Plagiarism Evasion Tactics

art via EssayShark

As we embark on a new semester, you should be aware that students are finding new and creative ways to circumvent plagiarism-detection software such as SafeAssign and Turnitin. These so-called paraphrasing tools are free websites which allow students to copy and paste text, which is then rewritten for them. 

Following is a list of the tools we know of. If you are aware of any others, please share in the comments section.

• Spinbot
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Go Paraphrase

eLearning has been advised of a default test option that allows students to view each question on a test after it has been submitted. The default setting is “Score Per Question” and is listed under “Show Test Results and Feedback to Students” in the Test Options. This has allowed students who have completed the test to access their submitted test and view the questions and in some cases those students are allowing students who have not taken the test to view the questions on the test. To remove this feature you will need to uncheck this option when deploying the test (unless you wish for students to be able to see the text for each question after submission). The image below shows where you need to uncheck to remove this option.

click image to enlarge

At this time, there is no way to remove this as a default so we wanted to make you aware that it is there. Blackboard has created an enhancement request on our behalf to ensure product development sees our desire for the functionality to remove this as a default.