Study of Using Rhetorical
Forensics
to Examine Online Writing
for Signs of Cheating
In the first online FE course, it became evident that some of the students felt they could take advantage of their remote locations and submit plagiarize work. Wiith that in mind, we began examining obviously plagiarized texts for consistencies that could be applied to analyzing future student work. Using simple, rhetorical tools we found that we could easily identify indicators of stolen work.
As we learn to recognize voice over the telephone, if we see it often enough, we learn to recognize the written "voice" of those around us. It may be possible to look at any two, large bodies of writing and tell if they are done by the same person.
Publications
The paper, "Will the Real Author Please Stand Up" was presented in the 1997 Conference of Computers and Writing, Honolulu.