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Plagiarism Checker

A completely free and accurate online plagiarism detector. Simply copy and paste to detect copied content.

Get your Weekly Plan Only in

The free version does not support more than 1000 words.

Plagiarism Checker “ PRO ” the most trustworthy plagiarism detection tool

Our mission is to fulfill everyone's NEEDS in plagiarism detection. Most user-friendly interface with plenty of exclusive FEATURES to execute efficiency & reliability mission.

Plagiarism Checker Online for Multiple Languages

Why choose our plagiarism checker.

Our best free plagiarism checker is totally free. It doesn’t charge you anything which means you can conduct as many searches as you like. All you need to do is just copy and paste your content.

This plagiarism checker software offers you a deep and thorough check. With deep search, you get extra levels of plagiarism search and additional result details.

If you don’t want to copy and paste your text, you can alternatively upload the page URL or the file for a quick and free plagiarism check.

Consequences of Plagiarism

Today, copyrighted content has become a constant problem in educational institutions. Students create many assignments using a lot of research in a short period. Many schools/institutions, such as Duke University, have judicial affairs offices. They will review each case of plagiarism and fix penalties.

Most of the outcomes of plagiarism occur once the replication is caught. Institutions have noted that students who duplicate data often fail to learn research and writing skills. Once they leave the institution, all those students lose the ability to create original content because they have only cheated before.

Professional

Countless journalists, academics, writers, and creators have had their reputations damaged by plagiarism accusations. Not only do plagiarists disrupt their ongoing work by getting fired or terminated. They also find it difficult to get work in the future. A particularly egregious instance of plagiarism, or worse, can destroy a person's professional image. It also forces them to change careers to avoid the stigma of plagiarism.

Apart from all the professional and personal difficulties that may arise in certain cases, there are also legal consequences. Copying copyrighted material for profit may result in the plagiarist having to pay some financial losses. In some cases, copying data can subject the plagiarist to criminal prosecution. And the punishment can range from charges to imprisonment.

So, before submitting any content, do a plagiarism check once to see if you have copied it or not. It can protect you from all kinds of harm. You won't have to wait long for results using a duplicate content checker. You can take advantage of this plagiarism checker free and save yourself from embarrassment.

How it detects?

Plagiarism Detector is the free and an intelligent and essay checker software. It doesn't matter if you are a student or a professional, everyone can have benefit from this likewise.

Now, with the help of our plagiarism detector, you can check if your content that you are just seconds away from publishing and considering its uniqueness. If you are web owner, then it is very important to have a plagiarism-free content on your website if you wish to attract maximum traffic. This is the best Free Plagiarism Checker that you will find online as it works the same way as Google.

Built with thorough research on the needs of our customers, all the essential strategies and techniques have been implemented to make results 100% accurate and authentic for everyone.

We analyzed that any anti-plagiarism software is mostly used by students or teacher to check the essays, papers, and reports that they submit or that have been submitted to them. Because plagiarism is unacceptable no matter what type it is . That is why we have particularly designed a system that offers free plagiarism detection which helps students and teachers to check their duplicate content.

Teachers, as well as students, should discourage plagiarism .

You can try our plagiarism detector now, and you will know that it is rightfully the free online plagiarism checker with percentage!

Importance of plagiarism Detector

If you aim at a higher Authority on SERP (Search Engine Results Page) then never take the risk of publishing a heavily duplicated content.

Plagiarized or duplicated content can lead to lower page rank. If you are caught up in a situation where your article, blog or web page content is not entirely unique, then there is a comparatively higher risk of getting blacklisted by search engines especially Google. You can utilize the free plagiarism detection service offered by our similarity checker to check the content from your own website to make sure that no one has stolen the content from your website. Apart from SEO (Search Engine Optimization), our free plagiarism finder can also be utilized by students and teachers for academic uses.

Beware! It is a double-edged sword .

How the plagiarism scanner Works?

It is very simple!

Plagiarism scanner is an intelligent free and most accurate software.

The content you enter is analyzed on the basis of its

• lexical frequencies,,
• word-choice,,
• matching phrases,,

and many other important factors. Your given text is mapped into our internal network, and then it is compared against different databases and the entire internet. We have designed our algorithm to especially ignore statistically common phrases to provide a better and more valuable search for potential plagiarism in the text. Once the plagiarism test completes, the results will appear below along with the match percentage that our best plagiarism tool has found.

The article you have entered is carefully scanned, and so is the entire internet. If complete plagiarized sentences are found, the plagiarism detector will identify the original source of that content and show to you. All you have to do is copy and paste the content in the text box and then click on “Check Plagiarism” button.

It is as simple as it sounds. (How to check plagiarism)

This plagiarism checker free online for teachers, students, and writers will run your text through its database of millions of sites to show you the best plagiarism free report with the detailed results. Alternatively, you can either enter the URL of the website for which you want to conduct a plagiarism check or you can upload the files. Whether it is an article, essay or blog, a thorough sentence check will be conducted for your text in order to give you the most reliable and accurate results.

Online Plagiarism Checker

Understanding the results.

Beside the text box, you are shown the percentage for Checked, Unique, and Plagiarized.

Phrases or sentences shown in the results below are the ones that our plagiarism detector has identified as plagiarized and already exist online, along with the matched percentage. These are the links and by clicking on the “Match Text” you will be redirected to the original source where you can see yourself the plagiarized text. When the plagiarism test is finished, you’ll also be given an exact percentage of uniqueness and plagiarism of your text. However, if your content is completely unique then you will get a congratulations message:

Plagiarism Checker API

The plagiarism checker API allows everyone to add plagiarism detection functionality to their software or applications. Our flexible system allows you to customize your settings to fit your needs. It can grow with your business or personal needs. Most importantly, our reliable services give you peace of mind knowing your data is safe and protected.

Identify Copied Material with Anti Plagiarism Software

Plagiarism can appear in different forms, but the end outcome is always the same: the plagiarist stole something from another person. Plagiarism refers to using some other person’s ideas and information without acknowledging that specific person as the source. Similar to all other forms of theft, plagiarism also has many disadvantages associated with it.

It can take place in both intentional, when you try to pass someone’s content as your own, or unintentional when you forget to mention the source for your work correctly. In spite of the kind, piracy always has consequences when it is discovered. Mostly, the punishment of accidental copying is temporary. Because ascertaining unintentional plagiarism requires knowledge of intent, the overall prestige of the plagiarist becomes the deciding factor.

Plagiarism can occur in any shape either textual or pictorial. So we not only scan the document for the copyrights but also check the duplication for images. You can also perform Reverse Image Search to look for the best matching photos. By using advance image recognition algorithms, it will bring out the matching results from all over the internet and search engines.

Before jumping to direct consequences, here’s a brief detail of how can you make sure your work is not matching with any source. Loads of information, millions of text documents, is attainable on the internet now. So, if you think you can check manually, then you are wrong. No matter, how many articles you read or how many hours you spend, you can never be sure. Hence, the alternative best way you can take help from is a free plagiarism detector. There are many such tools readily available on the internet, providing best services to users. Majority of them, search your material against billions of contents and underlines each sentence which resembles with another posted article.

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Quetext's deep search technology analyzes your text to identify plagiarism and AI, to resolve writing issues, and build citations with ease. You wouldn't want to write without it.

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Check out our latest blog posts, quetext faq, is quetext reliable.

Quetext is reliable, safe, and extremely effective for verifying original work with ease. Rigorous testing is involved with every update made to the product, and the comprehensive plagiarism score users receive is backed by billions of internet sources. Students, teachers, and content writers alike rely on Quetext for fast and accurate verification.

What languages does Quetext support?

Quetext currently supports the following languages:

How effective is Quetext?

Quetext is extremely effective for writers who need to verify their content's originality. Not only does the plagiarism checker quickly and accurately identify any and all instances of plagiarized writing, but it also generates citations where necessary, right on the spot. In addition, our AI Content Detector Tool performs detailed, line-by-line analysis, proving our subscribers with the confidence to know the content they check was written by a human. It can be easy to lose track of sources, and Quetext is there to help writers stay on top of them without creating extra work.

What is the pricing for Quetext?

Quetext has several different subscription options, depending on what your needs are. The free plan is a great place to start, as it comes with plagiarism checks on 500 words (1 page), ColorGrade™ feedback, contextual analysis, fuzzy matching, and conditional scoring. Now, you can also check 250 words using our new AI detector tool for free! However, starting at just $8.80 per user per month, you get so much more: 100,000 words (200 pages) that can go through the plagiarism checker, DeepSearch™ Extended, Citation Assistant, a downloadable originality report, custom URL exclusion, interactive snippet text, and premium support. You can learn more and get started on our Quetext Pricing page.

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Free Online Plagiarism Checker

Possible plagiarism detected!

If you submit this paper, your institution may take disciplinary measures against you. The content requires editing and modification of parts. We know how to make it unique.

This is weighted average of all matches in your text. For example, if half of your paper is 100% plagiarized, your score would be 50%

Well done, your text is unique!

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How to avoid plagiarism?

Proper citation style.

Avoid plagiarism by always listing the source and formatting it correctly when you are note-taking. Take care of the proper formatting and citation style when using content from outside sources.

Write on your own

Avoid borrowing and overusing large pieces of the content from outside sources, especially from Wikipedia. Write your own thoughts and use sources only to support your opinion (remember to cite it though!).

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Plagiarism Checker Review

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Online Plagiarism Checker For Students

Writing an academic paper can be challenging when you’re not sure if it’s original enough to pass a plagiarism check. Of course, students take information from various sites before writing their own text. Sometimes, it just so happens that certain parts are very similar to your resources, making your professor think that you’ve just copied work from somewhere. That’s why it’s crucial for any modern college or university student to ensure that their work has 100% original content to maintain academic integrity.

Luckily, a free plagiarism checker online can solve this issue quickly and easily. Many cheap essay writing services use a plagiarism checker for research paper. However, students sometimes forget that they should too. But with so many options that pop up when you ask Google to “check my paper for plagiarism”, how do you choose the right one for detection? We’ve got the solution in the form of PapersOwl’s free plagiarism checker tool! Our simple tool makes it convenient to check any writing task without having to spend a dime. It works quickly and highly accurately, ensuring that you get the top grade you deserve. So, if you want to check plagiarism online before turning your task in, head over to our website and get started!

Accurate Check for Plagiarism with Percentage

Many students wishing to produce original content aren’t quite sure how to get an exact percentage of plagiarised text in their work. This percentage is important since many universities have a certain limit of non-unique words you can have in your essay for it to be considered okay. If your plagiarism search doesn’t give you the exact percentage, you can’t be sure if your assignment will go through or not.

When using a free plagiarism tool, it’s essential to have this data provided to you. Only when you have it can you decide which parts to change and which ones to chuck out to achieve your desired results. Plagiarized content is a big issue in modern educational institutions, so getting reliable and trustworthy results is vital. This is the most essential requirement when you check plagiarism.

PapersOwl’s plagiarism detection tool gives you all the information you need to fix plagiarized content. Whether you’ve fallen victim to accidental plagiarism or have tried to make your life easier by copying some text from different sources, you’ll get an accurate percentage with our plagiarism checker online. If you’re wondering how to check paper for plagiarism, it’s nothing complicated at all! Simply visit our site, paste your whole essay into the relevant text box or upload the text file, click on Check For Plagiarism, and you’ll get accurate plagiarism results in a matter of seconds. You’ll see the problematic parts with plagiarism detected highlighted, with links to where similar content exists. Our service with plagiarism detector will also give you the option to check my essay for plagiarism and then to hire a professional paper writer to fix your task quickly if you're busy with other things!

The Fastest Plagiarism Checker Online

Gaining insight into duplicate content only works if you get your results quickly. There are so many free plagiarism software online that promise to do the job for you. However, a lot of them are clunky, slow, and inaccurate. How can you produce original work without similarity detection you can trust?

PapersOwl stands out in this regard because it will detect plagiarism in seconds. This is a plagiarism scanner that’s able to perform a Swift Check to give you a uniqueness check right there and then. It also conducts a Deep Search, going through millions of sources on the internet to check for plagiarism. A document of about 1500 words takes only about 10 seconds to get processed! You get a clear plagiarism score of how much text is plagiarized and how much is original. All the sources that your essay matches are listed based on how much similarity there is in your academic writing. And on top of that, you get a handy Make It Unique button that’ll take you to an order page where you can ask our expert writers to rewrite your work and make it 100% unique.

All of this is done almost instantly, allowing students to continue do assignments without missing a beat. Not every plagiarism detection software works this quickly, making ours the best one you’ll ever use.

Plagiarism Checker Helps Boost Your Grade

A lot of students make the mistake of considering their papers automatically free from plagiarism. After all, they’ve written it themselves, so how could it be problematic? What they don’t realize is that it’s very easy to borrow some information mistakenly. Turning such a paper in can cause multiple problems, as your professor might think you haven’t done the work at all.

That is why you should always use a plagiarism scanner to test for plagiarized content in your college papers. Our online plagiarism checker for students is designed for this exact purpose. A simple, free plagiarism check could help you check plagiarism, fix any mistakes you see, and submit high-quality text that no one will question.

Our plagiarism detector has a lot going for it. It makes plagiarism detection easier than ever before. Unlike copying and pasting each passage individually into Google, simply upload the whole file into our plagiarism checker free for students, and you don’t have to do anything else. All the matches are highlighted so you know what to change.

The plagiarism test will give you a uniqueness percentage too. This will help you figure out where you stand and how much time you need to adjust anything if required. So, using our copyright checker online free to check your writing is essential. This way, you’ll submit the task only when you’re sure it meets the level of uniqueness required by your school. As a result, your grades will drastically improve when you check for plagiarism.

Free Tools for Writing

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How Does Plagiarism Checker Work?

• If you already have a completed text, all you need is just to copy-paste the whole thing in the special box of the chosen plagiarism tool or website, choose suitable settings (if any), then press “check for plagiarism”. It is quite simple and takes just a few moments.
• Once you have pressed “check for plagiarism”, the system will analyze your text and compare it with different sources to find similarities. As a rule, the duration depends on the text’s length. A standard free online plagiarism checker with percentage can give you the result within five minutes or less.
• When the system finishes the work you will be transmitted to the reporting page – it contains the comprehensive report on your work, a percentage of its uniqueness, and a list of sources on which similarities were detected. Often, such tools also highlight the overlaps that were found.

As you can see, it is simple. However, for the best and reliable result you have to be careful. There are tons of programs and online tools that can be used but keep in mind that many of them work differently and not all are good for you. To be confident in the truthfulness of the received result, you need to select the best plagiarism checker because only a professional and high-quality software can detect all similarities and give you a reasoned assessment.

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Advantages Of Plagiarism Checker By PapersOwl

Why choose us? Our service offers a professional online plagiarism checker with report that will provide you with a comprehensive report to make you confident in the 100% uniqueness of your paper. Our free plagiarism checker for students guarantees the best check and here are the key advantages of using our tool that prove this:

You don’t need to pay anything to check your paper for plagiarism because we know the value of original and unique works.

One of the main benefits of our antiplagiat checker online is that it works so fast that you will not even have enough time to make yourself a cup of coffee while it analyzes your text, and it is safe!

We use the latest and the best algorithms and software in order to provide you with an advanced check and help you receive the high-quality papers.

It is simple in use and won’t take much time!

Many students have already confirmed that our free tool is a great and convenient feature that helped them detect and fix errors that could lead to a failure. With us, you will no longer need to look for a different scanner!

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Plagiarism Checker FAQ

Can i check my essay for plagiarism free online, can i use papersowl plagiarism checker as a student for free, can i check my research paper for plagiarism for free, will the papersowl plagiarism report be the same as at my university, what are the consequences of plagiarism, why wait place an order right now.

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How to Cheat on an Essay

Essay cheating is increasingly becoming popular among students. Some decades ago, it was almost unimaginable to cheat on an essay. But today, it is so common that most students consider cheating in school essay an everyday practice. But why do students cheat on their essays, and how can you do some essay cheating on your next essay test?

Sometimes, students get stuck while writing essays because they do not know how to outsmart the writing process. But with some essay cheating hacks, you can save yourself the stress involved in writing an essay test. So let’s hit the nail on the head and delve into details of these essay cheat hacks!

1.       Copy intelligently without being caught

This is an intelligent way of cheating on your essays. Plagiarism is punishable by law because it is considered academic dishonesty. However, it can help you ace your essay if you do it wisely without being caught. First, you can plagiarize by wisely adding adverbs, adjectives to the original sentences to make them different. Also, the order of texts within the original texts can be changed.

This method is safe because tools that detect plagiarism cannot detect any similarities or overlap between your essay and the original work. In addition, changing the order of texts will jumble your texts in such a way that their meaning and coherence will not be lost.

2.      Seek the service of a professional essay writer

You can make use of essay writing service cheating to excel in your essay without stress! This method can be considered as one of the easiest ways of cheating on an essay. Just check out some essay cheating websites and give them the topic. Then, in a few hours, you’ll be home and dry!

This method requires that you hire a professional essay writer that would write your essay for you. These professionals can be accessed through professional writing websites. Thus, there is a high assurance that your essay will be of good quality if written by a professional essay writer. First, however, the credibility of your writing service provider must be confirmed through research. This could be confirmed by considering how consistent they’ve been and how long they’ve been offering the service to students.

3.      Take advantage of free model essays to write your essay

A model essay is a guide or actual example that helps students to write their essays. Using or copying a model essay is a very efficient method to cheat essay papers. These model essays are created by people who are familiar with the course content and requirements.

However, it is essential to note that the assignment requirements given by your instructor may be different from the model essay. Therefore, it is imperative for you to carefully check the context of model essays and the content before using them.

Are you curious about how to cheat on an essay test? As humans, it is our nature to want to win in anything we set out to do. In order to achieve this, we may want to go against the rules. Over the years, cheating on tests and exams has become the norm and is considered nothing new. Unfortunately, technological advancement has made it much easier to cheat and gain undue advantage in almost any situation.

In this age and time where having an excellent and higher grade is prioritized over the actual knowledge, cheating may seem inevitable. Many students cheat today because of the fear of falling behind their mates. They also fear getting into trouble with their parents, who have so many expectations from them. In addition, coping with academic pressure and having to win the competition among classmates may push a student to want to cheat.

In order to get ahead at all costs, cheating may look like the only best option. Unfortunately, many people now see cheating as something that happens often and can be overlooked. You can refer to the essay cheating hacks as a guide to show you how to cheat on an essay! That’s a cheat sheet you’ll always want to have at your fingertips!

Disclaimer: This article is not aimed at giving you the go-ahead to cheat. However, it will equip you with valuable tips and hacks on cheating on an essay. Of course, whatever you do with the information is mainly dependent on you.

Essay Cheating Tips

1.       do a word count manipulation.

If you want to cheat on an essay, make sure you do not use the short form of some phrases. Word count manipulation is one of the most efficient cheating tips. For example, instead of using an acronym, write it out in full. This will help you write more words to hit your word count.

2.      Make it look like you read books

One of the things that your educator would like to see is that you researched well before writing the essay. So, before writing your essay, Google books on the topics you are writing on. Then choose a book( scholarly book) and extract a quote that is relevant from it. By doing this, your educator will be convinced that you have read the book. Also, for reference, you can check the ISBN.

3.      Make sure to paraphrase your essay well

A student can cheat on an essay by paraphrasing. This involves mixing the words of the original text without losing their meaning. By paraphrasing, you will not follow the structure of the original text. Instead, make use of similar words (synonyms) and you can as well break long sentences into smaller, similar, and separate sentences.

How to Hide that your Cheating On Essay

No student wants to be caught cheating on an essay, and no student wants to face the consequences of cheating. To avoid being caught, make sure you read the original text and rewrite them in your words. Do not copy the original text word for word. This can be easily checked and detected by a plagiarism checker. You can also employ the method of letter substitution by using letter duplicates from other languages. Also, you can make use of white-colored text to avoid being caught.

However, if you can put so much effort into plagiarizing someone else’s work to make it look like yours, why not put the same time and effort into writing your original work. This is the easiest way to avoid being caught cheating on an essay.

What if You Get Caught Cheating on an Essay

When you are caught cheating on an essay, you can do the following:

1.       Admit your cheating

If there is any evidence of you cheating that you can’t deny, do not hide, admit your cheating. This is in your best interest not to get into more considerable trouble. Coming out clean may be challenging, but it is the most appropriate thing to do. Then, apologize for cheating after admitting your fault.

2.      You can give excuses

As a method of damage control, you can try to give excuses, whether genuine or fake. But note that this method can only help when you are sure that there is a possibility of you getting away with it. If not, you are going to get into more trouble.

3.      Tell your parents about it

You can tell your parents about it, do not hide it from them so that they can be on your side, and they can talk to your instructor as experienced people. This may increase your chances of getting a pardon.

4.      Try to play the victim

You can use this method in different ways, but you must be very careful when using this method. If possible, this method should be your last resort. If you are not careful, you can make more enemies and further implicate yourself.

Act like you are not aware of the act or claim that you are oblivious of the act. Or you can go ahead to state that you were not aware of the rules and regulations guiding the essay. You can also claim that you were manipulated by bad students into cheating on your essay.

So here we are! Now you know how to cheat on your essay test! First, hire a professional writing service to get your essay done for you, especially if you’re short on time. They’re your best bet!

Frequently Asked Questions

With over a decade of experience in the industry, Evelyn Henderson is a highly accomplished freelance translator, research writer, and essay writer. She has established herself as the best in the business; she has a reputation for delivering high-quality projects and ensures that she meets and exceeds the client’s expectations.

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Buying College Essays Is Now Easier Than Ever. But Buyer Beware

Tovia Smith

Concern is growing about a burgeoning online market for essays that students can buy and turn in as their own work. And schools are trying new tools to catch it. Angela Hsieh/NPR hide caption

Concern is growing about a burgeoning online market for essays that students can buy and turn in as their own work. And schools are trying new tools to catch it.

As the recent college admissions scandal is shedding light on how parents are cheating and bribing their children's way into college, schools are also focusing on how some students may be cheating their way through college. Concern is growing about a burgeoning online market that makes it easier than ever for students to buy essays written by others to turn in as their own work. And schools are trying new tools to catch it.

It's not hard to understand the temptation for students. The pressure is enormous, the stakes are high and, for some, writing at a college level is a huge leap.

"We didn't really have a format to follow, so I was kind of lost on what to do," says one college freshman, who struggled recently with an English assignment. One night, when she was feeling particularly overwhelmed, she tweeted her frustration.

"It was like, 'Someone, please help me write my essay!' " she recalls. She ended her tweet with a crying emoji. Within a few minutes, she had a half-dozen offers of help.

"I can write it for you," they tweeted back. "Send us the prompt!"

The student, who asked that her name not be used for fear of repercussions at school, chose one that asked for $10 per page, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

"For me, it was just that the work was piling up," she explains. "As soon as I finish some big assignment, I get assigned more things, more homework for math, more homework for English. Some papers have to be six or 10 pages long. ... And even though I do my best to manage, the deadlines come closer and closer, and it's just ... the pressure."

In the cat-and-mouse game of academic cheating, students these days know that if they plagiarize, they're likely to get caught by computer programs that automatically compare essays against a massive database of other writings. So now, buying an original essay can seem like a good workaround.

"Technically, I don't think it's cheating," the student says. "Because you're paying someone to write an essay, which they don't plagiarize, and they write everything on their own."

Her logic, of course, ignores the question of whether she's plagiarizing. When pressed, she begins to stammer.

"That's just a difficult question to answer," she says. "I don't know how to feel about that. It's kind of like a gray area. It's maybe on the edge, kind of?"

Besides she adds, she probably won't use all of it.

Other students justify essay buying as the only way to keep up. They figure that everyone is doing it one way or another — whether they're purchasing help online or getting it from family or friends.

"Oh yeah, collaboration at its finest," cracks Boston University freshman Grace Saathoff. While she says she would never do it herself, she's not really fazed by others doing it. She agrees with her friends that it has pretty much become socially acceptable.

"I have a friend who writes essays and sells them," says Danielle Delafuente, another Boston University freshman. "And my other friend buys them. He's just like, 'I can't handle it. I have five papers at once. I need her to do two of them, and I'll do the other three.' It's a time management thing."

The war on contract cheating

"It breaks my heart that this is where we're at," sighs Ashley Finley, senior adviser to the president for the Association of American Colleges and Universities. She says campuses are abuzz about how to curb the rise in what they call contract cheating. Obviously, students buying essays is not new, but Finley says that what used to be mostly limited to small-scale side hustles has mushroomed on the internet to become a global industry of so-called essay mills. Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but research suggests that up to 16 percent of students have paid someone to do their work and that the number is rising.

"Definitely, this is really getting more and more serious," Finley says. "It's part of the brave new world for sure."

The essay mills market aggressively online, with slickly produced videos inviting students to "Get instant help with your assignment" and imploring them: "Don't lag behind," "Join the majority" and "Don't worry, be happy."

"They're very crafty," says Tricia Bertram Gallant, director of the Academic Integrity Office at the University of California in San Diego and a board member of the International Center for Academic Integrity.

The companies are equally brazen offline — leafleting on campuses, posting flyers in toilet stalls and flying banners over Florida beaches during spring break. Companies have also been known to bait students with emails that look like they're from official college help centers. And they pay social media influencers to sing the praises of their services, and they post testimonials from people they say are happy customers.

"I hired a service to write my paper and I got a 90 on it!" gloats one. "Save your time, and have extra time to party!" advises another.

"It's very much a seduction," says Bertram Gallant. "So you can maybe see why students could get drawn into the contract cheating world."

YouTube has been cracking down on essay mills; it says it has pulled thousands of videos that violate its policies against promoting dishonest behavior.

But new videos constantly pop up, and their hard sell flies in the face of their small-print warnings that their essays should be used only as a guide, not a final product.

Several essay mills declined or didn't respond to requests to be interviewed by NPR. But one answered questions by email and offered up one of its writers to explain her role in the company, called EduBirdie.

"Yes, just like the little birdie that's there to help you in your education," explains April Short, a former grade school teacher from Australia who's now based in Philadelphia. She has been writing for a year and a half for the company, which bills itself as a "professional essay writing service for students who can't even."

Some students just want some "foundational research" to get started or a little "polish" to finish up, Short says. But the idea that many others may be taking a paper written completely by her and turning it in as their own doesn't keep her up at night.

"These kids are so time poor," she says, and they're "missing out on opportunities of travel and internships because they're studying and writing papers." Relieving students of some of that burden, she figures, allows them to become more "well-rounded."

"I don't necessarily think that being able to create an essay is going to be a defining factor in a very long career, so it's not something that bothers me," says Short. Indeed, she thinks students who hire writers are demonstrating resourcefulness and creativity. "I actually applaud students that look for options to get the job done and get it done well," she says.

"This just shows you the extent of our ability to rationalize all kinds of bad things we do," sighs Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University. The rise in contract cheating is especially worrisome, he says, because when it comes to dishonest behavior, more begets more. As he puts it, it's not just about "a few bad apples."

Felicity Huffman And 12 Other Parents To Plead Guilty In College Cheating Scandal

"Instead, what we have is a lot ... of blemished apples, and we take our cues for our behavior from the social world around us," he says. "We know officially what is right and what's wrong. But really what's driving our behavior is what we see others around us doing" or, Ariely adds, what we perceive them to be doing. So even the proliferation of advertising for essays mills can have a pernicious effect, he says, by fueling the perception that "everyone's doing it."

A few nations have recently proposed or passed laws outlawing essay mills, and more than a dozen U.S. states have laws on the books against them. But prosecuting essay mills, which are often based overseas in Pakistan, Kenya and Ukraine, for example, is complicated. And most educators are loath to criminalize students' behavior.

"Yes, they're serious mistakes. They're egregious mistakes," says Cath Ellis, an associate dean and integrity officer at the University of New South Wales, where students were among the hundreds alleged to have bought essays in a massive scandal in Australia in 2014.

"But we're educational institutions," she adds. "We've got to give students the opportunity to learn from these mistakes. That's our responsibility. And that's better in our hands than in the hands of the police and the courts."

Staying one step ahead

In the war on contract cheating, some schools see new technology as their best weapon and their best shot to stay one step ahead of unscrupulous students. The company that makes the Turnitin plagiarism detection software has just upped its game with a new program called Authorship Investigate.

The software first inspects a document's metadata, like when it was created, by whom it was created and how many times it was reopened and re-edited. Turnitin's vice president for product management, Bill Loller, says sometimes it's as simple as looking at the document's name. Essay mills typically name their documents something like "Order Number 123," and students have been known to actually submit it that way. "You would be amazed at how frequently that happens," says Loller.

Using cutting-edge linguistic forensics, the software also evaluates the level of writing and its style.

"Think of it as a writing fingerprint," Loller says. The software looks at hundreds of telltale characteristics of an essay, like whether the author double spaces after a period or writes with Oxford commas or semicolons. It all gets instantly compared against a student's other work, and, Loller says, suspicions can be confirmed — or alleviated — in minutes.

"At the end of the day, you get to a really good determination on whether the student wrote what they submitted or not," he says, "and you get it really quickly."

Coventry University in the U.K. has been testing out a beta version of the software, and Irene Glendinning, the school's academic manager for student experience, agrees that the software has the potential to give schools a leg up on cheating students. After the software is officially adopted, "we'll see a spike in the number of cases we find, and we'll have a very hard few years," she says. "But then the message will get through to students that we've got the tools now to find these things out." Then, Glendinning hopes, students might consider contract cheating to be as risky as plagiarizing.

In the meantime, schools are trying to spread the word that buying essays is risky in other ways as well.

Professor Ariely says that when he posed as a student and ordered papers from several companies, much of it was "gibberish" and about a third of it was actually plagiarized.

Even worse, when he complained to the company and demanded his money back, they resorted to blackmail. Still believing him to be a student, the company threatened to tell his school he was cheating. Others say companies have also attempted to shake down students for more money, threatening to rat them out if they didn't pay up.

The lesson, Ariely says, is "buyer beware."

But ultimately, experts say, many desperate students may not be deterred by the risks — whether from shady businesses or from new technology.

Bertram Gallant, of UC San Diego, says the right way to dissuade students from buying essays is to remind them why it's wrong.

"If we engage in a technological arms race with the students, we won't win," she says. "What are we going to do when Google glasses start to look like regular glasses and a student wears them into an exam? Are we going to tell them they can't wear their glasses because we're afraid they might be sending the exam out to someone else who is sending them back the answers?"

The solution, Bertram Gallant says, has to be about "creating a culture where integrity and ethics matter" and where education is valued more than grades. Only then will students believe that cheating on essays is only cheating themselves.

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Cheating, Inc.: How Writing Papers for American College Students Has Become a Lucrative Profession Overseas

Credit... Illustration by The New York Times

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By Farah Stockman and Carlos Mureithi

Tuition was due. The rent was, too . So Mary Mbugua, a university student in Nyeri, Kenya, went out in search of a job. At first, she tried selling insurance policies, but that only paid on commission and she never sold one. Then she sat behind the reception desk at a hotel, but it ran into financial trouble.

Finally, a friend offered to help her break into “academic writing,” a lucrative industry in Kenya that involves doing school assignments online for college students in the United States, Britain and Australia. Ms. Mbugua felt conflicted.

“This is cheating,” she said. “But do you have a choice? We have to make money. We have to make a living.”

Since federal prosecutors charged a group of rich parents and coaches this year in a sprawling fraud and bribery scheme , the advantages that wealthy American students enjoy in college admissions have been scrutinized. Less attention has been paid to the tricks some well-off students use to skate by once they are enrolled.

Cheating in college is nothing new, but the internet now makes it possible on a global, industrial scale. Sleek websites — with names like Ace-MyHomework and EssayShark — have sprung up that allow people in developing countries to bid on and complete American homework assignments.

Although such businesses have existed for more than a decade, experts say demand has grown in recent years as the sites have become more sophisticated, with customer service hotlines and money-back guarantees. The result? Millions of essays ordered annually in a vast, worldwide industry that provides enough income for some writers to make it a full-time job.

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Best essay writing websites according to A*Help

It’s easy to become overwhelmed with busy schedules and never-ending to-do lists, leaving no time for academic assignments. Thankfully, custom writing services are available to assist with a range of tasks, including essays and dissertations. However, finding a trustworthy provider can be challenging due to limited information and a lack of genuine reviews.

Our experts have conducted a real mystery shopping and compiled a list of the top essay writing services that can get the job done for you when you have a lot going on. To ensure transparency and consistency in our evaluations, we have developed our own rating system called A*Help score.

• A*HELP (HIGHEST)
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PaperWriter is a professional academic writing service which offers a number of assignment options, including essays, reports, and even term papers. It offers student-friendly prices and a refund guarantee.

Essay Writing Websites: Finding the Best One for Your Needs

Academic help for students.

High school graduates are usually inspired by these ageless uplifting words of wisdom on their graduation day: “The world is your oyster”, “The sky’s the limit”, and “You can do anything you set your mind to”. At first, many still have enough power and strength to overcome every hill and mountain they meet on their academic route. But long nights, endless lectures, piles of projects and essays, pressing deadlines, and high demands can easily drain any aspiring learners. The A*Help team understands that taking a breather is a must. Here, we present a list of websites that will write essays for you, take the stress away, and most importantly, provide help with any assignment on this long and exciting educational voyage.

Academic Help is a transparent platform where you can find relevant information and valid recommendations on what essay writing help website to choose for your personalized needs. With that being said, we review and work with all sorts of homework help companies, be they fast, expensive, or cheap essay services. This way we make sure that they can stand the pressure of demanding university and college lives. Should we give our trusted readers the most unbiased opinion, we work with every platform and assess all available features and the final task result. Then, our experts filter through our experience and grade the service based on value-for-money, overall experience, and paper quality criteria.

Through our background, we have reviewed many companies with an abundance of options and features that can be the ideal fit for every learner who is currently baffled with their academic life. Hence, the A*Help team wants to remind you to check out the list of the best essay writing service when you are wading through the stressful and overwhelming process of juggling multiple assignments and responsibilities, which can be made easier with the help of a reputable essay writing website.

Why Use Essay Writing Websites?

Education life is tough. It is filled with a plethora of extracurricular commitments and personal aspirations. Being overwhelmed with various tasks it is only natural for students to search for help from within. College essay writing platforms are the solution to their trouble with time management and meeting deadlines. Essay writing websites alleviate this stress by taking on the burden of writing, allowing students to prioritize other important tasks . Moreover, expert writers with extensive experience in academic writing, ensure the delivery of well-researched, high-quality content that meets university standards and essay requirements. Besides, such platforms are adept at creating customized essays that align perfectly with these specifications, ensuring that the final product meets the expectations of the professor or the admissions board.

The key features when selecting the best website for essay writing

Stress and anxiety can shift a student’s focus and impede the search for a credible homework-help website. That’s why our testing strategy is a perfect balance of analytical and practical approaches. We understand where learners’ worries come from and our goal is to take them away and facilitate academic life.

We are as strict and meticulous in our evaluations as every professor. Unquestionably, we pay most of our attention to the final result of the essay. But we tend not to forget about the whole process of interaction with the service. To put it mildly, we do judge a book by its cover. And we check all essential aspects of the user journey.

The Academic Help team does not stop there. We strive to find legit paper writing websites. Hence, for a more professional take on things A*Help collaborates with US professors who give us expert commentary and evaluation.

The best essay writing website: the legitimate factor

Nobody wants to get scammed. The A*Help team values students’ precious time and money. Hence, even before considering working with any essay writing company, we peruse and analyze the available information online. Every feedback and insight is valuable for our reviews. We sieve through many comments on trusted resources not only to find the most positive testimonials but also negative ones. This is one of the most fundamental ways to check each essay-writing website’s legitimacy. Our aim is to share with the readers only professional and trusted resources. So, by gathering real users’ feedback and ensuring that the service is indeed informative, welcoming, and user-friendly, we verify its professionalism.

Our experts believe that this approach shows a more genuine and transparent view of the essay writing platform. Such a comprehensive technique gives an extensive understanding to students.

Final words: How to choose a top essay writing website

Finding the best paper writing site can be considered hard. But with the right approach and mindset, every learner can certainly find a platform that can take their academic trouble away. Top essay writing websites comprehend the level of anxiety students have and the endless projects that are always left unfinished.

So, to find the platform that covers all educational needs and shows high-quality results there is one thing that is worth remembering – personal research. We highly recommend focusing on the quality of content and paper, adherence to university standards, and the ability to meet specific essay requirements. Additionally, various key features, such as revisions, affordable pricing, secure payment options, wide scope of services, efficient customer support, and the legitimacy of the website should also be considered. Besides, a service that really aspires to be that one flexible helping platform, offers customized essays, keeps up with deadlines, and provides reliable services such as free revisions, a money-back guarantee, and originality reports.

What website writes essays for you without plagiarizing?

When searching for an essay writing website students should not forget about checking the plagiarism feature. Since there is a pool of platforms that are not reliable and can produce low-quality paper, every student can reassure themselves by contacting support and asking if there is a plagiarism checker on their website. Or whether the writers themselves run the written pieces through the plagiarism detector before submitting the work.

Are there any legit essay writing sites?

Homework-help writing companies cater to students’ academic needs by crafting papers according to their requirements and preferences. Academic Help has interacted with and tested a lot of services and products available online, so our team can state that there are definitely many legit paper writing websites for different students with various needs.

Judging by personal experience, the search is long and tough. But what we certainly recommend doing to everyone, is personal verification. We believe that it is only safe for students to check the service’s reputation, policies, and overall reputation online. Our team does the same but helps with our more in-depth approach, we can also double-check the platform’s attitude toward cheating and plagiarism, as well as their position on academic misconduct. This way, every learner can make a conscientious decision when looking for extra help on the Internet.

Can I trust online essay writers?

When students are alone on the Internet they feel less protected. The same happens when they try to search for a homework-help website online. Learners may doubt their choice and keep pondering: “is Academized a scam?”, or “is Grademinders legit?” , and “are there professional writers in CustomWritings?”. Without proper research and analysis, it is going to be a long road. First thing first, it is recommended to opt for legit essay writing websites that have many trusted users online. Additionally, every learner can browse through the feedback and reviews from former clients. While on that, we advise focusing the attention not only on the transparency policy but only on the level of service. Available plagiarism and grammar checkers, skilled and experienced writers, and high-quality papers in the outcome are the telltale signs that this essay writing website can be trusted.

Writer-customer communication

The cream of the crop when it comes to essay writing websites are the ones that let you chat directly with the writer. Why is it essential for students? For starters, it means learners can tell them exactly what they need, straight from the very beginning. No more Chinese whispers, just clear instructions so the writer knows exactly what the student is after.

Besides, coordinated customer-writer communication goes far beyond that. Sometimes, students are willing to chip in with ideas or ask how things are going with the assignment. Writers, on the other hand, would need to clarify some details about whether they have to add extra tweaks here and there.

Moreover, such an open online conversation helps to build trust. Meaning, writers always keep the students in the loop. So, when a service offers this kind of chat feature, it’s a good sign that this platform is serious about making sure its clients are satisfied with an outcome.

The main criteria for top-notch paper writing websites

Regardless of the aim, whether to find a service to get help with an essay, research paper, or thesis writing, there are many details to keep in mind. Undoubtedly the final goal is to find trustworthy and reliable sites whose experienced writers can provide a high-quality paper . Whether a student chooses to surf the Internet to search for proof or they decide to trust their gut feeling and try the service on their own, there are essential moments to consider.

Paper quality

The fundamental part of our experiment is the quality of the final paper. There are numerous reasons why learners want and need to seek assistance in writing their essays. Therefore, they have to keep in mind that if they set out to find an essay writing company that produces exceptional papers, the search can be a long one. As practice shows, there are enough homework-help services available online, many of which provide substandard outcomes, and some fail to address your specific subject matter requirements. Moreover, others tend to have fishy rules and policies that are deliberately deceiving students.

When the final decision is made, and learners are waiting to receive the final paper, we advise focusing their attention on the following things. A satisfactory written piece that follows the American university standards should tick the following boxes, such as a wide range of language aspects, namely grammar, spelling, and word choice. Besides, the reasoning, logic, integrity, and objectivity of the written piece are also subject to detailed verification. If all the aspects are taken into account and the final result follows the initial instructions this shows that the chosen service does put in a lot of work to show outstanding results.

Revisions are a necessary aspect of every reliable essay writing website. While students can provide enough vital information and detailed instructions on the final paper, and writers can produce high-level work, still the possibility to polish the final result should be available. More reliable platforms offer revisions free of charge. Say, a writer misunderstands the introductions or does not cover a certain aspect of the paper or the student is not satisfied with certain details and asks to refine some aspects. The bottom line is that it is natural to ask for a revision since you are already paying for a quality service . However, please note that if you do choose to request a revision there are individual rules on essay writing websites. Meaning, the writer cannot improve the paper in split seconds but propose an extended deadline for enhancing the final result. With that said students have to bear in mind that there can be some bumps on the road so it is better to have some time to spare in case revisions are needed to achieve the desired outcome. It is important to understand that the process of improving the paper may require some time. Hence, having extra time available is beneficial to ensure a smooth revision process.

Pricing and discounts

The best paper writing site is not only the one that writes high-quality pieces but also the most budget-friendly. This ratio is hard to reach, yet possible. So, the next essential feature that all learners should keep an eye on is pricing. Many who seek assistance in any form or shape want to find something on the more affordable end since students are not ready to splurge on more extra things. But there is one thing to consider: no matter how hard you want to save, different papers with different urgency deadlines will have different pricing . Imagine a scenario where a student completely forgets about a deadline given by their professor. They suddenly realize they need a two-page essay written, and they only have three to four hours to do it. They don’t want to risk failing the class due to this oversight. Since there is an urgency factor, many platforms would ask for a higher price for all the hassle.

However, many essay writing websites try to be flexible and customer-oriented. That’s why learners can always take advantage of using the platform’s bonuses, order coupons, loyalty programs, and referral schemes. These can help students save money and indicate that the service values its customers.

Payment options

In today’s digital age, providing a variety of secure payment options is crucial for any online business, including essay writing websites. Users should have the freedom to choose a payment method that they’re most comfortable with. While plenty of transaction options like credit or debit cards, bank transfers, or digital wallets such as PayPal or Apple Pay are usually offered, having these options is just part of the story.

What’s equally, if not more important, is how safe your money is during these transactions. Students have to be certain that these essay writing platforms are taking every precaution to safeguard their financial details from any potential risks. Top-rated essay-writing companies invest in secure payment gateways that protect users’ financial information from potential online threats. Such services use encryption technology to securely process transactions and keep sensitive data safe.

Moreover, it’s worth checking if the website has a clear and fair payment policy, so that questions like “ is 123helpme legit in payments?”, or “is Paper Coach a fraud?” do not worry you. We always recommend looking for details on refunds, or possible additional charges, and how the service handles disputes about payments. Knowing these details can help avoid any unpleasant surprises down the line.

Available services

The scope of available services is an essential element to consider when choosing an essay writing website. Students who seek a helping hand come from various educational backgrounds. Obviously, they require assistance with different task types. Starting from basic high school essays to more complex university-level research papers and dissertations. Moreover, services should also include different types of writing such as argumentative essays, narrative essays, descriptive essays, and expository essays. Furthermore, they should be able to handle specific tasks like admission essays, scholarship essays, or term papers, along with proofreading and editing services.

The ability of a service to cover a wide array of subjects is another important factor. Additionally, the service should have qualified writers across different fields of study. This ensures that no matter the topic, the service can provide an expert to handle your specific needs. Not only does it provide a peace of mind to the students but shows that the service can be trusted to handle different types of work.

But a cry for help from students does not stop there. Especially, international students require more support in this situation. While for some studying in a foreign language is no trouble at all and they can cope with homework on their own. Others, on the other hand, experience an array of mixed feelings and cannot go about starting to write an essay not in their mother tongue to meet the expectations of their higher education establishment. Therefore, the availability of writers with different writing styles and skills is especially beneficial to such students.

A truly top-rated service would extend its support beyond just writing essays. Some homework-help platforms offer additional resources and guidance to aid students improve their language proficiency and writing skills. For instance, this could include providing language enhancement tools, offering one-on-one sessions with their expert writers, or providing feedback and suggestions to help students improve their writing style.

Customer support

More often than not, service is the key to a successful customer’s journey. It is, indeed, to reassure that learners are not dealing with their troubles alone and can always contact experts who have answers to their burning questions. With this regard, the support team should always show stellar results when it comes to assistance. First and foremost, all learners appreciate the availability. The round-the-clock helping team that is accessible through social media messengers, as well as the site messenger, ensures that all queries and concerns are addressed promptly, regardless of the time zone and time of the day.

Professional essay writing websites usually have well-trained customer support teams that can help resolve issues ranging from payment problems to inquiries about the services offered. They should also assist in tracking the progress of your orders and facilitate communication with your assigned writer.

The speed and quality of response are also crucial. Usually, students expect to receive speedy answers with clear and comprehensive instructions. Not only does the support aid in resolving issues but also contributes to a smoother, more satisfying customer experience.

Service’s Reputation

The reputation of the essay writing website is another vital factor to consider. The service’s reputation is a mix of timely high-quality work delivery and excellent customer service. A good reputation is usually built over time, so consider how long the service has been in operation. It never hurts to emphasize that checking reviews and testimonials from previous customers is a must. Such a practice can give you a clear idea of the quality of work the service provides.

A reputable service will be transparent about its policies and operations. It will have clear terms and conditions, a solid privacy policy to protect your personal information, and a transparent pricing structure with no hidden costs.

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sometimes the APA citations are not correct

4 stars = I like it, but don't love it

Scribbr's citation generator is an awesome, free tool. I love that it's free. It is modestly accurate on picking up the correct source details, but I usually need to edit at least one citation detail after entering the source's link (translation: the details that the citation generator picks up is not 100% accurate). I always proof-read and revise the citation details, as needed, before using one of Scribbr's auto-generated citations. Regardless, once details are correct, Scribbr's tool is an excellent way to form correct citations and references. I will always recommend and use Scribbr (I've used it for at least three years now).

This has saved my academic rear-end in…

This has saved my academic rear-end in so many ways, but more importantly the time saved when writing papers for school is invaluable.

perfect for citing papers

open access and easy

You'd be silly not to

I have been using scribbr for the last year and I recommend this website to everyone I know. As a university student this has changed the game. The integration with AI and the shortcuts to adding sources to the reference list is so helpful and efficient. Very rarely do I have to edit the reference it has generated (I still double check it is). So easy to learn AND ITS FREE

It is a great help and I like this one

It is a great help and I like this one. Though it does not do everything I need, I still like its simplicity.

Thank you for a complete job and good…

Thank you for a complete job and good review

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Personalized Writing Help When You Need it

Unintentional plagiarism, grammar mistakes, and uncited sources  can turn what you thought was a good paper into a poor one. When you’re writing a paper the last thing you want is for your message to get lost due to incorrect punctuation or confusing sentence structure. You know that the great ideas in your head would make for a standout paper, if only you could get them written clearly on the page. If this struggle sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

Great ideas may be an essential part of high-quality writing, but they’re not the only component. Excellent papers and essays clearly express strong ideas with good grammar, proper punctuation, spot-on spelling, and thorough, careful citations. While this may sound like a lot, your teachers and professors are grading you on your skills as both a writer and a researcher, which means your assignments will require an ethical and attentive approach. Luckily, there is no shortage of available tools to help you along your way.

You could use a plagiarism checker free, though, these tools often lack grammatical support. Given the high stakes and rigorous requirements, the aid of a plagiarism checker without the needed support of a grammar checker could mean the difference between an “A” paper and a “C” or even “D” paper.

Thankfully, the EasyBib Plus plagiarism tool provides all-in-one support to cover all your bases. Our premium essay checker is convenient, easy to use, and includes access to a grammar and spell checker, plus a plagiarism checker. With a single scan, you’ll receive personalized feedback to help identify potentially missing citations and help improve your sentence structure, punctuation, grammar, and more.

Not sure if that noun is spelled correctly, or if the preposition at the end of your sentence is grammatically correct? The EasyBib Plus plagiarism tool is your one-stop shop to help check plagiarism, get grammatical suggestions, correct spelling and punctuation errors, and help create polished papers you can be proud to turn in. And, we haven’t told you the best part yet: you can try our tool free and scan your work for grammar suggestions right now!

Access all the tools today!

A Grammar Check for Peace of Mind

You know that grammar plays a significant role in your assignments. Not only does it factor into your overall grade, but without clear and precise language, your ideas can lose their impact or might even be misunderstood entirely. Still, with so many different parts of speech and rules to learn and apply, it’s not uncommon to get them mixed up and find yourself questioning your knowledge now and again:

Can you use an adverb to modify a noun? (No. You need an adjective for that.)

Well, can you use it to modify a pronoun ? (Still no.)

What do they modify, then? (Almost everything else. Fun, right?)

Ugh. (That was an interjection .)

Does this have to be so difficult? (Nope!)

Scanning your paper with the EasyBib Plus writing tool delivers more than the basic punctuation and spell check functions that come standard in word processing programs. You’ll receive immediate, targeted feedback that can help improve the sentence structure and style of your writing. Not only can this help ensure that you don’t lose points off your grade for grammatical errors such as mismatched verb tense, but it can also help to clarify your meaning and strengthen your arguments by eliminating confusing punctuation and run-on sentences that confuse readers.

Reviewing your work to correct errors and refine the flow of your writing is a critical part of the revision process for novices and novelists alike. Even the most conscientious of wordsmiths might make mistakes, such as using a conjunctive adverb in place of a coordinating conjunction or pairing a plural determiner with an uncountable word. They likely appreciate a subscription-based or free grammar check as much as a beginning writer. That’s why the EasyBib Plus writing tool is designed for all writers, from students who are still learning the fundamentals to published professionals who get paid by the word.

The EasyBib Plus writing tool provides quick, targeted feedback that you can use to help improve your writing immediately. Also, our free resource library is available 24/7, just like the rest of our tools, to help you brush up on the areas that challenge you the most (Conjunctive what? Uncountable who?) That means you can continue to sharpen your skills and improve your writing over time, which will help make finishing your next project easier.

Ready to give your paper a boost? Sign up for EasyBib Plus or scan a paper right now for a free spell check—it’s easy!Just upload or copy and paste your paper to the online grammar check tool and, in a matter of seconds, you’ll be able to receive up to 5 feedback cards so you can begin polishing your draft.

To learn more about proofreading tools, you can find more info here. Or, for more tips on grammar, punctuation, and style, check out this useful reference .

Why is Grammar So Important, Anyway?

Why is grammar important? As long as others know what you mean, does it really matter if you use proper grammar? These are age-old questions, but the answers remain unchanged. Grammar is important for many reasons:

Communication:  Communication is about more than merely listening and talking. We communicate in myriad ways: with our voices, our mannerisms, our facial expressions, our actions, and frequently, our written words. Written communication is just as important as all the other ways we broadcast our thoughts and feelings. Unlike our other communication methods, though, written communication leaves a record. While most of us relax our style when talking to or texting friends, the fact remains that more formal venues require a more formal tone. Proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation are a necessary element of professional and academic writing, so running your work through a spelling and grammar check before you submit it is an absolute must.

Clarity:  Expressing your thoughts, ideas, and opinions is an uphill battle when you communicate them with less-than-stellar punctuation, spelling, and grammar. A missing or misplaced comma, for example, can entirely change your meaning:

• Call me Ishmael = My name is Ishmael.
• Call me, Ishmael = I want Ishmael to call me.

Spelling errors can result in similarly muddled meaning:

• Her shoes perfectly complemented her dress. = Her shoes and dress go well together.
• Her shoes perfectly complimented her dress. = Her shoes can both speak and engage in flattery.

Grammar deficiencies such as a dangling modifier yield similarly confusing results:

• I saw the girl’s purple backpack in the library. = The purple backpack belonging to the girl is in the library; I saw it.
• I saw the purple girl’s backpack in the library. = You know the girl who mysteriously turned purple? I saw her backpack in the library. This week has not been easy on her.

Credibility: Establishing your credibility is critical whether you’re writing for school or business. Proving that you can reliably communicate using proper grammar is essential to establishing and maintaining the trust of your teachers, professors, readers, customers, and colleagues.

To learn even more about the importance of English grammar in writing, check here .

What Happens After I Upload My Paper?

Once you upload a paper, the EasyBib Plus grammar checker scans your text and highlights grammar issues within your document so you can see it in context. For users running a grammar check and spell check using the grammar check free tool, up to the first 5 issues are shown. For subscription subscribers, all of the areas that require your review will be highlighted once the scan is complete.

No matter which version of the tool you’re using, your feedback will include detailed explanations so you can understand why the text was flagged. Other highlighted areas will include examples of how the issues can be fixed. Some will include a detailed explanation as to why the issue was flagged. This personalized feedback allows you to make an educated decision about whether to edit your text or dismiss the suggestion, so you’re always in control of your final draft.

Subscription users also have the plagiarism checker at their disposal when scanning their papers for style and grammar suggestions. Just as with our other writing tools, when you use the tool to check plagiarism, changes are never made without your review, so you are always in the driver’s seat. You can review each highlighted area as well as the sources of matching text and will always be given a choice to either accept or ignore both citation and grammar suggestions.

Whether you are a student or a professional, the EasyBib Plus tools are powerful allies that can help you improve your paper, establish credibility as a writer, and maintain an ethical writing process.

Try our checker free for 3 days to see what you think*. Trust us; you’ll wonder how you got along so far without it!

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Check for Unintentional Plagiarism

Persistent use of the best grammar checker and spell checker you can find will help to shape up the style and substance of your composition. However, to ensure the integrity of your work and root out unintentional instances of academic dishonesty, you’ll also need to incorporate a subscription-based or free plagiarism checker for students.

The ability to scan your paper and check plagiarism and grammar before submitting your work is an invaluable tool for students. It’s so valuable, in fact, that students are not the only ones who consistently use this type of software.

Many teachers and professors use a service to ensure that student papers are original and include properly formatted and sourced citations for all reference materials. For some, this may be a consistent element of their grading process, while others may utilize one only when they feel there is a reason to do so.

What Exactly Does a Plagiarism Checker Do?

If you’ve used an online plagiarism checker before, you may be familiar with the process that these tools employ. For those who have never used one, it can be helpful to understand how these tools work and what you should expect as a result of using one.

The most basic free tools will scan your paper and provide you with a percentage that indicates how much of your work is original. This feature can be useful to a point, as some instructors and institutions set a percentage for the amount of similar text that is considered acceptable. This policy does not mean that they are lenient about academic dishonesty but, instead, that they recognize that similar or even matching word choice is not always an indicator of copying.

However, some schools do not tolerate any form of incremental plagiarism, period. In these institutions, “check paper for plagiarism” is likely a standard action when grading all papers.

With a free plagiarism checker, the percentage of word-for-word plagiarism in your text may be the only feedback you receive. Moreover, some of these providers may wade in unethical waters, and offer essay writing services in conjunction with their checking services. This is why many students and teachers prefer subscription-based checkers that focus on integrity, such as the EasyBib writing tools.

With our premium tools, you get more than just supporting proof that your paper is original and in your own words. Your writing is scanned for potentially matching text and areas that needs your attention is highlighted. We’ll provide you with the source of the matching text so you can review it and decide how to proceed. If you agree that a citation is needed, our citation tools and resources will provide you with the information you need to help format and insert the new sources in your text as well as your works cited page.

How Does the EasyBib Plus Online Plagiarism Checker Work?

The EasyBib Plus writing tool provides an all-in-one spell check, grammar review, and plagiarism checker that not only helps you with the paper you’re writing now but enables you to gain new knowledge and improve your writing for the future, too.

Our essay checker searches online for phrases, sentences, or passages that are similar to those in your paper. If it returns matching text, this may indicate that you have passages that are missing citations.

Just as with many checkers, our tool will tell you how many instances of matching text it finds in your paper. Our plagiarism tool is designed to do more than most free tools, however.

When a portion of your paper is flagged for review, we provide you with the source that it matches. As with our online spell check tool, you have the power to review each area and choose how to proceed. If you decide to cite the flagged text, you can review the suggested source and access our citation tools to help create a proper citation and start building a bibliography for your paper. Or, you may determine that no citation is needed, in which case it’s simple to dismiss the suggestion and continue to the next section.

If you’re unsure about how to proceed, our library of resources can help you learn more and make an educated decision. In this way, you gain more than just the ability to correct your work; over time, you can learn how to avoid plagiarism altogether.

Reasons Your Teacher May Run Your Paper Through a Plagiarism Detector

As stated previously, your teachers and professors grade papers with a fixed process that includes “check paper for plagiarism” as a standard, across-the-board action. Others may check for plagiarism only when they feel there is cause to do so. There are a few red flags that may stand out to them while reviewing a paper that would lead to their running a plagiarism check, including:

Style/Voice:  Most teachers are familiar with the style and voice that you use in your writing. While most will hope that the feedback they provide when grading your work will help you to improve problem areas over time, a paper or essay that has a dramatically different style or voice than the work you’ve previously submitted can be a red flag.

Inconsistency:  Changes in the font, font size, formality, formatting, and more may indicate that portions of a paper have been copied and pasted. If these inconsistent passages are not presented as quotations or don’t include citations, this may further indicate to your teacher that there’s plagiarism in the paper.

Old References:  Part of a well-researched paper is verifying the legitimacy and relevance of your sources. While some older references may be acceptable depending on the topic, if all of your sources are outdated, it may lead your teacher to believe that you’ve recycled your own work or someone else’s.

Looking for a checker to try? With EasyBib Plus you get unlimited checks to give you peace of mind when turning in your papers!

What is Plagiarism?

If you’re looking for a free online plagiarism checker , you’re already aware that it’s not something you want to be found in your papers. However, you may still be wondering: what does plagiarism mean? It’s a reasonable question and one that merits exploring. After all, some of the actions and circumstances that fall within the plagiarism definition come as a surprise to those who only learn that they’ve committed them after it’s too late.

So what is plagiarism? To define plagiarism in the most basic sense, you might say that it is taking someone else’s ideas and words and passing them off as your own.

If your goal is avoiding plagiarism entirely, you’ll need to go beyond the basics to thoroughly define plagiarism, recognize it, and keep clear of it. Some examples of plagiarism that students find surprising include forgotten citations, poor paraphrasing, and re-submitting your own work in whole or in part for more than one assignment. This useful article provides more help in recognizing and understanding the different forms that academic dishonesty can take.

Of course, using your own words and ideas does not count as plagiarism, nor does using common knowledge . Basically, common knowledge is information that is well known by the average person. Examples of common knowledge:

• there are 12 months in a year
• the freezing point of Celsius is zero degrees
• Socrates was a Greek philosopher

So should you only include your original thoughts and common knowledge in your papers? Of course not! Research-based assignments are meant to demonstrate your skills as a researcher, after all, as well as your ability to build upon the work of others to formulate new ideas. To avoid accidentally committing an act that falls within the plagiarism definition when you’re using another person’s words or ideas, though, you need to give them proper credit. This means you’ll need to clearly identify direct quotations or properly paraphrase them when including them in your paper.

Regardless of your approach, you’ll also need to cite your sources according to the style your professor specifies. Generally, you will use MLA format for the arts and humanities and APA format for the sciences, but it’s always best to check with your instructor when you’re unsure.

If you know what style to use but still aren’t sure how to create your citations, don’t fret! Our library of resources includes free guides to help you learn about various styles so you can properly structure and place them. And our premium tools not only help you check grammar, spelling, and originality in your papers, but subscribers also enjoy access to our citation creation tools!

What are the Different Types of Plagiarism?

In addition to the question “what is plagiarism,” you may also be wondering, “why do students plagiarize?” While some students do intentionally plagiarize because they believe they can pass off someone else’s work as their own to avoid spending time on their assignments, many others do so accidentally. They may not understand how broad the plagiarism definition is or they haven’t learned how to research and cite their sources properly. That is why it is vital to recognize plagiarism in all of its forms if you wish to ensure the integrity of your work.

Examples of plagiarism & How to prevent it

Direct plagiarism:

Intentionally copying another person’s work without including a citation that gives credit to the source. When most students are asked to identify potential plagiarism examples and behaviors, this direct and deliberate act is what they think of first.

• Prevention: If you use an idea or quote from another source, cite it in the text. Make it clear that it was not your own words. 

Incremental plagiarism:

Copying parts of another person’s work, such as phrases, sentences, or paragraphs without crediting the source. When deciding which tools to use to check a paper for plagiarism , instructors often seek out those that will identify incremental forms as well as instances of direct copying and similar phrasing.

• Prevention : Decide to either directly quote the phrases or sentences you want to use, or write a good paraphrase. In both cases, be sure to add a citation. Using a plagiarism checker could also help you identify problematic passages.

Self-plagiarism:

Academic self-plagiarism occurs when a student submits the same paper or parts of a paper for more than one assignment. When your instructors are grading your papers, they’re assessing your research and writing skills in the present. When you submit work that you completed in the past, they are both unable to evaluate your current skills and unaware that you haven’t completed the assignment.

• Prevention: Write a new paper for each assignment you’re assigned. If you feel strongly that your past work could enhance your new paper, speak to your instructor and ask for permission first.

Misleading citations:

Including a citation for a quote or idea that misrepresents the source material. This can occur if a student does not understand the reference they are citing; if a student includes a citation for a disreputable source; or the source material simply does not align with the idea or argument that the student has attributed to it.

• Prevention: Carefully review your assignment to understand it. As you research, take the time to evaluate each source notes . Remember, it’s better to have quality citations over an abundance of citations.

Invented sources:

If a reference in a student’s bibliography is found not to exist, it is considered an invented source. This may occur if a student couldn’t find a reputable source to back their argument, or if they needed to include additional references to meet the requirements of the assignment and chose to take an unethical shortcut rather than completing the required amount of research. No matter the reason, this behavior ultimately hurts them in the long run. Not only will they fail to gain the experience they need to conduct research in the future properly, but they’ll also experience significant consequences if they’re caught.

• Prevention: Set aside time to do proper research so you can find enough sources. Start creating a list of sources as you’re researching and take good notes. This will help you keep track of your sources so none are forgotten. If you do end up forgetting where a quote came from, a paper checker could help you pinpoint the original source. 

Patchwriting/Spinning:

Patchwriting is often confused with paraphrasing, but there’s a significant difference. When you paraphrase, you demonstrate that you understand the topic well enough to restate it in your own words. When you patchwrite or spin, it is more akin to a word-swapping game; there’s no need to understand the subject, merely to have access to a thesaurus so you can substitute enough synonyms to mask the source material. This can be intentional, but it may also be a result of having a poor understanding of how to paraphrase.

• Prevention: Using your own words, write down the key points of the phrase or idea, and put them together in a sentence. Be sure to include a citation as well. 

A good way to test if you’re patchwriting or paraphrasing is to remove your sources from view. If you can write about what you’ve read without looking at the source material, you likely understand it well enough to paraphrase it. If you have to review the source material with each new sentence or consult a thesaurus while writing about it (except when you’re adding direct quotations), you may be spinning your sources instead of paraphrasing them.

Academic Integrity Policies and Statements

If you’re still uncertain about what counts as plagiarism, look for your school’s/ organization’s policies on academic integrity and plagiarism. The policies of academic institutions usually cover what is considered plagiarism, the consequences of committing it, and how to avoid it. One great example is Purdue University’s Academic Integrity statement .

What are the Consequences of Plagiarism?

No matter the setting, plagiarism is not taken lightly, and the consequences can be significant. For a good reason, too! Whether in an academic or professional setting, the plagiarism consequences reflect the seriousness of the act, which is ultimately a form of theft that hurts everyone involved.

Just as with the theft of a tangible object, there can be legal punishments for plagiarism. It is, after all, a form of copyright infringement in many instances. A quick search for plagiarism articles will reveal that professional instances of intellectual theft have resulted in civil lawsuits and can even be criminally prosecuted under rare circumstances. In addition to the possible legal consequences, professionals may lose their jobs or have to start over in a new field after their acts of fraud are uncovered.

As a student, you’re likely to wonder what happens if you plagiarize in college or high school. While there will almost always be consequences for this behavior, there is no one-size-fits-all plagiarism sentence. Depending on the circumstances, academic dishonesty could result in outcomes such as:

• You might get a zero for the assignment in which the infringement occurred.
• You may receive a failing grade for the class. If it is a required course, this could leave you without enough credits to move on to the next level until you can repeat it and, in some instances, postpone graduation.
• You may be expelled from your school or university.

The academic dishonesty may be noted on your transcript, which can lead to you not getting into your preferred college, graduate school, or Ph.D. program in the future.

Nobody wants to be known as a fraud or to have a reputation for dishonesty follow them through their career. And, given the consequences that can extend beyond just their reputation, it’s no wonder that professional and academic writers who wish to avoid them take the time to understand the complete definition of plagiarism and run their work through a plagiarism checker before sending it out into the world.

Even the vigilant can fall prey to inferior tools, unfortunately. Before selecting a plagiarism checker, you should understand how they work and what they can (and cannot) detect.

How We Check for Plagiarism

When exploring how to check for plagiarism, most students and professionals conclude that including a checking tool in their revision process is not only helpful but necessary. When you consider the Herculean task of checking each line of your paper against the text of each of your resources, the benefits of a checker are clear. Moreover, this manual approach would only alert you to matching text in the sources you’re aware of, after all, and leaves the sources you haven’t reviewed untouched.

But, hang on. Why would sources you haven’t reviewed factor into your review? The answer to this lies in the plagiarism definition you learned above. What is plagiarism? It’s presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, intentionally or otherwise. It is not uncommon to uncover an idea while you’re researching a topic and later misremember it as your own. This might even occur years after you originally came across it.

You might wonder: how can plagiarism be avoided if you have to account for the source of every thought you include in your work? A few exceptions minimize the scope of this. Common knowledge about your topic does not need to be supported by a citation, nor does knowledge that you gained through your personal experience. Using a subscription-based or free plagiarism checker will help you locate any passages that may fall into these categories so you can review them and decide for yourself whether a citation is needed.

EasyBib Plus writing tools provide easy, convenient, and reliable support to help you find potentially missed citations and can help you improve your paper into a high-quality paper with integrity. Simply upload your paper, select the checker, then sit back and relax as the site scans your document. In mere moments, we’ll search the web for passages of similar text and highlight duplicate content for your review.

Regardless of the tools you use to help you revise and polish your work, it’s ultimately your responsibility to ensure that you’re writing and submitting ethical work. That’s why our tools go beyond the basics and require your participation. The tool never automatically makes changes to your paper, but only flags sections that may need your attention and provides you with the matching source so you can to make an educated decision.

If you find that a citation is needed, our citation tools can help you create properly formatted citations and develop a complete bibliography. And, if you review the passage and determine that the match is coincidental, you can dismiss the alert and move on to the next.

Seamless Citation Creation

Professional writers and students alike can find creating citations incredibly confusing. Nevertheless, they are an integral part of a well-written and researched paper and a requirement in almost all academic settings. But, have you ever wondered why they are so important? Citations really do have a purpose—other than driving us crazy— that make it necessary always to cite our sources.

We cite our sources for a few important reasons:

We need to give credit where credit is due. When you use a quote from someone else’s work, you need to give credit for using their words and ideas. Research is often based on the works and ideas of others. However, to include the words and ideas of another without giving them proper credit is to plagiarize, even if the act was unintentional.

In addition, showing that you’ve done proper research by including in text & parenthetical citations and a comprehensive list of sources to back up your arguments gives your work a layer of credibility that can help you earn the trust of your reader or teacher.

Readers can find the sources you used.  When you’re writing high school or undergraduate papers, your only readers may be your instructors and peers. However, including citations at every level of writing helps to ensure that anyone who reads your work can access your sources to check their accuracy, learn more about your topic, and further their own research.

Sources can take your research and learning to the next level, too. When you are conducting research on a topic, checking the works cited or annotated bibliographies prepared by your sources can lead you down new avenues in your research to further develop your ideas and help you write your papers.

Correctly utilizing citations gives strength to your thoughts and opinions. Understanding the value of citations does not, unfortunately, make them any easier to create. We know how confusing it can be, but don’t throw in the towel on learning how to cite websites in MLA , create your APA citation website references, or format your works cited —this is where we come in!

While a free online plagiarism detector may tell you how much of your work is unoriginal and may even identify the passages that meet their plagiarize definition, a premium EasyBib Plus plagiarism checker account also gives you access to our powerful citation resources and generator so you can:

Scan your papers with the plagiarism tool to check for plagiarism-free work before you submit.

Review flagged passages to determine if they meet the plagiarism definition and create unlimited citations in APA format and MLA format for anything fitting the plagiarism meaning. Need more styles ? Check out our regular citation generator for thousands of choices and free resources to help you learn how to create an APA parenthetical citation , APA book citation , APA works cited , and so much more!

Build a full bibliography for your paper right along with your parenthetical or in-text citations, which can save you hours of work along the way compared to manually creating and formatting them.

How Else Do We Help You Improve Your Paper?

The EasyBib Plus plagiarism detector helps you check your content or paper for text that may be missing a citation—which may fall within the definition of plagiarism—to help ensure you don’t accidentally plagiarize. It also includes grammar check and spelling check tools to help identify errors and suggest grammatical tweaks that could help to elevate the level of your writing.

Running a plagiarism check couldn’t be easier! Just upload your paper to the online proofreader, and in a few moments we’ll have your writing and citing suggestions. And, there’s no need to worry about your paper after it’s been scanned.

Run a Grammar and Spell Check for Free!

There’s no denying that your schoolwork can be challenging at times, and your assignments can lead to some late nights even when you’ve started them early. The last thing you want is to submit assignments that don’t reflect your best effort, but it can occasionally be quite the juggling act to get everything done on time.

Why not let our plagiarism checker free up space on your calendar by helping you revise your papers quickly and efficiently? The EasyBib Plus paper checker is your one-stop shop to check for plagiarism, create citations, spot spelling mistakes, and receive feedback on your grammar and style.

When you proofread and do a manual spelling check on work that you’ve written, you’re more likely to overlook mistakes. This is even more likely if you’re pressed for time or trying to complete several different assignments at once. There are tricks to help minimize this, such as reading your work aloud to identify poor grammar or reading each sentence backward to find spelling errors. When time is of the essence, though, these solutions aren’t the most convenient or useful options. That’s why many students seek the assistance of online tools that will run a grammar and plagiarism check on their work.

Are you asking yourself, “ How do I check my grammar online ?” We’ve got the perfect checker for you! Our advanced tools help you find and correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. Our targeted feedback and free writing and citing resources help you learn as you go to improve your writing over time.

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Published February 3, 2019. Updated April 9, 2020.

Written and edited by Michele Kirschenbaum and Melissa DeVrieze Meyer . Michele is a school library media specialist and the in-house librarian at EasyBib. You can find her here on Twitter. Melissa is a professional writer and editor based in New Jersey. She writes for academic brands and independent publishers about writing, grammar, and literature, and creates study and curriculum materials for ESL learners. You can find her on Twitter .

Visit our EasyBib Twitter feed to discover more citing tips, fun grammar facts, and the latest product updates.

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• CAREER GUIDE
• 04 September 2024

Guide, don’t hide: reprogramming learning in the wake of AI

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Monique Brouillette is a science journalist in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Christiane Reves, who lectures in German, helped to develop an AI program called Language Buddy that simulates human conversation. Credit: Meghan Finnerty, Arizona State University

In the early days of generative artificial intelligence (AI), Ethan Mollick told his students to use it freely as long as they disclosed it. According to Mollick, a specialist in innovation and entrepreneurship at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, “it worked great when ChatGPT-3.5 was the best model out there”. The program was good, but did not replace students’ input and they still had to edit and tweak its responses to earn a high grade in Mollick’s course. Things changed with the release of ChatGPT-4, the latest version of the chatbot developed by the US tech firm OpenAI. The new AI was noticeably smarter, and it became much harder to distinguish its output from that of a person’s. Suddenly, the program was outperforming students in Mollick’s classes and he knew he had to rethink his approach.

Nature Career Guide: Faculty

Today, academia faces a dilemma as AI reshapes the world beyond the campus walls: embrace the technology or risk being left in the dust. However, as versions of the software become more robust, so does the risk of cheating. According to a 2023 -survey, roughly 50% of students over the age of 18 have admitted to using ChatGPT for an at-home test or quiz or to write an essay (see go.nature.com/4fpwrtv ).

Educators today have two options, says Mollick. The first is to treat AI as cheating and intensify conventional measures such as in-class writing assignments, essays and hands-on work to demonstrate students’ mastery of the material. “We solved this problem in math in the 1970s with calculators,” he says. “If cheating is the thing you are worried about, we can just double down on what’s always worked.” The second option, which he terms “transformation”, involves actively using AI as an educational tool.

Lesson logics

The transformative approach is gaining traction on campuses. Innovative educators in various fields, including computer science, literature, business and the arts, are now exploring how AI can enhance learning experiences and prepare students for a technology-driven future. One area in which AI tools have shown particular promise is languages.

“One of the main things you need to learn languages is communication,” says Christiane Reves, who teaches German at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe. “‘You need to talk to people and have actual interactions.”

In 2024, Reves decided to build an AI tool to meet this need. Through a collaboration between ASU and OpenAI, she developed an AI program called Language Buddy that simulates human conversation. Students interact with the AI just as they would with a real partner — using it to practise everyday interactions, such as ordering a meal at a restaurant, in spoken German.

If the conversation is too advanced, the student can adjust its complexity. Reves offers the tool for her beginner-level German course. She says it helps students to sidestep the natural anxiety that comes with trying to talk in a foreign language, which is a barrier to people getting the practice they need. Overall, she has been pleased with its performance. “It’s not robotic; it doesn’t just repeat sentences, and it creates a conversation. So you never really know what the next sentence is, which is the natural way,” she says.

The arrival of ChatGPT-4 has made it harder to separate the tool’s output from a real person’s. Credit: Stanislav Kogiku/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty

Suguru Ishizaki, an English specialist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, uses AI tools to teach new ways of writing. He has spent his career studying the challenges of becoming an effective writer and has now developed a tool to aid the process. Ishizaki says the problem is that inexperienced writers spend too long trying to craft nicely written sentences, which slows the process of getting their ideas onto the page. By contrast, expert writers and authors spend most of their time thinking, planning and preparing their ideas before hammering out prose on the keyboard. The “cognitive load of sentence craft” creates a hindrance to novice writers, which is where AI can help.

David Kaufer, a colleague of Ishizaki’s at Carnegie Mellon, agrees: “In the early writing process, you shouldn’t be worried about polishing. You should be worried about prototyping your ideas. What you need is a quick scribe to get these things down.”

In 2024, Ishizaki and Kaufer released myProse , an AI-powered tool that helps students to focus on their big ideas while AI handles the mechanics, transforming a student’s notes into grammatically correct, smoothly written sentences. They added ‘guardrails’ to ensure that the only information used by the tool used to create prose is generated from students’ notes, and not from its training data, which is taken from the Internet.

Kaufer says that he doesn’t want AI getting in the way of student creativity. AI should be “an attention tool that simply allows the student to attend to the most important things”, he says — namely, the ideas. By letting myProse finesse the sentence structure and produce drafts “efficiently and professionally”, students have more room to nurture their ideas.

He adds that the course is offered to upper-level undergraduates who already have an understanding of sentence crafting and grammar. It is not meant to be a replacement for learning how to write or practising creative writing, and it will be geared towards technical and professional writing. “Our goal is to preserve English departments and writing instruction,” says Kaufer. “AI cannot get in the way of that, but at the same time it is here to stay.”

Changing minds

Despite the exuberance among early adopters of AI, there is still much resistance among faculty members and students. Lecturers need to stay up to date with AI’s new capabilities and adopt it in an iterative way to encourage familiarity with the technology while maintaining the educational experience.

In his classroom, Mollick focuses on assigning projects to challenge students beyond the current capabilities of AI. In one example, he asked students to do things that AI struggles to do, such as building and testing a board game. He also asks students to reflect on how they’ve used ChatGPT, and what they’ve learnt from it, to gauge their thinking process. In another class, he created a tool that simulates job-interview scenarios for his students to get practice. He requires them to turn in the transcript and write a reflection on the exercise. He also assigns oral presentations with question-and-answer sessions designed to assess students’ knowledge and communication skills.

David Malan gave his AI tool ‘guardrails’ to guide students without giving away too much. Credit: Leroy Zhang/CS50

The challenge, according to Mollick, is that the technology advances and adds new capabilities rapidly, and students are adopting it quickly. Educators cannot simply use AI as an add-on to their courses, he says. Instead, they will have to overhaul their curriculum regularly to keep up with the technology. “We will have to do what we do terribly as academics, which is coordinate and move quickly in teaching,” he says. He urges teachers to share and collaborate with each other to maintain up-to-date teaching tools.

David Malan, a computer scientist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, recognizes AI’s immense potential to boost productivity, but thinks it is too powerful for the university setting. In his introductory-level coding course that he uses at Harvard, Malan prohibits the use of general AI tools until the end of the course. Instead, he developed his own tool, which offers a more nuanced approach to AI integration in education.

“We set out to make ChatGPT less useful for students, in the sense of providing them with a specific chat tool that still answers their questions but does not provide them with outright answers to problems, or solutions to homework assignments,” says Malan.

To achieve this balance, Malan and his team applied what he calls “pedagogical guardrails” to the AI, designing his tool to nudge students towards the correct solutions without actually providing them. The tool acts like a tutor that is available 24 hours a day, he says, offering help when students get stuck. It allows students to highlight one or more lines of code and get explanations of its function. It also disables autocorrect and autoformat, but it advises students to improve their coding style in the manner of a grammar-correction function, flagging text that needs improvement. His favourite feature is that the AI answers students’ questions any time of day, any day of the week.

Future visions

For Vishal Rana, a business-management -specialist at the University of Doha for -Science and Technology in Qatar, the biggest challenge is the cheating mindset. Students are wary of AI tools because of concerns about academic misconduct. But Rana stresses that once students enter the workforce, prompting AI is a skill that the job market requires. He thinks that using the technology does not constitute plagiarism, and that the final product should be credited to the person who is prompting and knowing how to ask the right questions. “As an employer, I would rather hire somebody who could ask the right questions and increase productivity in a short time span,” he says.

Vishal Rana says all students will need to know how to prompt AI once they join a workplace. Credit: Vishal Rana

Last year, Rana had a vision of transforming the business-education classroom from a conventional lecture-based environment to one in which students and lecturers worked alongside AI as partners in hands-on projects. Students were required to tap into generative AI programs, such as ChatGPT and Claude (from tech firm Anthropic in San Francisco, California), for many aspects of product development; these included brainstorming, e-mail writing and pitching to investors. The AI created ideas in seconds that allowed students to step into the role of editor, sifting through possible options and finding a feasible one. “Our goal was to create a more dynamic and interactive learning experience that prepares students for the AI-driven future of work,” he says.

In a product-development course, Rana instructed his students to put their real-world skills to the test and conduct in-person interviews with potential clients and stakeholders. The students used AI to write e-mails and generate interview questions, but they were the ones who had to go out and talk to people face to face, which bolstered their social skills. He said that in this case, the AI was working “as a co-pilot in this experiential learning”.

Rana suggests that educators will have to adapt their assignments for use with AI and experiential learning in future. “We suggest to all our academic colleagues [that they] now bring an element of experiential learning into their assessments,” he says. “This will replace old-school report writing and essay writing.”

Malan is optimistic that AI will eventually become a one-to-one teaching assistant — perhaps especially for students who aren’t financially able to go to university. “As much as we are focused on the on-campus students, for us, what’s been especially exciting about AI is the potential impact on self-taught students who aren’t as resourced or as fortunate to live in a part of the world where there are educational resources and institutions,” he says.

“There are quite a few students, young and old, around the world who don’t have a friend, a family member or a sibling who knows more about the subject than they do. But, with AI, they will now have a virtual subject-matter expert by their side,” Malan says.

Nature 633 , S1-S3 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02837-0

This article is part of Nature Career Guide: Faculty , an editorially independent supplement. Advertisers have no influence over the content.

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