Sometimes it is difficult to decide to decide if a piece of writing is the student's own work. More often, you do not have immediate access or no access at all to plagiarism detection software?
Typically, my students don't write very well to begin with ... so, if it's written too well, then that's a hint for me ...
Sudden changes in diction, more than one font, unnecessary hyperlinks, shifts in tense, outdated information, apparent quotes with quotation marks, incorrect citations or mixed citation styles, missing references, not really fitting the question, and getting a hit on a search engine using a sentence from the writing!
Typically, my students don't write very well to begin with ... so, if it's written too well, then that's a hint for me ...
ADDITIONALLY:
1. The submitted material contains only highly smooth, high-level writing of an English first language speaker. Yet, the writer mistakenly titles the first section.
2. The writer is e.g., from one country. Yet, the writer is writing about another as if the writer had always lived there.
3. All the sentences contain high level thoughts. Yet, every thought is uniformly prescriptive (directives and opinionated), without counter-arguments being presented.
4. There is sufficient un-cited text to warrant calling this an original contribution. Yet, none of the thoughts are supported by empirical evidence or by reference to any authority.
5. Phrases like “there is some evidence” are used. Yet, the evidence is missing.
6. There is a stated topic. Yet, there is no thesis or sustained argument, with sudden changes of tack as multiple sources are plagiarised.
7. There are flowery sentences. Yet, the sentences do not seem to connect naturally from one sentence to the next. (The writer writes: fact, fact, fact, with no transitional text.)
8. There are paragraphs. Yet, the paragraphing is arbitrary, with linked thoughts not being put in the same paragraph.
9. There is considerable text. Yet, there is no References Section.
If it is student writing, I can usually detect vocabulary and grammar that goes beyond the typical college student's ability. Most often I assign topics that are not easily plagiarized, because they focus on the student's own critical thinking.
I don't use plagiarism software. If I have a suspicion, I just select a sentence and Google it.
Note that some sites offer access to assignments written by students, probably obtained through illegal means. Such assignments often contain original/ authentic student errors and that makes it rather tricky to detect plagiarism.
Following Andrew's response, I find it fairly easy to spot. You get a sense after a while about what the authentic voice is for the student. As soon as I see suspect text I copy it & place it within " " & do a Google search. This is easy & often more reliable than the commercial tools. My university has integrated SafeAssign with Blackboard but I often find it makes errors.
Jon Mason ; Michael W. Marek ; Pritam Kumar Panda
; Ian Kennedy ; Daniel Doss ;Andrew Paul McKenzie Pegman for valuable insights. My argument on students plagiarising from sites which provide access to other students work which already contains some ungrammatical or messy work (and I am not making this up; it happened) is still valid. What say you?
When you suspect plagiarism, but cannot prove it, call a witness and the student to a meeting. Read out a suspect sentence to the student. Leave out a word, and ask the student to supply it. Ask the student to explain the sentence.
A good tactic suggested by Ian Kennedy . The student I dealt with denied all wrongdoing until I used double quotes to search for a particular sentence I suspected. I found the assignment plagiarised word for word including some errors from a student services website.
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