To prevent collegiate copycats, two graduate students at
> the University of California at Berkeley have devised a
> program that compares a student's submission with every
> other term- paper on the Web.
>
> "We essentially search a hundred million Web pages on
> the Internet, interfacing with the top 20 search engines,"
>
I just tried out plagiarism.org on a paper from a student I was positive
was cheating (they offer a free trial) and it nailed _three_ sources for
whole paragraphs in her paper, _none_ of which was a paper-mill!
It only works with Internet sources (and papers submitted to other
classes that use the service), but it does an _excellent_ job with that.
I've had papers submitted to me before that came from one of the on-line
paper mills (I regularly check some of the major sites for new papers in
the areas most of my students write in--a time consuming job and prone to
error since I don't have time to read _all_ the papers available on them),
and this service would have saved me a _lot_ of work in catching them, as
well as others that probably slipped by me.
The rates are fairly reasonable--you pay a $20.00 registration fee (which
covers the cost of having 30 papers analyzed) then pay $0.50/paper for
additional papers after that (institutional rates are available). Of
course, _they_ recommend having your entire class submit their papers
directly to plagiarism.org (you are notified of the results with links to
confidential--and secure--web pages with the papers), which would make it
fairly expensive for large classes, but if you only use it to check
"suspicious" papers (by having your students turn in electronic copies of
their papers along with the printouts and submitting the ones you suspect
yourself), it would be both economical and a _lot_ easier than the
search-for-it-yourself method.
Overall, I'm impressed enough to register. It's not perfect (no off-line
search material is searched), but it's a lot better than the
time-consuming alternative.
Rick
--
Rick Adams
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Social Sciences
Jackson Community College, Jackson, MI
"... and the only measure of your worth and your deeds
will be the love you leave behind when you're gone."
Fred Small, J.D., "Everything Possible"
