Keeping Students Honest

Washington State University officials say they’ve seen a slight plagiarism increase in recent years, while the number of cheating cases reported at the University of Idaho has remained relatively flat.

At WSU, three plagiarism cases have been reported already this semester. That number may be low, since many professors deal with the issue directly in their classes and don’t report students for official misconduct proceedings.

Some may be using the plagiarism.org and related sites to catch cheaters, but then don’t go on to report students further for official misconduct proceedings. Either way, access to the Internet raises a lot of questions about how best to monitor electronic teaching, learning and cheating.

“Universities everywhere are trying to cope with this,” said Elaine Voss, assistant dean of students. “It depends on how wired your university is. Students here have easy access from their dorm rooms or anywhere to the web,” she said “Everything is just easier.”

College officials generally differentiate between two kinds of cheating that must be handled differently - improperly citing references, and outright plagiarism of a finished product.

The latter can be avoided if faculty think carefully about what sorts of assignments they give, said UI Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Dene Thomas.

“If you tailor the assignments in such a way that they cannot go and pull a fairly general piece you’ve gone quite a way toward controlling the problem.”

For example, the UI encourages faculty to help students with the process of writing by asking them to turn in pre-writing and rough drafts prior to handing in the finished product.

“Those become good pedagogical tools but also good defenses against the piece pulled off the Web,” Thomas said.