cheating made easy

Via Slashdot:
jefu writes “This NY Times story talks about the kinds of papers that students might find (and buy) on the web. It also mentions turnitin.com a site that will scan papers and attempt to determine if it was copied. The article uses ‘The Great Gatsby’ as an example and notes that for the time it takes to read the book and write a paper, buying a paper seems a poor tradeoff. However, many books (or required papers) involve much more work on the part of the student, so the question becomes that much more difficult. If you have to do a report on ‘Ulysses’ it takes a bit more than a few hours just to read the book – let along understand enough to do a reasonable paper on it.”

The discussion is interesting. I just like to see Slashdot readers argue about something directly related to my line of work, as in this entry I posted back in January.

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4 thoughts on “cheating made easy

  1. G2–
    Since you’re bringing “blogs” into your courses, thought you’d be interested in plaigiarism and blogging…particularly on Tequila Mockingbird’s website. She is currently handling yet a second infraction of her digial rights.

  2. Yep–that’s it. And I meant “an infraction of her digital rights”! Yuk, yuk. :)
    The play-by-play with Bryan Lamb is worth reading. If you go through her archive, it’s a wealth of interesting responses form readers, other bloggers, etc. about plaigiarism and how the web is considered “free material”. Would be great fodder for a discussion on plaigiarism and a writer’s responsibilities.

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