Protecting the written word
作者：SUSAN CHYN　时间：2009-04-29

STUDENTS are always looking for shortcuts. And it's no secret that school papers are a pain to research and write.

So it's hardly surprising that students have quickly taken advantage of the Internet to "borrow" some language and text from others. Teachers and administrators have seen an increasing number of instances of plagiarism, so they're starting to look for solutions.

Interestingly, technology is a major part of the problem, and technology is at least one of the answers. In China, we've seen an anti-plagiarism campaign in Xinjiang, where several large universities announced that they would employ an "Inappropriate Academic Conduct Detection System" to check graduation theses and doctoral dissertations.

The Xinjiang system makes use of computer programs that can match the text of a research paper to that of a host of databases containing academic papers. If there are a lot of "matches"–say, 10-30 percent, the student's work will be flagged as suspect. The student reaction to this detection system has been passionate.

Remember, plagiarism is the inappropriate or unacknowledged "borrowing" of ideas or words from someone else. In academia or the news, this means the writer has not "credited" the source. While it's easy for a computer to match "words", tracking ideas that have been snitched can be much harder–even though new digital tools seem to be coming almost weekly.

There are, for example, increasingly powerful translation programs and multi-faceted tools for grading essays. England's East Anglia University just announced new software that can lip-read and even find what language the person is speaking. So it is tempting to think that technology can achieve almost any purpose. But that is not the case.

At present, there is no perfect technological system for evaluating language. Software that follows "matching rules" can be fooled by superficial word changes. It may unfairly flag a student's work in certain situations–for example, scientific writing, where it is common to use the same phrases over and over. In the Humanities, we are conditioned to paraphrase. That's part of our liberal arts training.

In fact, many universities overseas already use electronic systems to check student writing. In the US, Blackboard and Turnitin both advise university customers that software results alone cannot always determine whether a student has "plagiarized": Only a teacher can make that judgment.

That is why I believe universities need to train teachers in the issues surrounding high-tech plagiarism. The proliferation of online "essay mills" and other materials has made it just too easy for students to lift text at the click of a mouse.

Teachers are on the front line in this battle and need to hold their students accountable. Only when teachers become more "tech-savvy" can they begin to tell the "inappropriate borrowers" from the students who have rigorously carried out their own research and writing.

BONUS

be flagged as

被标为

It's strange: Your e-mail is being flagged as spam by my mailing system.

真奇怪，我的邮件系统把你的邮件标为了垃圾邮件。

on the front line

在前线、前沿

The hospital found itself on the front line of the flu outbreak when the first cases started pouring in.

流感爆发后，不断有病人入院，医院处在了抗击疾病的最前线。

URL：http://www.www.21stcentury.com.cn/story/51397.html