Dive Summary:
- Despite the courses holding no academic credit, several incidences of plagiarism have been reported in the free online courses offered by startup company Coursera, prompting one professor to post a "stop plagiarizing" plea to his 39,000 students.
- The Massive Open Online Courses use peer grading, and in recent weeks, students in at least three Coursera humanities courses have complained about plagiarized assignments by other students--at least one of which was lifted straight from Wikipedia.
- Daphne Koller, a Coursera co-founder and Stanford University professor, plans to look into how widespread the reports of plagiarism are, adding that officials would consider adding plagiarism detection software to the courses.
From the article:
Students taking free online courses offered by the startup company Coursera have reported dozens of incidents of plagiarism, even though the courses bear no academic credit. This week a professor leading one of the so-called Massive Open Online Courses posted a plea to his 39,000 students to stop plagiarizing, and Coursera's leaders say they will review the issue and consider adding plagiarism-detection software in the future. ...