EDUC 6179: Plagiarism Detection and Prevention

This week’s post focuses on plagiarism detection and prevention, specifically in online learning communities.  The primary plagiarism detection and prevention software that is available to online instructors that I have come in contact with in my years as a student, is Turnitin.  This software enables students to submit their work directly to the program Turnitin (through a link on their online class) and Turnitin checks for plagiarism.  This software’s existence alone can help deter plagiarism because students may be too afraid to even attempt to plagiarize work out of fear of it getting caught so quickly.  Additionally, it saves time for teachers and gives them a quick and easy reference to make sure the students work is genuine.

The design of assessments in the online classroom can help prevent academic dishonesty.  For example, questions asked can focus on personal experiences related to topics learned so that the student has to come up with personal experiences and stories and would be less likely to “cut and paste” information from something they find online or in a book.  Teachers could incorporate timed online assessments in some cases where the student only has limited time to complete a test limiting their ability to plagiarize work from another source. 

Some strategies that I would like to see implemented in my role as a future online instructor would include the timed tests as well as encouraging students to provide real life, personal experiences that they can relate to the topics learned.  I would not ask for assignments that specifically request information that can only be obtained through research because I think that would be more likely to result in plagiarism.  To avoid cheating, I think that encouraging group work for assignments where the students have to work together to learn from each other as opposed to possibly cheating would be a good strategy. 

Some other considerations that need to be taken into account is the possibility that someone could be having someone else (unrelated to the class) complete their coursework.  This is something I always wonder about as I have seen it happen in the past.  I am not really sure how one would go about preventing this in an online learning environment but I think that it is necessary because I fear that some people are earning degrees without actually earning them.  With the increase in technology, I think that this will get easier.  For example, perhaps in the future students will log in with the use of their fingerprint on a touchscreen so that their true identity can be verified.  This issue is something that I will continue to think about as an instructor and try to prevent and I will take into account any safeguards that I am able to implement at the time. 

           

References

Boettcher, J. V., & Conrad, R. (2010). The online teaching survival guide: Simple and practical

pedagogical tips. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.