Plagiarism at Lake State?
By
Aaron Kopitz


Naturally the world is full of accidents both good and bad. The good ones we label under serendipity and the bad ones are the ones we choose to ignore. Its obvious that in an average college students history as a student they were at one time or another taught to cite work and give credit where credit is due. Some were taught the right way but most were not. The word plagiarism has a lot of stigmatism on it and for good reasons too. 
Some campuses have a product to protect against plagiarism and they use it in various ways.
But what does Lake State do about plagiarism? Well the faculty and staff at Lake State had a pre-class starting workshop where they developed different ideas and technology for students. An example of a recent technology is the iclickers students use in class. You know those costly little pieces of plastic with buttons; where you have to answer questions on a PowerPoint before class. Well along with this technology the KJS Library recently started up a new program for preventing plagiarism. Its name is My Drop Box. 
This software has many features allowing both student and staff to check work for authenticity and originality. It can be found at www.mydropbox.com and it allows a student to log on using a code that can be obtained by asking a librarian and use it to submit a form with your information. After which students and faculty alike can use it to check their work by entering the text which the software scans and compares it to all the sources in its database. After a complete scan is done which can take a couple of minutes to a few hours it will report back with a percentage of what material is considered plagiarized and what may need re-vamping. 
When you first register and log on it may seem confusing; although it is suggested that this product is far superior to that of WebCT and such programs. My Drop Box allows professors to post grades, comment on work and its main purpose to check large amounts of work in little time.
Why would they want to bring plagiarism checking software to Lake State? Faculty and staff at Lake State understand that many students in their high school and middle school education were taught that changing a few words here and there means its not plagiarism, or something of a similar practice. This product was brought to Lake State to help students and professors to protect themselves and be aware of the information they use and give credit where credit is due. Fred Michels, Dean Division of Academic Services say it would be a nice tool available to students. understanding that this is not a razor wire net that professors will be using to catch students in the act. It is more of a tool to help each other.
What should a student do? Go to the website its www.mydropbox.com and look at the material. Get the join code which can be acquired at the library and take the software for a spin around the block. There is no reason you should not try My Drop Box, it was intended not to put pressure on students to write excellent papers (which doesnt mean you shouldnt try to write excellent papers) it was simply brought to Lake State to better student and faculty alike. One more thing to entice you to try the software is to register and join and cut and paste some information from Wikipedia. Its quite interesting where the sources come from.
