September 2007 — eLearning
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A War of Words
SITE SEEING
www.copycatchgold.com An anti-plagiarism tool instructs students on how to do research correctly.
Created by a British company, Computational Forensic Linguistics (CFL) Software Development, CopyCatch Gold offers a suite of products including a search detection service and a program that helps students cite research appropriately. David Woolls, founder of CFL Software Development, says CopyChecker, a program that comes free with CopyCatch, shows students how to avoid plagiarism with two options similar to those offered by PaperToolsPro.
A "notes with work" function offers a split screen where source data can be stored and the student can type. Users can also cut and paste, but the program reminds them to cite the resource and helps them do it correctly. The students can press a "compare" button to see the level of similarity between the original and their own writing, and the program points out where there may not be enough distance.
The "freehand" function allows students to access original material they have found, but not while they are writing, simulating the effect of going back to check on data.
Lowe questions the ethics of releasing student essays to a business that then uses them against other students. "We are asking students to give their text to these companies so the companies can make money off it," he says. Students at Virginia's McLean High School are of a similar mind as the professor. Last fall they collected about 1,200 names on a petition protesting the use of Turnitin because they said it infringed on their intellectual property rights and assumed guilt.
Users should also realize that anti-plagiarism programs have their shortcomings. They may not check books or subscription services; they don't detect plagiary of ideas; and they can give false positives or, conversely, clear a paper without any real assurance that nothing has been copied. Some critics also suggest that, in time, students simply will find ways around them. Russ Hunt, a professor at Canada's St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, and an outspoken opponent of plagiarism detection tools, imagines a program that runs a thesaurus through an existing text, making enough word substitutions that the cheating would be undetectable by essay-comparison software. "How hard is that?" Hunt says. "I'm surprised I'm not already seeing it advertised."
Rebecca Moore Howard, associate professor of writing and rhetoric at Syracuse University, says that detection applications are more about policing than teaching. "They tell students when they have failed to write well, but they don't teach them how to write well," she says. "Plagiarism detection software teaches students that writing assignments are a cat-and-mouse game in which they are the teacher's adversary."
