Fighting plagiarism with the Internet

In an effort to combat plagiarism in schools and help students to become better writers, the Oceanside School District is going to start using an unlikely resource—the Internet.

Starting this year, the district will be using the website Turnitin.com, which analyzes students’ papers and finds instances of plagiarism and tells students how to correct it. The goal is to help students become better writers.

“It’s meant as an opportunity for kids to see the level of originality of writing that they’ve put in,” said Bob Fenter, assistant superintendent of curriculum for Oceanside. “Because people have been identifying this generation as a digital generation. And very often they will borrow things from the Internet and do so in a manner that they don’t always understand that what they’re doing is plagiarism.”

Teachers in grades seven and up (just the 7th, 11th and 12th graders will be using the tool this year) will be given access to the site, and they will help all of their students set up accounts. Then, before they hand in a paper, students will submit it to the website, which takes a few minutes to scan their work.

The students’ papers then get “graded” for originality in a color-coded system: Green means there is a high level of originality, and it goes down through yellow and orange to red, which means much of the paper is copied from other sources. Teachers get copies of the reports sent to them so they can help students improve their writing.

“It’s going to be used as a way for a student to ensure the originality of their work,” said Oceanside High School Principal Mark Secaur. “The harsh reality is that we live in a Wikipedia world and we’re asking for better. We’re asking for original work.”

In addition to using Turnitin.com as a way to check student work for originality, the district is also going to be focusing more on writing — giving the students the skills they need to get a Green rating from Turnitin.com every time.

The district will be introducing more research projects throughout students’ careers to help them learn more about research, citing sources and writing papers.

“We think it’s very engaging — research shouldn’t be boring, in fact it should be just the opposite,” said Fenter. “So every third grader will do a research project in the sciences, and they’ll do a developmentally appropriate amount of writing. We won’t have third graders writing term papers yet.”

Fenter went on to say that in fifth grade, students will be doing research projects looking at Canada, the United States and Latin America and examining one facet of the countries’ relationship. And in seventh grade, students will do a project on American history and government.

“So we’re trying to build these benchmark opportunities, because other kids might do three other research papers in their lives,” Fenter said. “But we can say with confidence that every Oceanside student will do a research paper in third, fifth and seventh grade, and then in other benchmark years, so we know they’re going into high school with a strong foundation in it.”

The goal of both the expanded focus on analytical writing and using Turnitin.com is to make students better writers, so they may be well-prepared for college and beyond.

“The harsh reality is that we hear from a great many colleges that students have a difficult time of [analytical writing],” Secaur said. “The colleges bemoan this issue. And our job, really, is to prepare students for college, and this will give them a leg-up into it.”

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