Google Classroom plagiarism check unreliable
Posted Oct. 6, 2022
By Emilia Gutu
News Editor
Google Classroom’s plagiarism detection option has proven questionable and unreliable to teachers.
The definition of plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else’s work and claiming it as one's own. Plagiarism checks help avoid that from happening. It is often used in schools, universities, and colleges. Having a reliable plagiarism check helps teachers know who has cheated, and it helps students stay away from copying work. It’s helpful, but teachers at David Douglas and elsewhere have not been able to rely on Google Classroom's plagiarism option. Even though it’s handy and accessible to use, sometimes it does not have the intended results.
Although some teachers use alternative options to check for plagiarism, such as Turnitin.com, there is still a large number of teachers who continue to use Google Classroom regardless. Many fine arts teachers, career classes, language classes such as Spanish, French, and ASL, tend not to have a very big need for plagiarism checks in the first place. Therefore, Google Classroom remains a big use for most teachers at this school. It is mostly intended but unreliable to English teachers, teachers who have students write big essays or research assignments.
There are different types of plagiarism, according to an article written at University of Nebraska, Google Originality Test: An Instrument for Research Integrity in Higher Educational Institutes. Intentional, unintentional, direct, paraphrase, metaphor and self plagiarism. Most of them are pretty self explanatory. What is difficult for Google Classroom’s plagiarism check is to be able to identify unintentional plagiarism, substituting words with synonyms without a citation, paraphrase plagiarism, & metaphor plagiarism which is copying someone else’s metaphors used. There are many other sources that can be used to check for plagiarism but Google Classroom offers this option in any kind of environment. Not only that, but it’s also free.
ELA teacher Michael Theofelis claims that he heard Google Classroom’s plagiarism wasn’t very good, so that influenced his decision of using Turnitin.com. Because he hasn’t given it a chance yet, he remains open minded for its use in the future.
“[Michelle] Wood recently told me that Google's checker has improved greatly, so I'll likely start giving it a shot on smaller assignments and maybe transition over to that for essays down the line," said Theofelis.