Unit 2: How to Use Plagiarism Detection Software
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Preventing Plagiarism in the Classroom
Unit 3: Strategies to Avoid Plagiarism
What Do I Know Now?
What do you know about plagiarism detection software, both as a teacher and as a student? Share your experiences in the Padlet below.
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What is Plagiarism Detection Software?
Plagiarism detection software is a system that takes submitted text as input, and compares the text against a set of publicly available and privately held documents, resulting in a similarity report. The similarity report includes marking of similar or identical text, hyperlinks or other references to sources that match it, and an overall similarity report. In some cases, the similarity report can be customized to include or not quoted text, and to include or not the bibliography.
There are many different platforms that you can use to detect plagiarism, both paid and for free. One of the most popular and sophisticated one platforms is Turnitin, which provides an abidance of customizations. Turnitin is a product designed to check the originality of student papers. It was made specifically for classroom use and for reviewing student work. Turnitin can be integrated within learning management systems for students to review their own papers before submitting them and teachers to then assess those papers for plagiarized content
There are also free websites, such as Dupli Checker, which can allow you to scan a document without paying for an expensive subscription. Of course, the similarity reports from the free websites do not provide nearly the same level of information or flexibility of a website like Turnitin.
Watch the video below for a brief overview of how plagiarism detection software works!
Why Use Plagiarism Detection Software?
Plagiarism by students is not a new problem, but it has been compounded by the ease of “copying and pasting” content from articles and other information sources on the Internet. Using content developed by others may be intentional but more often, this is an inadvertent error. With software tools that are currently available teachers can more easily identify plagiarism and do not need to rely solely on their own abilities to recognize similarities to previously published text and prior student work. Plagiarism detection software can be used to scan student papers in a few minutes, matching what they have submitted to already published work.
How to Use Plagiarism Detection Software?
In order to detect the plagiarism percentage of a text, you need to paste it into the opened window, or upload the document in its entirety. You then click the check plagiarism button. This is the only thing you are required to do. The pasted text is compared to thousands if not millions of web resources. Once the scanning process is over, a user will get a plagiarism report. Plagiarism detection websites are designed to be easy to use, and while each website may differ slightly, this is the standard method to check for plagiarism.
Watch this video to see an example of a plagiarism detection site in action!
Activity
Now you should attempt to use plagiarism detection software. Below there are a couple of passages, which may have some form of plagiarism. Use the website Dupli Checker to determine if any of the passages have plagiarism.
"There is no such thing as a "good" oil spill. If the time and place are just right, even a small oil spill can cause damage to sensitive ecosystems. Further, spills can cause harm days, months, years, or even decades after they occur. Because of this, spills are usually broken into short-term (acute) and long-term (chronic) effects. Both of these types of harm must be addressed in ecosystem recovery: a controversial tactic that is often implemented immediately following an oil spill".
"No oil spill is entirely benign. Depending on timing and location, even a relatively minor spill can cause significant harm to individual organisms and entire populations. Oil spills can cause impacts over a range of time scales, from days to years, or even decades for certain spills. Impacts are typically divided into acute (short-term) and chronic (long-term) effects. Both types are part of a complicated and often controversial equation that is addressed after an oil spill: ecosystem recovery".
Click Here to access Dupli Checker, a free plagiarism website!
Now that you have some experience using plagiarism detection software, try out the software on your own to come to your own determination on how reliable it may be for use in your classroom.
Is Plagiarism Detection Software Effective?
Plagiarism detection software is a useful tool for any educator, but it is important to remember that it is just that, a tool. For responsible use of plagiarism detection software, educators cannot make a decision about text being plagiarized based only on the score generated by the software; they need to review every segment of highlighted text to determine if the content is too similar to published work or has been properly cited and can be used. Some similarity is acceptable, such as commonly used terms and phrases, as well as lists of author names in the text.
The results from a plagiarism software report can be hard to interpret, difficult to navigate, and sometimes just wrong. Many systems report false positives for common phrases, long names of institutions or even reference information. The software can also produces false negatives. A system might fail to find plagiarism if the source of the plagiarized text has not been digitized, contains spelling errors or is otherwise not available to the software system. Many cases of plagiarism slip through undetected when material is translated or taken from multiple sources. The issue is that, even with all of these faults, the score that a document receives is usually taken at face value. It is vital to thoroughly check a students work, even if you are using plagiarism detection software, in order to determine if text is actually plagiarized.
Reflection
Consider plagiarism detection software, in a Padlet post, reflect on whether or not you think it is effective and if it should be used in your classroom. We will be talking about the effect that using plagiarism detection software has on student behavior in the next module.
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