Who really wrote that? An online pilot program is being implemented to assist Metro faculty in ensuring that students' work is original and not plagiarized.

The program, Turnitin.com, makes it easier for professors to check papers for plagiarized content by having students submit work to the plagiarism-detection service. Drawing from databases that contain more than 4.5 billion Internet pages, millions of published works and student papers already submitted to the service, Turnitin.com returns an "originality report" with questionable sections color-coded and tied to original sources.

"This is a tool," explains Tara Tull, interim assistant dean of the School of Letters, Arts and Scieneces. "It does not determine plagiarism. The faculty member must (study the report and) assess whether a student has plagiarized or not."

Since Internet use became widespread and simplified the process of copying material directly into documents, plagiarism has skyrocketed on America's campuses; some of it, Tull says, is blatantly intentional, but some of it is not. "The goal of this is to maintain academic integrity on campus and educate students about plagiarism and the appropriate citation of sources," she says. "We're protecting students as well. This protects them from someone stealing their work."

The Turnitin system is in a pilot phase this semester with professors from LAS and Professional Studies participating. A campus-wide rollout is expected sometime midyear.

How bad is it?
To view statistics related to academic plagiarism, visit www.turnitin.com/static/products_services/latest_facts.html