Academic decency is the cornerstone of an effective educational process and the default requirement of each assignment students take. Teaching students to develop their thoughts and come up with original ideas is a significant responsibility for an educator, and it is important for professors to find the balance between coaching and policing their students. Technology today allows checking whether a student’s paper is original, but there is still work for educators in figuring out the academic decency of their students.

False positive similarity of a text

A false positive result in a plagiarism checker means that a text is marked as plagiarized or matching with one found online. However, the phrasing may match out of context. Apparently, it is not flagged as a false result, so the conclusion of the report may draw accusations on the student, even though he or she was the one who wrote the composition. The materials that may appear in a false positive report are common phrases, widely discussed topics, or assignment details that other students receive. Determining that a positive result is false may be easy if the words and phrases it flags are common. However, it may be challenging if the checker highlights something more specific and unreferenced.

False negative similarity of a text

A false negative similarity result is the other side of the same problem of plagiarism detection. As well as the previous error, it may distort the conclusion of the report and, consequently, the educator. It happens when the plagiarism-checking software does not flag the text that was actually plagiarized. There are, as well, different reasons for that. In a cross-language institution, one of the cheating options is translating borrowed material, which makes it more challenging for algorithms to detect cheating. The software may not have access to certain books or issues, because they were not published on the internet or because the software cannot access the publication. Another problem leading to a false negative result is paraphrasing. An ethically challenged student may do it manually or employ software for facilitated plagiarism, which may either make plagiarism evident or conceal it. If paraphrasing is done well enough, the detector may fail to flag it.

How PlagiarismCheck.org works

PlagiarismCheck.org is a software that helps educators to estimate the originality of students’ writing and to detect similarity with other written work. The technology takes into account the possibility of false positive or negative results, and includes repository records of the institution.

The algorithm determines the key and the supplementary words in the text.

A special formula defines the value of the words for the text’s content.

It omits common terms and phrasing that are not likely to be a plagiarism case.

The formula analyzes whether a particular wording is a coincidence or plagiarism.

The analysis field expands to the school’s private repositories. They are individual and must be added to the software’s search range.

The technology of PlagiarismCheck.org aims to minimize the possibility of obtaining false results. The checker marks fully matching text and cited text differently, which also helps to track the appropriate citing of the sources used. So, technology today can become a great helper for professors in their defense of academic decency. However, it is important to remember that it can be faulty as well. For that reason, it is necessary both to analyze flagged text and to check the coherence of the unflagged one. Try PlagiarismCheck.org now and get a detailed report on possible plagiarism!

PlagiarismCheck.org provides effective solutions for teachers, students, and content creators. Scan for plagiarism and try our AI text detector now!