Assuring the Authenticity of Student Authorship
updated September 6, 2001

Reality: The electronic access to resources that facilitates creative scholarship also facilitates students presenting others' work as their own, intentionally or unintentionally, contrary to the GSU Academic Honesty Policy (GSU Faculty Handbook, www.gsu.edu/~wwwfhb/fhb.html, section 409, as amended by the GSU Senate on March 23, 2000 (www.gsu.edu/~wwwsen/minutes/1999-2000/MIN3-00.html) to make the definition of plagiarism include any work taken from the Internet or other computer-based resources without properly referencing the source). Guidance for students on avoiding unauthorized collaboration is available at the GSU Department of English's Writing Across the Curriculum project (www.gsu.edu/~wwwwac: select Resources for Writers and Avoiding Plagarism.)

Avenues for Electronic Access to Resources/Services
Name and URL
Kind of Resource or Service
NetLibrary through Galileo www.galileo.peachnet.edu* Electronic books
www.itknowledge.com* Online IT books
www.questia.com* Online research service for college students, who can view the complete text of books and have access to a "set of research tools...[including] interlinking of footnotes and bibliographies across titles...[and] file storage to compose and save papers online"
www.ebrary.com* Joint endeavor by Random House, Pearson, and McGraw Hill to "make the content of books, periodicals and other traditionally printed documents accessible to everyone on the Internet in a manner that benefits publishers, libraries, booksellers and Internet users, while protecting the authors copyrights", on a pay per use model.

www.12000papers.com **
www.academictermpapers.com **
www.acceptedpapers.com **
www.cheater.com **
www.coshe.com **
www.cyberessays.com **
www.junglepage.com **
www.netessays.net **
www.papercamp.com **
www.papers24-7.com **
www.poetrypapers.com **
www.research-assistance.com **

Term paper writing services

This list is a sample from existing services.

Program for transforming the writing style of a document to make it conform to someone's writing style.

 

Possibilities for Strategies for Encouraging
Creative AND Intended Behavior
Situation
Strategy
Group work in which groups have the same assignment Require groups to publish their work on the web (e.g., as a WebCT group/student presentation) such that all students can see every group's work
Group or individual work in which students in successive terms have a similar assignment Change the assignment enough for there to be subtle but detectable signals if the work from prior terms is being reused
Group work in which it is important for every student to master every aspect Give a graded quiz (or other graded instrument) that requires students to demonstrate the required mastery

Writing and research assignments (group or individual)

If you believe that careful design of term paper assignments is unnecessary, scan several of the URLs given above for term paper writing services.
  1. Give assignments that are sufficiently new and/or tailored that a finished version of them does not yet exist on the web
  2. Required good form attribution in the quantity and quality appropriate for the assignment
  3. Arrange assignments in sequences (e.g., two or more writing phases beginning with a phase that commits students to paper ideas and continuing with phases that require content outlines and rough drafts) that promote student development and revision of written work. (This strategy is consistent with the GSU Department of English's Writing Across the Curriculum project (www.gsu.edu/~wwwwac: select W.A.C. at GSU and Definition of Writing Intensive Classes.)

Turnitin.com

Essay Verification Engine **

CopyCatch

www.plagiarized.com **

www.integriguard.com **

 

 When student-submitted works exhibit attributes consistent with unauthorized collaboration, submit them to a service that compares them to previously copyrighted works.

* Link from Charlene S. Hurt, University Library, Georgia State University
** Link from Kristin Kubly, Librarian, Florida Community College at Jacksonville

Originally prepared by A. Faye Borthick for the GSU Empty Brownbag 11/8/00