Revealing Cases of Plagiarism among Students - Case Study Example

Case Study; Ethics ReviewThe Student Council would like to make its stand on the idea of using Turnitin.com to detect cases of plagiarism among students. It appreciates the efforts and views this as a great step towards maintaining the high standards of education in the university. However, in its current state, the idea is ineffective since it is prone to several shortcomings that arise from the use of software-based methods of plagiarism detection such as detecting texts in quotation marks as plagiarized texts and losing the format of papers.

After analyzing the idea and carrying out a research on the same, the Council feels that Turnitin.com cannot be effective on its own and should only be used alongside other methods of plagiarism detection to offer a comprehensive solution (Herrington, 2010).Consequently, the Council suggests that in a case where an instructor suspects a plagiarized paper, he or she uploads all papers related to that assignment to Turnitin.com for checking. The instructor should further check the papers by use of fingerprint method, which involves digesting a paper into a set of fingerprints and checking those fingerprints against a precompiled set of fingerprints and drawing similarities from this comparison.

The last step, string matching, should involve comparing the papers for verbatim text overlaps. Analysis of the results from the three approaches should be done and conclusions made based on those analysis (Herrington, 2010). The Council feels that this will be a more effective approach since it will reduce cases of false positive results. Additionally, this approach minimizes the chances of students beating the system.The Council would also like to know how the university administration plans to deal with ethical issues that rise from the use of this service.

The Council understands that the use of this service can lead to stern repercussions that could involve legal battles. Additionally, this service can create a culture of resentment among students and as such, the university should consider ethical issues before implementing it.ReferencesHerrington, K. (2010). Intellectual property on campus: Students' rights and responsibilities. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.