The student news site of El Camino College

El Camino College The Union

The student news site of El Camino College

El Camino College The Union

The student news site of El Camino College

El Camino College The Union

Editorial: New anti-plagiarism website to ease cheating in class

According to a recent U.S. News and World Report poll, about 85 percent of university students say that cheating is necessity to succeed academically.

With the help of Turnitin.com, there will be fewer students plagiarizing their way to better grades.

This program will help our instructors weed out the cheating students who ruin the learning process and make sure that they receive the failing grade that they deserve.

Turnitin.com’s Originality Check feature has 12 billion Web pages and 10,000 newspaper articles archived in the system to catch the slightest hint of plagiarism.

Surrounding community colleges like Fullerton uses Turnitin.com to monitor the academic honesty of its students’ work.

Whatever the cost that EC must pay, monetary factor should not be the issue when it comes to improving the learning process.

With professors using this anti-plagiarizing program, students will have to write their own term papers rather than buying or plagiarizing others’ work.

It should be the college’s responsibility to make sure that plagiarism is punished and dealt with in order to make sure that those who work hard are rewarded while those who don’t, fail.

It is only fair that the students who submit their original work earn a good grade while the cheaters are written up and punished.

If the college does not take appropriate measures to prevent academic dishonesty, hardworking students will be discouraged from doing their best.

According to the website, Turnitin.com has reduced the number of plagiarized work 82 percent within several years of usage.

While some students do not favor the idea of instructors using Turnitin.com and there has been a lawsuit against this program, they should not be objecting if they just write in their own words and turn in their original work.

In addition, the program will further discourage potential cheaters from plagiarizing other’s words.

Not only would this program catch plagiarism, it will save time for instructors who have hundreds of papers to grade.

A computer program will catch the plagiarism that a tired instructor at 1 a.m. would likely miss.

While it is unfortunate that the college must rely on such program to capture the act of dishonesty, it must do whatever it can to save the quality of education that EC has been providing for decades.

Academic dishonesty must not be tolerated on EC.

Turnitin.com will be a beneficial tool for students as well; by using this program, students will have peace of mind that everyone would earn a fair grade with no foul play.

The students who spent many hours working on an essay or a project would not want the same grade as the person who just copied and pasted their way through the work.

Whether it is a quote from Einstein or from Tupac, without a quotation mark or giving them the credit, a student cannot use what they said in his or her work.

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