Several months after the pandemic shutdown forced much of the U.S. into remote learning, plagiarism-detection software company Turnitin published an article that discussed how unsupervised remote learning was providing more opportunities for students to use AI/machine-learning software programs to plagiarize. Turnitin helps teachers and professors assess the originality of their students' work by comparing submissions against a range of previously published materials and a database of previously submitted assignments, then generating an “originality report.”

The Turnitin article brought to light a practice known as “facilitated plagiarism,” something that's been around for a while but which many higher-education institutions have previously not focused on. Facilitated plagiarism encompasses a variety of techniques. The oldest may be “article spinning,” originally developed by content farms to transform articles lifted from well-known publications into search-engine-optimized features that relay the same facts without directly duplicating the original content. Other methods include “patchwriting,” which replaces specific words with synonyms, and “content spinning,” which manipulates text in order to mislead Turnitin and other forms of plagiarism-detection software. Websites such as www.paraphrasing-tool.com and www.goparaphrase.com are said to produce natural-sounding language that is virtually impossible for Turnitin to detect.

Defining "Paraphasing"

Two professors decided to investigate the topic after a student inquired as to whether it was acceptable to use paraphrasing tools when writing a paper. The student had been working on a group project and had asked another student what a particular phrase meant. The student said they didn't really know, explaining that “to avoid plagiarism,” they had pulled the language from an academic-journal article and then used a free internet-rephrasing tool so the words would not be the same as the original.

A lightbulb went off in the professors' heads, providing them with an explanation for some odd phrasing they had recently come across in student papers, such as the repeated use of the phrase “constructive employee execution.” Upon typing the phrase into a content-spinning program, they discovered that the program was using the phrase as a substitute for “employee performance reviews.”

The student's innocent query about the acceptability of paraphrasing tools led to a realization that not all students who use such programs are deliberately trying to cheat; rather, there is a gap between educators' aims and instructions and the way students hear and implement them. Students rely on Google to carry out research, and they know that use of the internet is acceptable. They have been taught that they can't directly quote from an article without a citation and instead must paraphrase, they have access to software that does just that, and they don't see a problem with using that software.

Although current-day machine learning is not capable of generating remarkable new insights, it can create passable paragraphs that are no worse than those produced by mediocre writers–which may be all some students are looking for. The Turnitin article notes that such software programs take advantage of students with limited literacy skills who believe they are following instructions to paraphrase. The students don't understand that the purpose of paraphrasing is not merely to avoid plagiarism but to measure whether they understand the subject matter well enough to synthesize it with their knowledge of related topics and then come up with something original.

Education is Essential in Preventing Accidental Plagiarism

Of course, plenty of students are well aware that they're taking shortcuts to save themselves the time and effort of putting in the required work. Nevertheless, digital-studies expert Jesse Stommel, cofounder of Digital Pedagogy Lab, contends that cheating is a “red herring” in discussions about technology and plagiarism: "What we need to do is build positive relationships with students where we can have smart conversations with them about their work, about citation, about what plagiarism is and what plagiarism looks like. Ultimately, all of these companies–the cheating tech and the anti-cheating tech–frustrate those positive relationships."

Toward that end, the Modern Language Association has developed lessons to assist educators in teaching high-school and first-year college students the difference between paraphrasing and patchwriting and to help students understand that effective paraphrasing requires comprehending what they have read.

If you face plagiarism accusations at your university or high school, contact attorney Joseph D. Lento and the Lento Law Firm at 888-535-3686. He can assist you in mounting a vigorous defense, protecting your rights in the disciplinary process, and securing the best possible outcome for your future.