Toward a Rational Response to Plagiarism

By Rob Jenkins. Plagiarism is making us crazy. No, the mere thought of plagiarism is making us crazy. Collectively, as a professoriate, we're obsessed with it.
Consider "The Shadow Scholar," an anonymous confessional by a man who purportedly produces student papers on demand. Originally published in November of 2010, it remains one of the most-viewed articles on The Chronicle's Web site and has received, to date, more than 600 comments. More recently, we all read with fascination The Chronicle's account of Panagiotis Ipeirotis, a professor who got into hot water at New York University for blogging about the hordes of alleged cheaters in his courses. That piece, too, was among the site's most popular.
All of that preoccupation with plagiarism does little to help us answer the fundamental question: What can we as individual faculty members do about it?
My approach to student plagiarism over the course of my 26-year teaching career has been simple but, I believe, effective. I use strategies well known to most experienced professors, with a few twists of my own. Please note that what I'm about to describe is strictly my personal approach and does not reflect the official policies of my college (although I don't believe it conflicts with those policies, either)...
Don't penalize the nonplagiarists. Whatever you do to discourage cheating, make sure you don't damage the integrity of the course or make it more difficult for students to learn. I think it's both wrong and counterproductive—not to mention incredibly cynical—to assume that every student is a plagiarist, whether nascent or full-blown. You should start each course believing that most students are basically honest and genuinely want to learn. Otherwise, why would you stay in this profession?
What about the software? You may be wondering why I haven't said much about popular plagiarism-detecting software, like Turnitin. That's because I rarely use it. I'm not a fan of the software. I understand why so many of my colleagues tend to rely on it heavily, but I don't, for three reasons. First, it seems to me that having students submit all of their essays through Turnitin or something similar is tantamount to saying that all of them are cheaters—or at least they would be, given the chance. I think that's a bad way to begin a teacher-student relationship. Second, the software doesn't do anything to deter common low-tech forms of plagiarism, such as students' getting others to write their essays for them. And finally, as Mr. Ipeirotis discovered, tracking students through software can become its own kind of obsession, distracting you from other, perhaps more useful, pursuits... More