I have the luxury of relatively small (ca 20 student-) classes, but what I do is work with each student from the start: I work to help them develop hypothesis, I get regular submitted work on their progress (summaries of articles, annotated bibs) and do a couple drafts (at least) of each paper, several of these steps are in conference, and I get to quiz the student on what they know about their topic. I think this does a lot to discourage outright buying of a paper, but I'm not sure that everyone can do that.
It doesn't avoid the students plagiarizing parts of the paper from the research articles, but it certainly makes it more difficult for them to just buy something. m -- Marc Carter, PhD Associate Professor and Chair Department of Psychology College of Arts & Sciences Baker University -- ________________________________ From: Beth Benoit [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2010 10:47 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] more detective work with Word? I'm deeply unsettled at this time of year by the information about "contract cheating" (buying term papers online) and how flagrant it is. Sometimes you are positive that a student didn't write the submitted paper (how can a D student, who can barely complete a sentence in an essay question, submit a strongly written research paper?) but we need more ways to prove it. I'm sure the essay companies do their best to help the students not get caught. (I've seen some that offer an essay written to a grade specification, so that a C student will get a paper that's not very well-written and with some words spelled incorrectly. Sigh.) Does anyone know of any further little tricks to use with Word that can help us find these contract cheaters? I'd be particularly interested to know if there's a way to find out the TOTAL amount of time a student has spent on "writing" a paper - such as when the student began work on the paper. For example, if the student bought the paper from a term paper site, I'd expect that only a few minutes would be spent opening it up into a new document page, maybe adding his/her own name, etc. The information that I posted yesterday does tell the "last" time it was edited, and how much time was spent and how many "edits" were made. But this doesn't help if, say, the student worked on it for a week altogether, saved it, and then opened it one final time, etc. Then it might look like only few minutes were spent, which of course is very suspicious, but perhaps incorrectly so. Some of the tell-tale signs I've been using, as I described in yesterday's post, with Leah Adams-Curtis' tips, are in the Prepare->Properties link, which reveals the author's/owner's name. MOST of the time, this should be the student's name, but what if he/she is using someone else's computer to write the paper? That, in itself, shouldn't be incriminating. The other sign is under the pull-down menu for Document Properties->Advanced->Statistics, which reveals the editing information described above. But I KNOW that legal departments have other tricks they use to uncover "secret" notations that aren't intended to show up in the final documents. Anybody know what they might be, or any other detective tricks? Beth Benoit Granite State College Plymouth State University New Hampshire --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13029.76c7c563b32ad9d8d09c72a2d17c90e1&n=T&l=tips&o=6989 (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) or send a blank email to leave-6989-13029.76c7c563b32ad9d8d09c72a2d17c9...@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:leave-6989-13029.76c7c563b32ad9d8d09c72a2d17c9...@fsulist.frostburg.edu> ________________________________ The information contained in this e-mail and any attachments thereto ("e-mail") is sent by Baker University ("BU") and is intended to be confidential and for the use of only the individual or entity named above. The information may be protected by federal and state privacy and disclosures acts or other legal rules. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are notified that retention, dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error please immediately notify Baker University by email reply and immediately and permanently delete this e-mail message and any attachments thereto. Thank you. --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7015 or send a blank email to leave-7015-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
