Unit 7, Article 30

Probing for Plagiarism in the Virtual Classroom

Article Summary:

This article discusses cheating in both the traditional and the virtual classroom. The author tells us at the beginning of the paper that "the probability that a student will cheat in an online course is about equal to the chances that a student will cheat in a traditional course." Since, however, most academics are concerned about an increase in cheating in virtual classrooms, the author outlines some ways to deter students from taking advantage of their increased anonymity. Online exams and quizzes with strict time limits, proctoring of exams by a college testing center, and mandatory participation in discussion boards are all presented as ways to deter students cheating. Additionally, the author presents numerous websites which are dedicated to deterring plagiarism. Since students today have access to numerous papers that are easily copied via the internet, professors fear that cheating and plagiarism will become much more common. Some of the websites and plagiarism detecting software that the author presents seems like they would be effective tools in helping to preserve academic integrity.

Response to Article:

I think that the author's initial comment about cheating is the most realistic take on the issue. That is, students are just as likely to cheat in an online class as they are in a traditional classroom. I do think, however, that cheating and plagiarism will become increasingly common as technology becomes more pervasive. It is just too easy to directly copy and paste text from one source to another for more students to not take advantage of it. Especially now, considering how easy it is to convert text sources such as scanned documents and PDF files into editable formats, there are ever-increasing methods by which students can plagiarize. However, just because it is easier to plagiarize materials now, does not mean that everyone is going to do it. The programs that the author presented for anti-plagiarism seem like they would be very useful, but teachers should not consider those programs to be infallible. I'm sure that if you look hard enough, you could probably find a paper out there with similar ideas to the ones I am typing now. We must always be open to new technologies, but we must be responsible when using them.