As at most schools, HCC English faculty have noted increased cases of cheating with student use of Internet sources. In Spring 2001, several faculty required students to send their papers into turnitin.com before submitting them for grading. This service color codes the student paper to reveal any text which appears elsewhere on the Internet, and thus provides a way to check that sources have been quoted and cited correctly. It includes sites that provide papers for students, such as schoolsucks.com, and it archives student papers as they are submitted. Faculty can find this information on the website 48 hours after the student’s submission and should read the entire report carefully to see if Internet material has been attributed to its source (of course, more than one site may contain the same material, such as direct literary quotes; common idiomatic phrases may also appear). Faculty who have used turnitin.com endorse it enthusiastically as a way of catching and preventing cheating.
The English division encourages all instructors to use turnitin.com for all graded papers. To open an account for any or all of your classes, email Roger Stott (rstott@howardcc.edu) or call him at 410-772-4463. He will set up your account and provide you with an instructor password. Experienced faculty recommend doing the first submission together during class time. After that, students could become responsible for doing this on their own (with reminders). They can use their home computer or any computer on campus.
