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A Wangled, Wired Web
What You Need to Know About Online Cheating
By Tracy L. Doerr
And apparently it doesn't stop once a student is in college. In a test conducted by Turnitin (www.turnitin.com), a company that supplies high schools and colleges with plagiarism-screening software, 30 percent of a large sampling of Berkeley students were recently caught copying directly from the Internet.
Everyone knows that "winners never cheat and cheaters never win." And while some teachers may not bother to investigate a suspicious paper, there are companies like Turnitin that are giving educators the tools to unearth those copy and paste assignments with their own Web sites and anti-plagiarism software. So why take the risk of getting caught?
According to professor McCabe's study, reasons students listed for cheating were:
- To pass, to get good grades
- Don't understand the material
- Pressures to succeed
- Time pressures (jobs, athletics, etc.)
And most students are resigned to the fact that cheating is a normal part of learning. According to a U.S. News & World Report poll, 90 percent of students believe that cheaters are either never caught or have never been appropriately disciplined.
So what can you as a parent do to discourage your child from falling victim to the temptation to plagiarize?
- Open Up. According to McCabe, parents need to discuss the issue to help children understand why cheating matters and what appropriate use of the Internet is. The professor also adds that parents need to "be willing to accept the fact that your child may not always be a student. Don't put so much pressure on them that they feel they have to cheat to satisfy parental demands or expectations."