INTERNET Online essays: tempting to cheat

Research-paper sites yield an 'atmosphere of distrust,' a YSU faculty member says.
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
Nathaniel Hawthorne is probably rolling over in his grave.
If he'd had access to the Internet, no doubt he'd have slapped a scarlet letter P for plagiarism on sites like Bookreportsfree.com, TheTermPapers.com and MegaEssays.com.
The sites offer papers -- a few free, most for a price -- to any researchers adept enough to plug their topics into a search engine. If the researchers turn the work in as their own, they're guilty of plagiarism.
"The Internet made it so much easier and so much more tempting," said Dr. Kevin Ball, a co-director of composition programs at Youngstown State University. "Now, what used to be a drawer in a filing cabinet in a frat house has now gone worldwide."
Prices for papers
The sites are big business. For example, the 123helpme.com site reveals that it has handled "$27 billion in transactions." It offers six levels of essays from "free" to "fantastic." Translate "fantastic" to numbers, and you get $29.95.
MegaEssays.com charges up to $29.95 for a 30-day membership; FastPapers.com charges $9.85 per page. Another site, 4essays.com, has a scale. A 6.2-page astronomy paper on "Man on the Moon" has one source and costs $44.95. "Chemical Inhibitor of p53: Against the Side-Effects of Cancer Therapy," at 4.9 pages with four sources, costs $35.95. "Entrepreneurial Adventure: The Development of the American Economic System" costs $95.95 for 15.9 pages and 13 sources.
Bookreportsfree.com has a different twist. Before allowing access, it requires users to submit a paper they've written.
Some sites have an obvious disclaimer telling students they could fail or get expelled for plagiarizing; others use copyrights or warnings that the source of all student work should be cited. Still, some give users directions on ways to copy them into a word processing program.
Plagiarism crackdown
What these sites led to is another big business: software and Web sites designed to detect plagiarism.
Dr. Cary Horvath, an assistant professor of communication at YSU, said the department has bought rights to use the Turnitin.com Web site. Turnitin has a huge database of files in a variety of programs, she explained. When turning assignments in, students are required to upload the document to the Web site, where the work is scanned to see if it matches, in whole or in part, any documents in the database.
"We believe it functions largely as a deterrent to plagiarism," Horvath said.
Cost is $750 per year for unlimited use in 50 different classes.
Although Horvath has not used the program, she said she discovered an instance of plagiarism this term using an old-fashioned technique: teacher intuition.
The language used by the student sounded "almost poetic," she said, so she typed a phrase from the work into the Google search engine and found that the piece had been lifted word-for-word on a Web page.
At other schools
Dr. Thomas Flynn, a communication professor at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, said paper-writing businesses have been out there for decades but are easier now because of Internet access.
At SRU, he said, a faculty committee is considering various anti-plagiarism software programs to battle the proliferation of these Web sites. Some programs allow professors to compare work with that of other SRU students who have taken the course with a different instructor.
A negative result of the Web site availability is that "it introduces a cynicism," Flynn said, in which professors doubt the work of students who show marked improvement. Ball calls it "an atmosphere of distrust."
"That's one of the effects, one of the problems of this industry," Ball added. "I wish it would go away."
At Kent State University, Erica Lilly, associate professor and information services librarian, has held workshops for instructors and created an online presentation titled "Preventing Plagiarism in a Networked World."
She cites a Psychological Record survey that shows 36 percent of undergraduate students admitted plagiarizing written material, and an April-May 2000 Turnitin.com test that showed 30 percent of a large sampling of Berkeley students were caught plagiarizing directly from the Internet.
Foiling cheating
Instructor Jay Gordon, co-director of YSU composition programs, said a goal is to craft assignments that would be difficult to complete by plagiarizing, such as those that require multiple drafts or are drawn from a specific set of readings.
He said his suspicions are raised in about one of 15 or 20 papers, and he finds plagiarism about once in each of the two or three classes he teaches each semester.
"Part of it, I think, is part of our culture. People cheat on their taxes; they fudge travel expenses; they pad their insurance claims. That kind of integrity reaches over as well," YSU's Ball said. "Students don't realize the significance of an act in an academic world if they're praised for it."
College educators aren't the only ones dealing with the issue.
"It's really a hot topic," said Colleen Ruggieri, a Boardman High School teacher and president-elect of the Ohio Council of Teachers of English Language Arts. "Teachers have become fully aware of all the Web sites and have realized that students are looking for shortcuts. ... A lot of times, students rely on crutches and plagiarize when they don't have a strong understanding of the material."
Being in touch
Teachers who use software programs to catch plagiarism are using shortcuts themselves, she said. Instead, the key is to be in touch with students from the start of a project to its finish and to make assignments relevant to the students' lives.
Carolyn Suttles at Bristol High School in Trumbull County said the Web sites have become an issue because they are so readily available; however, a teacher can put an excerpt from a suspicious research paper into a search engine and quickly be taken back to a source.
Suttles, current president of OCTELA, said articles on the topic have appeared in professional journals, and anti-plagiarism software has appeared at trade shows.
But students who use the purchased essays might find they're not worth the risk. Suttles said that often, they are not of high quality.
"They're not necessarily getting students the A's," she said.