize students to proofread each other’s work, thus teaching them actively about plagiarism, punctuation etc.

2. Evidence Must Be Reliable

The Challenge: When identifying plagiarism, teachers need to be confident in their assessment. Accusing students of academic dishonesty is a weighty claim; it can lead to their suspension or even expulsion from school.

My note: another myth perpetuated by industry searching for profit. Instead of looking at the process of plagiarism as punitive action, an educator will look at it as education and prevention. Prevention of plagiarism will never be successful, if the focus as in this article is on “suspension,” “expulsion,” etc. The goal of the teacher is NOT to catch the student, but to work with the student and understand the complexity of plagiarism.

3. Tools Must Be Easy to Use

My note: right, the goal is to make the teacher think as less as possible.

My note: PlagiarismCheck is the same as TurnitIn and all other tools, which seek profit, not education. Considering that plagiarism is a moving target (https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2016/01/10/plagiarism-or-collaboration/) and it is a concept first and secondly an action, the attempt to extract profits from the mechanization of this process is no less corrupt then the attempt to focus on profit (of education) rather then on education (itself)

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more on plagiarism in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=plagiarism