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Show potential problems with cheating. Curbing Cheating: Resources for Instructors The research conducted by CAI does offer hope. The results of the research show that implementation of Honor Codes at schools has lowered the incidence of cheating. This would seem to indicate that clear communication is criticalâ€"if students understand what behaviors constitute cheating and the consequences of those behaviors, they are less likely to cheat. In her course syllabus, Michelson includes a section on plagiarism as defined in the Student Code. She said she modifies the section depending on the type of class that she is teaching, so students understand her expectations of them. She said she also discusses citation rules explicitly in class, so her students cannot plead ignorance. Web sites likeTurnitin.com also work to prevent cheating by running submitted papers against a database of millions of documents. According to the site, the incidence of plagiarism drops to 30 percent when instructors require their students to submit their papers through Turnitin.com. Simply knowing that their papers will be checked for plagiarism seems to be enough of a deterrent for most students. Olson has been usingTurnitin.com for two years and hasn't experienced any problems in her classes with plagiarism. She said one feature of the site that she likes is the ability to allow students to see the reports that show where their paper matched something in the database. "It helps students buy in to the idea when they can see the report too," she said. "If I get one that flashes red to indicate that it was a problem, then the student knows right away too, and we can sit down and talk about it." Olson explained that even if a student has correctly quoted and cited something it will still show up as a match, but the reports are helpful in starting a dialogue about the appropriate use of quotations in good writing. Senda-Cook said she began usingTurnitin.com after working as a teaching assistant at Colorado State University and finding nearly one-fourth of the class had plagiarized from Internet sources. Upon arriving at the U, she discovered thatTurnitin.com was available for instructors and decided based on her experience at Colorado State to use it. Has she found it helpful in detecting plagiarism? She explained that she thinks it is more a case of students not knowing how to correctly cite sources. She said, "I have not seen anybody take an entire paper or an entire paragraph and just not attribute it to anything at all, which are clear cases of plagiarism. What I've noticed more is people saying 'according to so-and-so' and just having the complete sentence without quotation marks, so it appears that they are paraphrasing when they're not. Generally when I come across that situation, I try to say, listen, this is plagiarism. If you don't understand how to cite things, come and see me. I make them aware of it, give them some kind of penalty and then next time, that would be it." Senda-Cook also frequently relies on Google. If she sees a "gem sentence" in a paper filled with sentences that are incorrectly punctuated and filled with grammatical errors, she simply Googles the sentence in question and can generally find the original source. She explained that students seem to forget that if they can use Google to find sources to plagiarize from, she will be able to use Google to find the sources as well. The University of Utah recently changed from using Turnitin.com to using the free service, SafeAssign. Safe-Assign is similar to Turnitin.com. The Technology Assisted Curriculum Center (TACC) through the Marriott Library offers a tutorial for instructors to help with getting started and using the features of SafeAssign. TACC also has staff members that can assist faculty with any questions or concerns about the service. Although she is not currently using either SafeAssign or Turnitin.com in her classes, Deneris said she would likely begin using the service in lower division writing courses now that she knows how it works. She expressed concern, however, that it forced instructors to take the lessons | fall 2007 15 |