News
At a time when the proliferation of online sources has made plagiarism easier than ever before, one Dartmouth professor has turned to the internet himself to deter potential cheaters.
Allan Stam, who teaches international relations in the government department, plans to use a free online service -- turnitin.com -- to check student papers for plagiarized material.
Papers can be uploaded to the website, which will within 24 hours return an edited copy indicating how closely written sections correspond with information found throughout the internet and in an extensive database of submitted materials.
"It's really pretty astonishing," said Stam, who will be using the service to check all papers he receives during the term.
Despite the effectiveness of the website, which can match even individual phrases from papers with their sources, Stam said he is not motivated by any particular suspicion of students' honesty.
"If I just wanted to catch people, I wouldn't have said anything about it," he said, adding that he had informed his students of his plans to use the website on the first day of classes.
Instead, Stam said, the service is intended "to deter people who might be tempted through stress or time constraints" to plagiarize, and also to help prevent inadvertent plagiarism, which he said "almost every student" has done at least once during his or her academic career.
Stam will hardly be the first professor to use turniton.com in his classes.
