Study Guide
What are Online Term Paper Mills?
Online term paper “mills” which
sell finished research essays to students are surprisingly
rampant. According to turnitin.org,
the leading site in automatic plagiarism detection,
29% of students' essays contain "significant
plagiarism" and 1% are fully plagiarized. The
Kimbel Library at Coastal Carolina University lists
over
250 online sites which sell or give away copies
of research papers on all subjects. Owners of these
websites report daily emails from students profusely
thanking them for their "help." Of course
cheating and plagiarism have always been problems
in academic environments, but with the internet, it
is so incredibly easy to simply grab a paper online
when the due dates mount up.
Defining
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined as copying someone else's words
or ideas without giving them due credit. With the
use of online term papers on the rise, it is imperative
that teachers educate themselves and their students
on what constitutes plagiarism and
how to avoid it. For a good start, go
here.
Why Students Plagiarize.
Most of us would agree that plagiarizing
violates some basic rules of ethics, and furthermore,
nobody would dispute the claim that handing in a paper
downloaded from the internet (or copying significant
portions of it) constitutes plagiarism. So how do
students justify these actions to themselves? Well,
many claim that the academic environment places an
unreasonable emphasis on both "formal" assessment
through writing that is somewhat artificial and not
relevant outside academia. They also claim that our
society as a whole relies too heavily on GPA and grades
in determining one's potential, and many students,
faced with a deadline that they feel they cannot meet,
see no other way to get the grade without doing some
cheating "here and there." For an essay
defending these sites, go
here.
Ethical Issues
But there are problems with the students' arguments.
Writing research papers, while perhaps an activity
restricted to academia, develops other skills which
are highly important in one's work and social life.
These include the ability to locate background material
and educate oneself on a subject, explaining that
subject to others, analyzing evidence and forulating
opinions, and supporting one's conclusions through
a well-articulated argument. All of these skills trickle
down into the most important aspects of life--not
just building a successful career, but also being
a more informed citizen, evaluating legal situations,
being a better parent, and living a happier, more
fulfilling life. Not only that, there is the basic
ethical issue that you are using someone else's work
and fooling people into believing it is your own.
If we allow this kind of deliberate deception to be
acceptable, why would it stop at graduation? The academic
environment, even more than educating, is supposed
to enstill lifelong values of honesty, discipline,
and critical thinking--all of which get compromised
when a student plagiarizes. Maybe the consequences
in academia are minor in the "grand scheme,"
but in
the real world they are not.
Current Safeguards
A McCabe study discussed in the N&O article "Is
cheating becoming a way of life?" found that
colleges and universities which have an honor code
have fewer incidents of cheating. The Seattle Times
article "Internet access opens door to paper
plagiarism" states that some colleges and universities
may practice other safeguards such as monitoring a
student's work and progress over the semester for
any wide leaps in quality of work. But does this make
a student a cheating suspect simply if he/she begins
to take the course more seriously? Some instructors,
if they suspect plagiarism, may check a student's
work against online sources (Google and similar search
engines are quite effective here). But, this can be
a time consuming process. The most promising form
of safeguard is the kind provided by companies such
as turnitin.org,
who monitor "billions of pages" of works
found on the internet, on online term paper sites,
and within papers that have been submitted by other
students and faculty.
|
|
|