One way teachers are battling plagiarism is through online plagiarism checkers that are designed to authenticate papers. These sites save time and gives constructive feedback to teachers and students on whether or not some form of plagiarism was used. Through these sites, students are held responsible for their work and teachers have a sense of ease in determining if the student actually wrote their own paper. In addition, less paper is being wasted as the virtual copy is now kept in an online system.
Here are some websites being used to battle plagiarism:
One of the most popular websites, this website searches databases and checks for proper citation use. Other features include:
- Write Check feature for students- Detects plagiarism and gives a percentage amount of how comparable the paper is to the citation references they were pulled from
- Fast results- reports can be generated in a matter of minutes
- Additional features- Checks style, grammar, and spelling
9th Grade Civics/ Humanities teacher Susan Marsh says that Turnitin has given her ease in grading papers and has been a positive experience for students.
“Overall, I see more organized papers, fewer technical errors, and desire to get more good comments,” Marsh said. “Students enjoy the feedback.”
Matching Plagiarism
Some sites will compare a phrase to the web (up to 50 words depending on which site) or take a url and match plagiarized words with other websites, articles or online sources of content. Here are some examples:
For-Teachers-Only Plagiarism Detection Websites
In addition to searching databases for matching compromised content, these websites offer approaches to teach students how to cite their sources and take other preventative measures against plagiarism.
Plagiarism websites don’t have to be a bad thing for students. Not only do these detection websites allow students to check for plagiarism and see their writing errors, they also allow them to want to be better writers by allowing them to see the ways they can improve.
For more information on how to teach plagiarism prevention in your school, please visit Adina’s Deck.
Youth Internet Safety 