Cut And Paste, Catch Cheaters

The Internet has become the answer to cheaters’ prayers, diminishing any chance that professors might have to identify plagiarized source materials and ferret out academic dishonesty. Now, it’s high time that professors wisen up. The electronic age demands that professors have more sophisticated resources at their disposal to safeguard against cheating.

Professors in some Harvard courses, like Government 1790, “American Foreign Policy,” are using new software such as Eve2 and the website TurnItIn.com to check students’ work against the massive volumes of content on the web. Professors should feel free to use these resources, which are valuable in identifying cases of blatant Internet plagiarism. Because it includes stock essays from websites like lazystudent.com in its databases, using this type of software can be a more effective method than simply relying on whether a paper “feels right.”

These programs are also essential when relying on suspicion alone is simply not feasible—for example, in large courses where professors rarely can get acquainted with their students’ writing styles. University of Virginia Professor of Physics Louis R. Bloomfield, who developed his own version of anti-plagiarism software, used this program to successfully detect more than 40 instances of cheating in a large introductory course. Many of the students caught by his software were subsequently expelled; without the use of Bloomfield’s software these students, who were clearly guilty of academic dishonesty, would have gone unpunished.

The use of this technology can also serve as an effective deterrent against cheating. Students who know their work will be checked using vast online databases, however infrequent the checks, will certainly think twice before plagiarizing their papers.

But professors who choose to use computer software to detect cheating should do so with caution. Much of the new software can be imprecise and is no substitute for more careful scrutiny by professors and TFs. Technology should not replace common sense in potential plagiarism cases, and professors must fully investigate any similarities the software finds in students’ work.

The technical process of checking is also very time-consuming, and extensive checks on every assignment would most certainly prove to be a waste of the University’s academic resources. Professors should instead rely on the deterrent effect of random, infrequent checks of their students’ work, and they must make it clear to their students that computer screening will be used to prevent plagiarism.

A national survey by Rutgers University’s Management Education Center in April found that 75 percent of high school students had engaged in “serious cheating,” and that more than half had used the Internet to plagiarize their work, showing unequivocally that students are leaving high school with a perception that it is acceptable to cheat. The same survey uncovered the common perception that “what’s important is getting ahead” as a justification for cheating.

To suggest that Harvard students are immune to the temptations of plagiarism is overly optimistic. The threat of potential academic dishonesty in the Harvard community is not to be taken lightly and professors should feel free to use any measure available, including new computer software, to combat plagiarism. Such a step will help to preserve the integrity of academics at Harvard.

Dissent: Innocent Until Proven Guilty

Employing anti-plagiarism programs will probably catch a few cheaters. It might even act as a deterrent to copying and encourage original work. But these positive results will certainly be outweighed by the tense, adversarial relationship this will undoubtedly create between professors and students. Once a few bad apples get caught, the trust the faculty and the administration presently grant students—most of whom are honest and hard-working—will be replaced by suspicion as teachers feel justified to crack down. Positive interactions with teachers will become much rarer as they devote more time to administrative reprisal; when students see professors as adversaries rather than partners in education, office hours attendance will plummet.

It is better to let one or two dishonest individuals slip through than to poison the student-teacher relationship.

—Stephen W. Stromberg ’05