back in the good ol’ days of studenthood I spent many frantic nights typing a paper that was due the next morning.
Sure , I was irresponsible,–but at least I did my OWN work. I spent long hours in the library looking at lots of sources and finally at the last minute put together a coherent 5 , 10 or 15 pages of research.
Back then,(I graduated on or about 1980) there were a few shady companies that advertised in the local paper offering “research assistance”. But the mechanics of it made such cheating difficult. (A very brief,non-detailed catalog; and with snail mail, you had to order weeks in advance and pray that it would be relevant to your professor’s assignment, etc.)
Today, we have the net. And it just now occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, a few students might actually be dishonest. So I googled “term papers”, and discovered that there are only enough sites out there to meet the needs of several million dishonest students.
So 2 questions:
Professors–how do you check that students are actually writing their own papers?
And students–how tempting is it to you?(well, okay, I’ll let you keep your private secrets–just tell me what the “other” students in your dorm do)
How widespread a problem is it?
When I had to hand in my first research paper of considerable lenght in 2002, we were repeatedly warned by teachers not to let this temptation win over us. I don’t think anybody actually cheated, but then again I can’t be sure, of course - depending on the topic on which you have to write, it can be very tempting.
Teachers told us that they could definitely detect a copied paper; they’ve been teaching those students for years, they know their style, and if anything in the paper makes them suspicious they’ll research. Besides, an additional oral exam had been made mandatory for those papers a year or so before, so I guess if you hand in an A+ paper but turn out not to have the slightest clue in the oral exam, you’re out. Apart form that, I think it works with cruel deterrence: The chances of being caught cheating are not that big, but if you actually do get caught, you’ll face consequences that make you wish you would have done it differently.
Knowing my luck if I cheated I’d get caught. But I wouldn’t do it anyway as it’s unfair to the people who actually worked for their grades.
There exists a couple of computer programs that check for plagerism, also. They connect with a central database full of old papers and scholarly writings and compare paragraphs and words. And I believe, one program checks for stylestic entegrity, to catch people who take a paragraph here, a paragraph there, and string them into a paper.
I go to comunity college, and know of no serious cheating problems. But I may just be out of that loop, not being much of a cheater myself.
Please forgive any spelling or grammar errors, as I am on serious pain meds cause I slipped a disc in my back.