Misuse of sources as plagiarism. In her post titled Reuse, Remix, Regret, Barbara Fister suggests that an over-dependence on technology to police and charge students with plagiarism is not that effective at dealing with the problem, and can furthermore lead to unfounded accusations. Fister provides the example of misuse of sources (ex. students attempt to cite their sources, but do so incorrectly) being flagged and treated as plagiarism. I would be interested in seeing statistics on how often this happens, since I find it hard to believe that any university administration would adopt such a policy. Not only would it result in students being wrongly accused of plagiarism, but it would generate a tremendous amount of work for the administration who have to process all these cases (assuming, of course, that there is a process in place for the students to be treated fairly and to plead their side of the case).

Plagiarism is a serious academic offense, and one that cannot be delegated entirely to technological systems. While there is a role in these systems to educate students and to detect potential cases of plagiarism, faculty must nevertheless remain engaged with their students, both in teaching them how to avoid plagiarism and in determining when acts of plagiarism have in fact been committed.