Students plagiarize for a variety of reasons: they are bored with or uninterested in the assignment; they don’t understand the assignment and are too afraid to ask for help; or they face an assignment deadline and are overwhelmed with other work.
Many students turn to online paper mills in order to download papers, or to have papers written for them for a fee. Students can justify their use of online paper mills because they have a transactional view of education. In other words, they feel that education is merely an exchange of goods and services, and whether they wrote a paper themselves or not shouldn’t matter as long as they are completing the given assignment and receiving the grade.
Paper Mills and Education as a Transaction
Much as one walks into a store and expects to receive a certain product in exchange for a few dollars or more, many students, unfortunately, come to school and expect a “product” (a good grade, a diploma) in exchange for some form of “currency” (a paper, a test, a project). When students view education as a transaction, they distance themselves from the products they must produce to achieve the outcomes they desire. Therefore, many students feel justified using online paper mills because they are paying for a service and now they are using the product of that service as currency to obtain something else that they want. In other words, students feel that they are just getting what they paid for.
Eliminating Generic Assignments
What can teachers do to change student perceptions of online paper mills? One suggestion is for teachers to make their assignments less generic and more specific to students’ immediate lives (and, therefore, less easy to plagiarize). For example, an English teacher could require a paper in which students compare a literary character to someone in their lives. Or a political science teacher could ask students to analyze a local or state political race using concepts that they have learned in class.
Alternatives to the Research Paper
Teachers could also choose to forego the traditional research paper altogether and have students do an alternate assignment (such as an interview or a power point project) that would require students to use the same analytical, organizational, and research skills that they would use in doing a research paper. Not only are such projects more difficult to find online if students want to plagiarize, but students might be more invested in such projects due to their non-traditional and engaging nature.
Discussing Paper Mills With Students
Finally, teachers can talk with students about online paper mill sites and critique the freely available papers from the sites with the class, showing them the poor quality of some of the work and stressing to them that they could do better quality work on their own. This final technique also serves the important purpose of showing students that teachers are aware that these sites exist and would know where to look for the evidence if students choose to use one.
As long as students (or their elders) have to pay for higher education, and as long as schools at all levels use grades and test scores to measure performance, students are unlikely to stop viewing education as a transaction along the lines of paying for goods and services. As the elimination of tuition, grades, and tests is unlikely (if not impossible), teachers need to be proactive regarding all types of cheating. With a little work and creativity, teachers can effectively combat student use of online paper mills.
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