[Air-l] turnitin issue

Marj Kibby Marj.Kibby at newcastle.edu.au
Thu Mar 8 17:40:41 PST 2007


There is no assumption of guilt 

Students are required to submit to Turnitin to check that their referencing is accurate. In the same way that they are expected to use spelling and grammar checks.

Turnitin reports are not accessed by staff unless there is reasonable cause to suspect that the work is plagiarised, and Turnitin reports cannot be used as the sole evidence of plagiarism

Marj




Dr Marjorie Kibby, 
Senior Lecturer in Communication & Culture
Faculty of Education and Arts
The University of Newcastle,  Callaghan NSW 2308 Australia
Marj.Kibby at newcastle.edu.au
+61 2 49216604
>>> Rosanna Tarsiero <rosanna at gionnethics.com> 03/09/07 10:57 AM >>>
As a student myself (and online instructor), I never plagiarized a paper,
and I do know that there are persons that do.

However, the assumption that students need to prove innocent (rather than
innocence unless otherwise proven) bothers me a great deal.

I would refuse both submitting a paper to turnitin AND doing supplemental
work. In all honesty, I do hope that some student sooner or later ends up
suing colleges. Assuming people to be guilty unless otherwise proven
violates quite a number of human rights.

Rosanna Tarsiero
 
"Circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him."

--James Allen 

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Mark Warschauer
Sent: venerdì 9 marzo 2007 0.50
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] turnitin issue

I know of no precedent or case law, but this is an issue that is 
taken seriously here at UC Irvine. Students are usually given the 
permission to opt out of submitting their papers through 
Turnitin.com, but professors then require any students who opt out to 
complete one or more alternate assignments to demonstrate their 
papers were not plagiarized (and those alternatives can be quite 
onerous).  See examples at 
http://eee.uci.edu/faculty/ccopenha/39b-student/turnitin.students.htm

Mark Warschauer

>Dear AOIRers,
>
>A colleague teaching another course has come across an issue with an
>undergrad who refuses to hand in her term paper because the faculty
>member's course requires that all papers also be submitted to
>Turnitin.com.
>
>The student claims that this violates her own intellectual property
>because Turnitin reportedly keeps copies for future plagiarism searches.
>
>As a supposed ICT & society "expert," my colleague came to me for advice.
>My first thought was horsefeathers.
>
>However, I am wondering if there is any precedent or case law on this in
>Canada or the US. (EU would be too different, I think.)
>
>I am not interested in the ethics or the morality of Turnitin, but in how
>other situations have been resolved.
>
>Thanks,
>  Barry Wellman
>  _____________________________________________________________________
>
>   Barry Wellman   S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology   NetLab Director
>   Centre for Urban & Community Studies          University of Toronto
>   455 Spadina Avenue    Toronto Canada M5S 2G8    fax:+1-416-978-7162
>   wellman at chass.utoronto.ca  http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman
>         for fun: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php
>  _____________________________________________________________________
>
>
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