Catching College Cheaters: High-Tech and Low-Tech Methods

I hate cheaters. And I use that in every sense of the word. I hate people that cheat on their taxes, I hate people that cheat on their spouses, but I especially hate people those college students that cheat on tests. It not only affects them but it effects a whole class of people who didn't take the same advantage and are graded on a curve. Think about the continued repercussions of that, especially if there are only a few cheaters in a class of many. Now, I know that professors like to trust their students but that's no reason that a professor shouldn't try and detect cheaters by any means possible.

There are services now that can help detect those cheaters who use plagiarism. Those students who cheat on papers can be detected by using turnitin.com. This site has become very popular especially at the college level. The site has been integrated with Blackboard, a service for college professors where they can put information for their class and converse with students through chat forums. It is a typical college feature these days and more can be found out about that at www.blackboard.com. Www.Turnitin.com offers great service for the typical college and gives originality scores to each. So not only does it detect word-for-word cheaters but it also tries to detect those that cheat by changing a few words here and there. Another suggestions is to disallow essays done overnight, simply have the students have the essays in, in class. They can't copy off each other without your knowledge and they have no resources to cheat off of.