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‘Academic fraud’ filtering hopes to crack down on plagiarism
Tools from OpenDNS and M86 Security block students from accessing term paper web sites
Some education technology companies hope to curb students' access to term paper sites and crack down on plagiarism.
For years, schools have struggled to crack down on web-savvy students who purchase or download term papers online, and a new option from OpenDNS aims to make plagiarism that much harder.
The free internet security service launched an Academic Fraud Filtering option earlier this year after the company’s users suggested OpenDNS create a filter for term paper sites.
In addition to content filtering, OpenDNS provides anti-phishing security and domain name system (DNS) resolution. DNS is a database system that translates a domain name or URL—which is how the average internet user calls up a web page—into an IP address.
“The idea for Academic Fraud Filtering came from our community’s IdeaBank, a place where OpenDNS users can suggest new features and functionalities,” said Allison Rhodes, the company’s director of marketing. “We recognized [blocking term paper sites] as an excellent idea right away and delivered the service to our customers within weeks.”
Users—including school district administrators, teachers, and parents—can submit sites for inclusion in the Academic Fraud Filtering system. Once the site is verified as academic fraud, it is automatically blocked by OpenDNS. To date, users have submitted thousands of sites to be filtered.
“Academic fraud—including plagiarism, the buying and selling of papers and reports, and other forms of cheating—is a problem plaguing academic institutions around the world. By preventing students from accessing the fraud sites on the school networks, academic institutions can add a simple and effective first line of defense to their effort to prevent academic fraud of all kinds,” Rhodes said.
Although OpenDNS allows for entire categories to be blocked, the service allows for individual exceptions. For instance, a district might choose to block all social networking sites from its computers, but a teacher’s classroom blog can be entered as a permissible site so the teacher and students can access the blog from school.
M86 Security is another provider of secure web gateway solutions that offers a way to block term paper sites.
“We have a category [called Educational/School Cheating] to address cheating and student access to term papers,” said Alison Norris, who does K-12 marketing for M86, adding that sites where students can purchase or download term papers are added to the school cheating category as the company becomes aware of them.
Another tool that many school districts use to try to curb plagiarism is Turnitin.com, a software program that checks the originality of students’ papers. Turnitin allows teachers to compare students’ work to millions of online submissions and internet sources, ensuring that assignments are not too similar or identical to any other published works online.
According to effectiveness research conducted by Turnitin, institutions that use the software see significant reductions in the number of serious incidents of papers with large amounts of unoriginal material.
4 Responses to ‘Academic fraud’ filtering hopes to crack down on plagiarism
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brucefulton
June 24, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Most students know how to get around DNS filtering by the 7th grade or so.
brucefulton
June 24, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Most students know how to get around DNS filtering by the 7th grade or so.
clyoung
June 24, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Schools cannot afford to waste money on sofware that takes the place of good teaching across the content areas, not just in English classrooms. As long as teachers continue to assign research projects in school, teach students how to take proper notes from their readings, watch them do so, and also watch them complete at least part of the rough draft of the report, they (teachers) can see and resolve most of the plagiarism as it occurs. Unfortunately, as schools and districts continue to spend inordinate amounts of money on machines and programs that write and score exams, and on objective tests that are driving instruction, many teachers say they have less time to teach the writing process including the research process. Their complaints are valid, but Open DNS is not the answer to teaching students how to be ethical.
The best way for any school to help its students remain academically honest is for all teachers to adopt the same policies on what constitutes plagiarism, and for all teachers to show their students how to cite information correctly. This means all teachers incorporate writing in their curriculum and make students follow the school’s or district’s guidelines. As teachers from various curricular areas meet in PLCs beyond their own subject areas, and devise lessons and activities that make students read and respond critically– in writing– to what they read, then students learn that academic integrity matters to all. No software program can replace good teaching and a solid team of teachers across all disciplines who expect and model academic honesty in all written work.
clyoung
June 24, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Schools cannot afford to waste money on sofware that takes the place of good teaching across the content areas, not just in English classrooms. As long as teachers continue to assign research projects in school, teach students how to take proper notes from their readings, watch them do so, and also watch them complete at least part of the rough draft of the report, they (teachers) can see and resolve most of the plagiarism as it occurs. Unfortunately, as schools and districts continue to spend inordinate amounts of money on machines and programs that write and score exams, and on objective tests that are driving instruction, many teachers say they have less time to teach the writing process including the research process. Their complaints are valid, but Open DNS is not the answer to teaching students how to be ethical.
The best way for any school to help its students remain academically honest is for all teachers to adopt the same policies on what constitutes plagiarism, and for all teachers to show their students how to cite information correctly. This means all teachers incorporate writing in their curriculum and make students follow the school’s or district’s guidelines. As teachers from various curricular areas meet in PLCs beyond their own subject areas, and devise lessons and activities that make students read and respond critically– in writing– to what they read, then students learn that academic integrity matters to all. No software program can replace good teaching and a solid team of teachers across all disciplines who expect and model academic honesty in all written work.
trainer12
June 24, 2010 at 3:33 pm
What about preventing students from hiring a surrogate or taking an exam with others helping them to answer the questions on a exam or quiz in a distance learning environment, when they are not in an exam room, classroom, lecture hall or protored environment?
trainer12
June 24, 2010 at 3:33 pm
What about preventing students from hiring a surrogate or taking an exam with others helping them to answer the questions on a exam or quiz in a distance learning environment, when they are not in an exam room, classroom, lecture hall or protored environment?
arhodes
June 25, 2010 at 1:27 pm
@clyoung – You make some good points. There’s certainly no failsafe way to prevent students from cheating using technology, and if a student wants to find a way to cheat, he/she will probably try. I agree that the most important component of preventing cheating is teaching students how to appropriately cite information and educate them about plagiarism.
That said, our Academic Fraud filtering service makes it so those websites are at least not accessible on the school’s network. This alone makes it that much more difficult to cheat, and could prevent students who are considering cheating from actually following through. In my opinion, a combination of education by teachers and preventative technology is ideal. And for the record, OpenDNS provides Academic Fraud filtering free of charge and it’s extremely simple to set up, which may change your feeling about whether or not schools should use it.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
-Allison Rhodes
OpenDNS
arhodes
June 25, 2010 at 1:27 pm
@clyoung – You make some good points. There’s certainly no failsafe way to prevent students from cheating using technology, and if a student wants to find a way to cheat, he/she will probably try. I agree that the most important component of preventing cheating is teaching students how to appropriately cite information and educate them about plagiarism.
That said, our Academic Fraud filtering service makes it so those websites are at least not accessible on the school’s network. This alone makes it that much more difficult to cheat, and could prevent students who are considering cheating from actually following through. In my opinion, a combination of education by teachers and preventative technology is ideal. And for the record, OpenDNS provides Academic Fraud filtering free of charge and it’s extremely simple to set up, which may change your feeling about whether or not schools should use it.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
-Allison Rhodes
OpenDNS