Cheating statistics, dead give aways
Unless students do a lot of work to cover-up the origins of stolen papers, most essays from Internet sources will give themselves away
Issue date: 2/18/02 Section: Details
Statistics
• Almost 80 percent of college students admit to cheating at least once.
• Thirty-six percent of undergraduates have admitted to plagiarizing written material.
• Ninety percent of students believe that cheaters are either never caught or have never been appropriately disciplined.
• Thirty percent of a large sampling of Berkeley students were recently caught plagiarizing directly from the Internet.
• A cheating level between 20 to 25 percent exists among high school advanced placement students.
— turnitin.com
Obvious signs of unoriginal work
• Essay is grade-school quality. The majority of essays available on the net haven't been written by rocket-scientists.
• Essay is off topic. Many of this type have oddly placed 'on-topic' paragraphs that a student inserts to bring it in line with the required subject.
• Strange/poor layout. Some students paste the essay into their word processor and hit "print." None of the original author's format is retained, resulting in out of whack page numbers, headings, spacing and page breaks.
• Essay contains a reference to its origin (e.g. "This essay is from www.essays.com — join today!") on the last page. It's common for students to miss this.
• The ultimate sign of sloth ... The essay was printed from an Internet browser. Very sad.
• Essay refers to or cites the lectures of a mystery instructor (not from UW-Eau Claire).
• The references are from books not available at Eau Claire, or are all from another country.
• All the references in the bibliography are at least five or 10 years old (i.e. A paper has no references after 1995 and refers to "President Clinton" in the present tense.)
— plagiarized.com
• Almost 80 percent of college students admit to cheating at least once.
• Thirty-six percent of undergraduates have admitted to plagiarizing written material.
• Ninety percent of students believe that cheaters are either never caught or have never been appropriately disciplined.
• Thirty percent of a large sampling of Berkeley students were recently caught plagiarizing directly from the Internet.
• A cheating level between 20 to 25 percent exists among high school advanced placement students.
— turnitin.com
Obvious signs of unoriginal work
• Essay is grade-school quality. The majority of essays available on the net haven't been written by rocket-scientists.
• Essay is off topic. Many of this type have oddly placed 'on-topic' paragraphs that a student inserts to bring it in line with the required subject.
• Strange/poor layout. Some students paste the essay into their word processor and hit "print." None of the original author's format is retained, resulting in out of whack page numbers, headings, spacing and page breaks.
• Essay contains a reference to its origin (e.g. "This essay is from www.essays.com — join today!") on the last page. It's common for students to miss this.
• The ultimate sign of sloth ... The essay was printed from an Internet browser. Very sad.
• Essay refers to or cites the lectures of a mystery instructor (not from UW-Eau Claire).
• The references are from books not available at Eau Claire, or are all from another country.
• All the references in the bibliography are at least five or 10 years old (i.e. A paper has no references after 1995 and refers to "President Clinton" in the present tense.)
— plagiarized.com
