Plagiarism and the internet

Cheats have been with us for as long as there have been rules. The word 'cheat' itself was originally coined more than 1,000 years ago from 'escheator', a name given to corrupt tax collectors who worked for the king's exchequer.

The internet has been around for only a few years but long enough for dishonest people to work out that the world wide web could make their lives a lot easier.

The original escheators diddled people out of money; today's cheats steal other people's hard work and ideas.

The vast amount of information on offer at the click of a mouse button is a tempting prospect for some schoolchildren.Our feature on the use of computers in schools set out the many benefits that technology brings to teachers and pupils.

Now we speak to some teachers and pupils to discover what is being done to make sure that students get the credit only for work they have done themselves.

Red-faced, red-handed
Plagiarism isn't just unethical, it's an infringement of copyright law too, although most people don't consider this when they copy someone else's work.

Even our political leaders fall foul sometimes, as the recent controversy over the dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq showed when it was discovered that some of the material was taken from a student's essay.

The Government argues that it simply forgot to give credit to the original author but, as any teacher will tell you, that in itself is plagiarism.

If the powers that be have trouble keeping their mitts off other people's work, how can teachers make sure that the work submitted by their pupils is original and not just a copy-and-paste job?

The National Union of Teachers (NUT) claims that most of the 7.5 million children in Britain's schools are very hard working and honest, and that budding information highway robbers leave a clear trail of guilt.

"Teachers can spot material that's been plagiarised from the internet very easily," a NUT representative said. "Young people think they can pull the wool over experienced teachers' eyes, but they can't. Teachers are much more knowledgeable than they are sometimes given credit for by pupils.

"If a pupil hands in a piece of work that is out of character, not just in the quality of the work but the language used, teachers will spot this immediately."

This is particularly true of younger children but, as writing skills improve, it can be harder to spot where original work begins and ends.

Jean Gemmell is general secretary of the Professional Association of Teachers and served as the head teacher of a Nottingham comprehensive school for 16 years. She believes that internet cheating is becoming a serious problem in higher education.

"Some pupils learn how to adapt the style of the material they take from the web and make it fit in with their own work," she said. "If a child has these skills, it can be very difficult for teachers to spot."

Gemmell added that most children are not usually skilled enough to do this. If they hand in work witha style and knowledge beyond their own, then it's more often a cause of mirth in the staff room.

"I was teaching a class on geology and set homework on metamorphic rock. One pupil just typed 'metamorphosis' into a search engine and pasted the results into his so-called essay," she explained.

"The boy handed in a whole treatise on metamorphosis in the life cycle of a butterfly. When pupils do this it's so obvious because they are not attaching any thinking mechanism to what they are doing."

Caught in teacher's net
Dan Charmer, a 15 year-old pupil at Hartford High School, agrees that internet cheats usually get caught by beady-eyed teachers.

"When I use the internet for research, I would not copy a whole piece of writing from it because teachers can tell your style of writing," he said.

"We all know that if a teacher just typed in the opening lines of an essay that has been copied, it would probably be picked up by a search engine."

This is the most common approach used by teachers to detect cheating. Any phrase that looks out of place is typed into a search engine such as Google.

Google then hunts through its billions of web pages. You don't even have to match the exact phrase - anything that is similar will turn up in the search results.

However, this optimistic view is dismissed by Terry Handley, a teacher and consultant who is part of a national team funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) that is responsible for making sure government teaching standards are followed.

"I think it's rubbish to say that web cheating is not an issue," he said. "It's just so easy for kids to copy material from the internet. Click, click, click and bang there it is. Internet plagiarism is a real problem."

Handley conceded that it is technically possible for teachers to check suspicious work by passing it through a search engine, but pointed out that, teachers do not typically have time to do this.

"With all the extra things they have to do they can't be expected to check every piece of marking," he explained.

"There is great pressure on schools to get good results and, if you can put A-grading and A-star grading on coursework, there may be pressure on some staff to turn a blind eye to what's going on here."

Crime and punishment
So what is the government doing to make sure that cheats get what they deserve? From the response to Computeractive's questions, it's difficult to tell.

The DfES says that it has no research detailing the extent of internet cheating in Britain, but recent US studies indicate that the problem is reaching epidemic proportions.

The Center for Academic Integrity, an unofficial body that aims to promote ethical education practice, says that on most campuses, more than 75 per cent of students admit to cheating.

From the government's point of view, weeding out students who cheat in exams and coursework is the responsibility of the examining boards, which take their guidelines from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA).

The QCA insists that it has tough guidelines that the examination boards must enforce and echoes Gemmell's point that teachers can usually spot unoriginal work.

Neither the QCA or the DfES would spell out the methods they use to catch cheats and there are no concrete guidelines for schools on the detection of plagiarism.

The DfES website that advises teachers and parents on safe use of the internet, Parents Online, includes a brief paragraph pointing out that plagiarism is wrong.

It offers links to US-based sites offering commercial software that analyses students' work for evidence of cheating. The decision on whether to buy this software, which has not been tested by education chiefs, rests with individual schools, where budgets are already stretched.

Handley says that classroom discussion is a much better way of discouraging swindlers. But this softly-softly approach must be backed up with a big stick.

"Copying people's work is not just a bit of fun, it's an infringement of copyright law," he warned. "As a teacher talking to a group of pupils, I would always warn them of the dangers of using any work produced by another person without giving credit."

He adds that it is vital that there are fair but harsh punishments dolled out to pupils who are caught cheating and that these are explained to all pupils as a school policy.

Setting guidelines
Rules, regulations and government plans alone will never stamp out cheating - whether on the internet or anywhere else, although it would be nice to see some specific guidelines for schools.

There will always be people who cannot or will not behave honestly. Some people believe that internet use in schools should be banned or severely restricted because the temptation is too great, but that would be a discredit to our children, not to mention our hard-working teachers.

Cutting links to the internet, at school or at home, would punish honest pupils unfairly and stifle learning and would equate to banning libraries.

As always with children, parents have their part to play. The discussion that Handley says should take place in the classroom, should start in the living room.

Essays for sale
Teachers are concerned about the growing number of websites that offer essays written by other students on a range of school subjects.

Cheathouse, also known as the Evil House of Cheat, is one of the most infamous sites. Its creator, Jens Schriver, defends his site, saying that Cheathouse is "not too different from a library".

"It can be used legitimately, to do research and get inspired, or it can be used to outright plagiarise," he said. "I don't try to parent my users. It's completely up to them what they do with the essays."

Cheathouse offers free access to essays providing that pupils contribute to the site themselves. Other sites, such as School Sucks, charge fees.

What is plagiarism?
It is not wrong to use other people's ideas in your work, providing you are honest about where the information came from. Whether using a quote from a book, website or CD-Rom, you must give the name of the publication and its author.

In most academic work, it's best to do this within the essay rather than at the end and use double quote marks (" ") to indicate which passages of text are not yours.

These ideas should only be used as examples to explain your own argument. The person you are quoting has already made their point - what's yours?

The same applies even when you are not using direct quotes. Taking a piece of text and rewriting it so that it says the same thing in a slightly different way is also plagiarism if you do not credit the original author. Claiming you forgot is no excuse.

Further information:

Government and education
Center for Academic Integrity
US guidelines on combating plagiarism.

Department for Education and Skills
Ministry with responsibility for educational standards.

Parents Online
Government website giving advice on all aspects of the internet to parents and guardians.

Plagiarism.org
Commercially-backed US website offering tools that detect online cheating.

Qualifications and Curriculum Authority
The guardian of standards in examinations and coursework.

Superhighway safety
The Government's guidelines for schools on plagiarism.

UK Intellectual Property
Government website that explains the legal jungle of copyright law.

Know your enemy!

Websites that offer access to other peoples' coursework, stock exam answers and essays:
www.schoolsucks.com

www.cheathouse.com/uk

Try searching on Google for many more.