Paul Bernhardt wrote:
I want to thank folks for their responses to my question.
I was suspecting false negatives might be a problem, too.
If y'all have more to share on plagiarism software in general, I'm happy
to hear more. I may want to build some ammunition to take to our IT people.
Thanks!
Paul
I am not a fan of any of the well-known commercial
anti-plagiarism packages because I can generate both false
positives and false negatives easily.
One semester, I offered extra-credit in a couple of classes to
students who could sneak plagiarised material past a commercial
package and show me how they did it. More than 80% of the
students in the classes could do so and several students showed
me more than 1 way.
(We were testing the product for adoption. I am amazed that
schools are buying these services without testing. Instead,
schools seem to rely on sales pitches and testimonials.)
Finally, many cases of plagiarism are done by very lazy students.
Doing Google searches on suspicious phrases often produces the
copied document on the first page of searches.
Ken
---------------------------------------------------------------
Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [email protected]
Professor and Assistant Chairperson
Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu
Appalachian State University
Boone, NC 28608
USA
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