Downloadable Term Papers: What's a Prof. to Do?
Tom Rocklin
(note: Though much has changed since this was written in 1996, much is still the same. This article has not been updated)
I imagine that people have been presenting others' work as their own at least since...well, at least since there have been people. Since students are people, I don't suppose any of us is surprised that some students sometimes present other peoples' work as their own. And, since we live in a market economy, I don't suppose any of us is surprised that some people have found ways to make money off the phenomenon.
People have been selling term papers at least since I started college almost 25 years ago. The nature of the market has evolved as technologies have come along to facilitate it. When I was a student, most papers were locally produced and sold. Shortly after I graduated from college and started graduate school, posters started appearing on bulletin boards advertising catalogs of term papers. The advent of 800-number marketing techniques and the widespread use of credit cards, allowed for national markets in term papers.
Enter the Internet
In its August 2 issue,The Chronicle of Higher Education caused quite a stir when it reported on a Web site that allows students to download term papers for free. Locally, both the Iowa City Press Citizen and the Des Moines Register ran related stories.
It seems that an enterprising soul has created a Web site, www.schoolsucks.com, to which students are invited to submit papers and from which students are invited to download papers. Apparently, the proprietor of the site expects advertising to support it. I imagine that advertisers will not be hard to find.
Before reacting in greater detail to the schoolsucks site, I'd like to survey the Web scene as it relates to term papers. It looks to me as though there are at least three kinds of term paper sources on the Web.
- Traditional paper mills
I found several traditional paper mills advertising on the Web. One of these sites claimed to have been visited almost 12,000 times since January 1, 1996 as of my last visit. The site offers an online form that allows the proprietors to search for appropriate papers and report back to you what they have on hand. The search is free. Upon receipt of your credit card number, the paper can be delivered on a floppy disk, by fax, or by e-mail.
Another site offers not only term papers, but answer keys for "all high school and college textbooks."
These sites are really only a new advertising medium. The services being offered are no different from those that have been offered before. For the record, all of these sites admonish customers that the papers offered for sale are for research purposes only and are not to be turned in for a grade.
- Papers "published" by students and instructors.
The Web has created an unprecedented opportunity for people to publish, and students (e.g., [At the request of the student originally cited here, I have removed the specific reference. Others abound. TR, 7/1/2003]) and instructors (eg, the instructor of COM 326 at Franciscan University) have taken advantage of the opportunity. There are a number of good reasons to go this route. Perhaps the most important is that publishing student papers more broadly gives students a real audience to write for.
Of course, it also gives (other) students a source of papers from which to plagiarize. But those that live by the sword will die by the sword, won't they? If an instructor suspected such a plagiarism, it would be fairly easy to find the source paper. A search with Alta Vista or a similar search engine, using an unusual phrase from the paper that was turned in as the search phrase, would quickly find the source.
- Papers free for the downloading.
Finally, School Sucks offers papers for free. They are categorized by subject and particular topic. A quick click of the mouse, a brief wait, and the text is on your disk, ready to be read into your word processor. If you want to hand it in, all you need to do is add your name and other identifying information, perhaps do some minor formatting, and print. The whole process would probably take less than half an hour.
I've implied that downloadable term papers are a natural step in the evolution of a market that has long existed. Indeed, there are strong continuities here. At the same time, things have changed. For one thing, the combination of internet access and word processor power have made it almost trivially simple to disguise the origin of a downloaded term paper. In the "old days" a student often ended up having to re-type a purchased paper because professors insisted on original typescripts. Remember, in those days, a typewriter made noticeable impressions on the paper, and copiers didn't. These days, of course, a laser printed paper is indistinguishable from a photocopied paper.
For another thing, downloading a term paper is quick and easy. I imagine that the idea of turning in a term paper written by someone else gains attractiveness as the due date approaches. Imagine a student the night before a term paper is due, with no term paper to turn in. The easier and quicker it is to obtain a term paper, the greater the temptation. I cannot imagine that there is an easier way or quicker way to get a paper than downloading one from School Sucks or from one of the sites on which students and instructors publish papers.
How Do Downloadable Papers Threaten Education?
By making it easier to plagiarize, downloadable term papers undermine the purpose of assigned papers. Instructors assign written work not to test the students' abilities to obtain papers, but to encourage students to engage in certain kinds of intellectual work. This intellectual work is what facilitates the students' educational development.
Downloading a paper does not help students develop their abilities to analyze or synthesize information, to judge the credibility of sources, to express themselves clearly and convincingly. It is because handing in a plagiarized paper to fulfill an assignment undermines our educational goals that we take such a dim view of the practice. To see just how dim, check the Liberal Arts Academic Policies and Academic Services.
What Can Faculty Members Do to Minimize the Threat?
A Focus on the Process of Writing [1]
Remembering the purpose of assigning term papers is the key to one response to the threats posed by downloadable term papers. Because we are interested in helping students develop certain skills, the best writing assignments have always included opportunities for the instructor to observe and coach the process of writing as well as judge the product. For example, many instructors require that students turn in a topic statement, or a description of the theme of the paper they plan, or a thesis statement early on in the semester. The instructor might also want to see an early bibliography, notes, an outline, a first draft and revisions before accepting the final product for grading. There are a number of more creative opportunities for helping students think about their writing as well. For example, one instructor I know has asked students to turn in three possible openings for a paper. These are all functional ways to encourage students to do the hard intellectual work that we believe will facilitate their development as writers and thinkers.
If the instructor collects interim evidence of students' progress on the assignment, it is unlikely that the purpose of the assignment will be undermined by downloadable term papers. It would generally be more difficult for a student to construct plausible interim products that might lead to a downloaded term paper than to write a term paper.
In any case, anecdotal evidence suggests that plagiarism is rarely a part of a long-term plan. Most students who plagiarize decide to hand in another's work as their own in a panic at the last moment. If students have been turning in interim evidence of their work throuoghout the semester, they are less likely to panic at the last moment.
Writing Assignments Closely Tied to the Course's Goals
Some assignments are relatively easy to fulfill with plagiarism. In particular, it is not too hard to find papers to satisfy "generic" assignments on the Web. For example, an introductory social psychology course might include the assignment:
Choose any topic we cover in this course and explore it in greater depth. Write a paper summarizing what you learn by reading at least five reports of empirical research. Relate your summary to one of the theories we have discussed.
There are, by conservative estimate, a zillion such papers floating around out there.
Other assignments may or may not be easy to fulfill with plagiarism, but create conditions ripe for plagiarism. We are often tempted to ask students to write substantial papers which they won't be able to begin until later in the semester, because we will not have discussed essential ideas until then. Remember my hypothesis that the closer the due date, the more tempting plagiarism is.
Other assignments are very difficult to plagiarize, particularly by obtaining papers from off-campus sites. I once gave an assignment in an educational psychology class that called on students to analyze the motivational properties of our class. I asked them to think about our class in terms of some specific concepts we had been discussing and some that were mentioned in their textbook. The assignment was specifically connected to our particular goals in that class. It is hard to imagine that somewhere out on the net there exists an analysis of a class just like ours in terms of the particular concepts I specified. Frankly, my purpose in defining the assignment this way had more to do with supporting my goals for the students' learning than it did preventing plagiarism. The fact that the paper is hard to plagiarize is a byproduct of a carefully focused assignment.
As it turns out, a student once did turn in a plagiarism for this assignment, by turning in as his own a paper written in a previous semester. The plagiarism was obvious, since the course had changed and the paper described requirements that were out of date.
Putting Downloadable Term Papers to Legitimate Educational Use
Another approach to dealing with the phenomenon of downloadable term papers involves co-opting the site. The proprietor of both the traditional term paper mills and the and of School Sucks note that they are providing papers for educational purposes. In fact, I can imagine a variety of eductional purposes to which they could be put.
- A faculty member could identify several relevant papers on the Web and grade and comment on them. These graded papers could then be made available to students as examples.
- Alternatively, the faculty member could assign students to identify a paper of their choice and critique it. This could be the basis of a class discussion about the characteristics of high quality student papers.
No doubt, instructors will find other uses for term papers on the Web. In any of these cases, it seems unlikely that students will hand in as their own papers downloaded from a site that the instructor has obviously inspected.
Some final thoughts
In thinking about downloadable term papers, I have been struck by the feeling that the issue of plagiarism may be symptomatic of a deeper issue. A student who hands in a plagiarized paper has not bought into the instructor's goals for a course. The plagiarist and the instructor are in an adversial relationship. Somehow, the student has come to conclude that the goal is to "beat" the instructor, to fool the teacher.
If we can convince our students that the assignments we have developed are truly for the students' benefit, they will understand that beating the assignment harms them, not the instructor. That's really what my thoughts about developing assignments that focus on process and are closely tied to the focus of the course boils down to. If we ask students to complete assignments of demonstrable value and offer to work with them as they complete these assignments, they are likely to join us in the educational enterprise we envision.
Footnote: The section on focusing on the process of writing grows out of a comment made by Steven Richardson, Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Iowa State University.