Computer plagiarism 'threatens the value of degrees'
By John Clare, Education Editor
(Filed: 03/07/2000)

ELECTRONIC plagiarism by university students has become so widespread that it is threatening to undermine the value of degrees, a computer researcher said yesterday.

Dr Fintan Culwin, of South Bank University, said universities were so overwhelmed by the problem that many discouraged staff from reporting plagiarism and officially denied that it was taking place. The dramatic increase in plagiarism - defined as the presentation of other people's ideas or material as if they were one's own - was caused by the expansion of the internet and web-based information services.

Students could copy and paste material directly into their essays or download complete essays and hand them in as their own. Dr Culwin said: "Many students realise the likelihood of being detected is low. As academic institutions are run more like mass industries, tutors cannot be expected to learn the details of so many students' writing styles."

However, an automated detection system known as Moss - Measure of Software Similarity - used by South Bank and other universities can identify work that students had copied or stolen from one another, he said. Such systems compared letter frequencies, the length and complexity of sentences and the occurrence of uncommon words to see whether essays had been written independently.

Other programs used by American universities caught students who incorporated material from the web into their work. Dr Culwin suggested that students may soon have to obtain an electronic clean bill of health for an essay by running it through a detection system.

Other Telegraph Stories 
16 September 1999: [Connected] Ctrl-C... the key to hi-tech cheating
28 August 1999: Lecturer's software program traps copycat computer students
14 August 1999: Computer students 'used e-mail to cheat'
10 July 1999: University withholds 90 exam results over 'Internet cheating'
8 November 1998: Computer exposes copycat students
18 October 1997: Students shop for essays on the Internet

External links 

Moss: A system for detecting software plagiarism - University of California, Berkeley

FindSame.com

The new plagiarism [May '98] - From Now On

Dr Fintan Culwin - South Bank University

The Evil House of Cheat


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