Committee offers solutions to widespread Internet plagiarism

by Anne C. Miller assistant managing editor

The Internet has become a popular, fast and sometimes free way to obtain works of a scholarly magnitude. All you need is a computer, an Internet connection, and occasionally a credit card-but look out for the professors that may double-check your sources

To the surprise of many faculty members, plagiarism over the Internet has become a problem on Cabrini's campus-and they are fed up.

Rocco Paolucci, associate professor of computer information science, and Anne Schweim, coordinator of information access and user services, hosted a seminar for Cabrini faculty in the Grace Hall boardroom on Tues- day, Feb. 16.

Several Internet sites, of both an intricate and simple nature, were introduced to the small group that was in attendance. Such advanced sites included "School Sucks" at http://www.schoolsucks.com, "The Essay Organization" at http://www.essay.org/ and "Cyber Essays" at http://www.cyberessays.com.

From these sites, one can perform an advanced search for a particular work of literature, person, theme, etc.

The committee mentioned other search engines or databases involving a broader span of material, such as "Altavista," which can be found at www.altavista.com, and "Hotbot" at www.hotbot.com.

Essay.org, an international site, contains essays in a variety of languages. When a particular essay is chosen, it can than be copied and pasted in Altavista and later translated into English or another desired language.

"The student will hit onto a site and look for essays that are in relation to his assignment or do an elaborate search," Paolucci said.

Paolucci has designed his own web site that warns faculty members of the plagiarism fiasco. This site can be found on the Cabrini College webpage at www.cabrini.edu/~paolucci/plagiarism. Also on the webpage is a complete list of the most popular plagiarism sites.

The seminar introduced a series of solutions to the controversy, including software and web services that can be used to detect plagiarism and helpful hints when giving an assignment. However, when all else fails, help can be found in the Holy Spirit Library. "Anyone with concerns involving suspicion of plagiarism in a student's work can come to the library for help," Schweim said. Faculty members could request that student-written papers be emailed to their email addresses. From here, they can use software such as Intelligent Essay Assessor at dlaham@psych.colorado.edu, which scans every fifth word in a paper, focusing on similarities in the student's essay and plagiarized essays found on the Internet.

Schweim suggests that faculty members carefully focus assignments on a specific topic and require intermittent progress re- ports, such as outlines and oral presentations.

However, if specific assignments are given, student creativity and intellectual challenge is limited and personal interests can not be explored.

Plagiarism is defined in the student handbook as "the attempt to present research, ideas and writing of another person as original work."

Penalties for plagiarism are at the discretion of the course instructor. They include lowered grades for the assignment or test, failure of the assignment or test with the option to re-take, failure of the assignment or test without the option to re-take and course failure or course failure with a recommendation for suspension or expulsion.