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Re: [xmca] FW: The Shadow Scholar - He writes your students' papers.



There are significant problems with commercial plagiarism checkers.
There are studies that indicate that a simple google search for a unique phrase is more accurate and is free.
See this study
http://wac.colostate.edu/journal/vol20/gillis.pdf

The National Council of Teachers of English website has several better resources for issues of plagiarism. Here is just one resource:
http://www.ncte.org/magazine/archives/122871/

Turnitin is very expensive. School districts are being pressured to buy this service. Some teachers are using these policing mechanisms rather than teaching students effective ways to use direct citation. Moreover, citation practices do vary from discipline to discipline.

Nancy

Nancy Mack

Professor of English 
Wright State University

http://www.wright.edu/~nancy.mack





----- Original Message -----
From: David Cross <d.cross@tcu.edu>
Date: Sunday, January 9, 2011 6:22 pm
Subject: Re: [xmca] FW: The Shadow Scholar - He writes your students' papers.
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>

> Turnitin is used at TCU ... it works well for plagiarism, but 
> wouldn't  
> have caught The Shadow Scholar.
> 
> http://turnitin.com/static/index.php
> 
> Cheers
> 
> David Cross
> d.cross@tcu.edu
> www.davidcross.us
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Jan 9, 2011, at 4:11 PM, David H Kirshner wrote:
> 
> > Karen,
> > I'd not heard of anti-plagiarism services.
> > What a great idea. Their use should be routine--a high-tech 
> solution  
> > to
> > a high-tech problem.
> > To tell you the truth, I don't know how they would be able to detect
> > frauds like the Shadow Scholar, in that the papers are one-of-
> a-kind,
> > not recycled. Yet some organized effort to combat this really 
> is in
> > order. This is something that a union of university 
> professors, or  
> > some
> > other pan-university organization should undertake.
> > David
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-
> bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]> On Behalf Of Karen Heckert
> > Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2011 4:03 PM
> > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > Subject: Re: [xmca] FW: The Shadow Scholar - He writes your 
> students'> papers.
> >
> > This is not amusing. This is horrifying. (You can tell how old 
> I am.)
> >
> > I recently finished an MS in I/O Psychology, and one professor 
> made us
> > submit
> > everything we handed in to an online anti-plagiarism service.
> > Personally, I
> > thought she was nuts and certifiably paranoid. Now I understand.
> >
> >
> > About fifteen years ago I spent some time in a Ph.D program 
> and  
> > teaching
> >
> > undergrads. One day I received two exactly identical papers 
> from two
> > different
> > students. Some astute questioning uncovered the fact that the best
> > student in
> > the class (Chinese) and several American students were pooling their
> > resources
> > to write the research papers. Since their exams were all 
> written in
> > class, this
> > didn't bother me too much. I just stipulated that each student 
> had to
> > write up
> > the work in their very own words for submission. But there 
> wasn't a
> > question (I
> > think) of anybody getting paid - it was just a case of uniting 
> in the
> > face of a
> > common enemy (the gradebook). Beng a student myself, I 
> understood only
> > too well.
> > Besides, I figured, most research these days is done by teams, 
> and  
> > this
> > was a
> > little practical experience.
> >
> > Another cautionary tale: One of my students who had been 
> turning in
> > acceptable
> > papers all semester turned in one that read very much like
> > schizophrenese
> > word-salad. I called her into conference and asked her point 
> blank,  
> > "Are
> > you
> > dyslexic?" She said that she was, but that the student 
> center's  
> > writing
> > lab had
> > been helping her write her papers. This time she simply hadn't 
> had  
> > time
> > to take
> > her paper to them.
> >
> > Having just survived another bout of our "educational" system, 
> I  
> > have to
> > agree
> > with many of the anonymous writer's points about college, if 
> not with
> > his/her
> > ethics. I find this sort of thing a far more serious symptom 
> of "moral
> > decay"
> > than abortion or gay marriage. We in the US are supposed to be a
> > meritocracy and
> > those things which undermine that threaten our existence in 
> more  
> > crucial
> > ways.
> > The "system" is failing the students and in the long run 
> failing us  
> > all.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> > From: David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu>
> > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > Sent: Thu, January 6, 2011 3:17:56 PM
> > Subject: [xmca] FW: The Shadow Scholar - He writes your students'
> > papers.
> >
> > Not a propos of anything, this is both amusing and disturbing.
> >
> > David
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ****************************
> >
> >> From the Chronicle Review [A Weekly Magazine of 
> Ideas/Chronicle of
> > Higher Education], Friday, November 19, 2010, pp. B6-B9. See
> > http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/
> >
> > ****************************
> >
> > The Shadow Scholar
> >
> >
> >
> > The man who writes your students' papers tells his story
> >
> >
> >
> > By Ed Dante
> >
> >
> > edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
> >
> >
> >
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