One question that concerns professors of online courses is: "How can we make sure the students are actually doing the work online, instead of buying a paper to turn in?"

One of the best ways to address this issue is to remove the incentive to cheat. Have your students turn in something with every class meeting. That way you will get to know  the students' individual writing styles. This practice also removes some of the incentive for cheating, since a large percentage of their final grade does not rest on one assignment.

That said, students who want to cheat will find a way, online or offline. Below are some resources that can help you identify plagiarized work.

• Turnitin.com: This fee-based resource allows a five-paper trial. You submit a suspect paper, and Turnitin.com return to you a report on the paper, complete with hyperlinks to the paper that was plagiarized.
  http://www.turnitin.com/
• Glatt Plagiarism Program: This software uses a cloze algorithm to determine authenticity of papers. The site also features materials that provide student education oabout plagiarism.
  http://www.plagiarism.com/
• The software and text similarity SIM. This program tests student computer programs for plagiarism.
  http://www.cs.vu.nl/~dick/sim.html

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