UCLA has a new tool to combat plagiarism, and cheaters should be
afraid.
The university has subscribed to a Web-based service ““
Turnitin.com ““ which checks student work against existing
databases of essays and Internet documents.
So far, 40 professors have signed up to use the service, but the
university has licenses for the entire UCLA College faculty.
Professors worried about plagiarism should consider using the
service ““ even those who think their students are honest
might be surprised. At the very least, the Web site can serve as a
basic line of defense against students who think they can get away
with grabbing snippets of material from the Internet.
Best of all, the design of the service precludes the possibility
of false positives. Rather than simply declaring a submission
“plagiarized,” the service assigns an
“originality percentage” to every new document.
Professors can decide on a case-by-case basis if actual plagiarism
has occurred.
Many UCLA students likely are confused as to exactly what
plagiarism is. (The definition includes copying ideas as well as
exact words). But ignorance is not an excuse.