College students use social media to cheat

Social media and content sharing websites account for one-third of plagiarism among college students, and paper mills are far less popular than once thought, according to a report detailing the most common cheating methods in higher education.

iParadigms, creator of anti-plagiarism site Turnitin.com, released a report April 28 documenting where students are turning for research material. Educators submit their students’ research papers and assignments to Turnitin, which then compares the content to three information repositories filled with more than 14 billion current and archived web pages. The study shows that legitimate educational websites are also among students’ most heavily used Internet resources.