Discouraging the use of text spinners: Opinion

Opinion

In an article for Inside Higher Ed, Elizabeth Steere warns about student use of ‘text spinners’ to hide plagiarism and discusses how instructors can take steps to prevent this. Text spinners are online tools that replace words in a text with synonyms or change the structure of the sentence in order to avoid plagiarism detectors, the author explains. To tackle the growing use of text spinners, Steere suggests that instructors create assignments that can be personalized by the student or that are based on unique prompts or new texts. In cases where assignments cannot be adapted, Steere recommends teaching students about plagiarism and proper citation, carefully examining students’ assignments, and opening up to questions regarding plagiarism from students Inside Higher Ed (Acct. Req.) Note: Archived stories may contain dead links or be missing source links.

Inside Higher Ed (Acct. Req.) | Inside Higher Ed (Acct. Req.) | Inside Higher Ed (Acct. Req.)