Plagiarism

Herrington, Anne, and Charles Moran. “What Happens When Machines Read Our Students' Writing?” College English 63.4 (March 2001): 480-499.

Criticisms of Plagiarism Detection Software

• detection services foster mistrust and poison teacher-student relations
• except in clear-cut cases of substantive and verbatim copying without quotation, the results of detection are often marred with inaccuracies and wrong conclusions.
• some plagiarism detection software companies contain student papers which were submitted without the permission of their authors. (312)

from Wilfried Decoo and Jozef Colpaert, "Detection Systems for Text-Based Plagiarism: Developments, Principles, Challenges, and the Aftermath" (Writing and Pedagogy, 2.2, 2010)

Reasons Why Students Purposely Plagiarize

• lack of clarity regarding the rules
• a sense that plagiarism is a common practice that others get away with
• a decision that particular assignments are not sufficiently meaningful to warrant the time it would take to complete them properly (323)

from Miriam Eisenstein Ebsworth, "Plagiarism, the Internet and Student Learning by Wendy Sutherland-Smith" (review) (Writing and Pedagogy, 2.2, 2010)