This semester, in an attempt to stave off such transgressions, he used a Web-based service designed to catch cheaters. During the revision stage, Hunt had his students submit their papers to TurnItIn.com, a fee-based service that searches for passages lifted from other sources.

He expected use of the service to dramatically improve the students' awareness of what constitutes plagiarism, and he was mostly pleased with the results. But TurnItIn.com didn't recognize that one student's paper had been purchased online. A quick Google search verified Hunt's suspicions.

As some Delaware educators and students have found, a digital remedy to academic dishonesty isn't necessarily a cure-all. TurnItIn.com and similar services can be expensive, and there's a feeling that much of their capabilities can be matched with a simple Google search and more specific assignments. Some have privacy concerns about such services.

Delaware's schools have subscribed at an increasing pace to TurnItIn.com, but some have chosen not to enlist - among Delaware's colleges, only Goldey-Beacom subscribes.

In the past two years, six Delaware high schools have subscribed to TurnItIn.com. The benefits, in the eyes of administrators, are twofold - students learn what qualifies as plagiarism, and cheaters' academic crimes can be quantified.

Yet several professors in Delaware are cautious about the precedent that could be set by the use of such services.

"It kind of creates a distrustful relationship between teachers and students," says Stephen Bernhardt, professor of English at University of Delaware and Kirkpatrick Chair in Writing. "Your word isn't good enough ...

"I've been teaching writing for years, and it's pretty easy to recognize when someone's style drastically changes."

The local high schools that subscribe to TurnItIn.com say they tend to use the service sparingly.

Linda Fischer, director of information resources at St. Mark's High School in Pike Creek, says teachers there have run two suspect papers through the system. One, she says, returned "glaring" evidence of plagiarism. In the other, TurnItIn.com mistakenly highlighted a properly attributed quotation.

"It's not a perfect tool," Fischer says. "Our teachers are very comfortable with technology. Maybe the need isn't there."

Third-party submissions

TurnItIn.com got its start in 1996 at the University of California at Berkeley. Professors, departments or entire institutions subscribe annually on a per-student or per-professor basis. Students file papers through the company's Web site, which provides detailed accounts of similarities between a student's work and any document stored in TurnItIn.com's vast database culled from the Web and from previous submissions.

TurnItIn.com handles about 20,000 papers a day during peak academic periods. Institutions pay a $500 annual licensing fee, plus 60 cents per student per year for unlimited submissions.

Other products, most notably EVE2 (Essay Verification Engine), provide similar services. A teacher can purchase a private license for unlimited use of EVE2 at $19.99 and download the software.

The results of such probes arrive quickly, ranging from within 15 minutes to several hours, and point out suspect passages, percentages of plagiarized material and links to the sites where the text originated.

Sometimes, simple carelessness is enough to raise suspicions within the service. Zach Schafer, an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Delaware, was surprised when a TurnItIn.com check of his high school term paper deemed he had plagiarized a passage. He soon realized that although he had provided a parenthetical citation, he had forgotten to place quotation marks around the supposedly lifted passage.

TurnItIn.com has prompted debate about students' rights. In January, a student at McGill University in Montreal successfully challenged a requirement in his economics class that he submit an assignment to TurnItIn.com. The student, 19-year-old Jesse Rosenfeld, had received a zero after handing his professor a printed copy and refusing to use the online service.

Rosenfeld, according to an article in The Vancouver Sun, said the private service assumes students' guilt and profits from students' work without their consent. A university committee accepted his claim, and the professor graded the paper.

A matter of policy

Ann Kneavel, chairwoman of the department of arts and sciences at Goldey-Beacom, says the school is using TurnItIn.com primarily as a way to teach students about plagiarism and is pleased with the initial results. From a stack of 100 term papers submitted for one of her humanities classes, Kneavel ran 10 suspicious papers through TurnItIn.com and found six to have included plagiarized passages.

"It's a problem that had been growing," Kneavel says, "and we were seeing more on the graduate level, as well."

There's been little feedback from students or parents, she says, because the college just began using the service this semester. She's already noticed improvements in quality of papers and a decrease in incidents of plagiarism as students using the service catch themselves.

Cynthia Cummings, University of Delaware's associate vice president for campus life, says the university doesn't officially employ software or a service to fight plagiarism.

"What we work with professors on is helping them understand what our policies are in dealing with academic dishonesty," Cummings says. "We don't recommend any particular technology for them to use. If the faculty decide that they want to use a particular tool, that's their choice, and we would support whatever decision they make."

It's similar at Delaware State University, says Michael Maciarello, a member of the faculty senate technology committee.

"We have an academic honesty policy, and we expect students to adhere to it," Maciarello says. "It's not really an issue of technology; it's an issue of policy. I'm of the school of thinking that if you have low expectations of students, they're going to live down to them."

Vigilance unplugged

The most effective methods of fighting plagiarism, some educators contend, might have nothing to do with technology.

Joan DelFattore, a professor of English education and First Amendment issues in education at University of Delaware, says teachers should be more pointed with assignments. "When you assign topics," she says, "you might want to have them compare and contrast two things that were discussed in class, rather than giving them a general topic."

Albert B. Miller, chairman of the department of psychology at Delaware State, also limits the topical domains of term papers. Rather than assigning a paper about the mind-set of serial killers, he says, he might specify a time frame or a particular case (such as the Green River killer).

"Structure the paper so that it becomes next to impossible" to plagiarize, he says.

Locally, it seems, most teachers aren't relying on technology beyond simple search engines to spot stolen passages.

"That's a professor's job," says Miller, of Delaware State. "I can't depend on someone else on an Internet site to tell me whether a student has plagiarized.

"I learn how students write in all of my classes. Fortunately, my instruction to students about the risks of getting caught is fairly effective."