Experience with a plagiarism control module

Since the introduction of Internet in education, it is reasonable to believe that there will be an increasing use of electronic submission of both exams and assignments. The Internet, with its vast and growing access to digital material of interest to students, provides opportunities for unauthorised use of digital material. It cannot be expected that faculty have full overview over all available information on any topic. Students can therefore use material in a "cut-and-paste" way and have a good chance of getting away with it. The consequences when such unauthorised use of digital material is discovered, vary, but should be very strict. Exam results can be annulled and in some cases students will be fail the year. To address the problem, some companies have developed programs for plagiarism control. The Norwegian-developed learning management system (LMS) ClassFronter provides a module for plagiarism control. This paper will present a small scale test of this module from both faculty and students' point of view. From faculty's point of view it is obvious that Ephorus is a powerful tool in detecting plagiarism, although it has weaknesses. From students point of view the tool can be useful as for checking for correct quotations and citations. The tool can also be used for locating cited sources needed to write academic papers for both students and staff