[Air-l] turnitin issue

[burkx006 at umn.edu]

On Mar 9 2007, James Whyte wrote:

> It occurs to me that requiring a student to agree to Turnitin as a 
> requirement for a course may be a "contract" made under duress and 
> therefore subject to challenge.

Legally, no, this is not duress. Simply witholding a desired benefit in a 
competitive marketplace will typically not be duress. The student can take 
a different class, or go to a different school, or choose a different 
career. There are enough alternatives, and no threat to necessities of 
life, that duress is not a credible claim.

That does not resolve the ethical question of coercion, as several people 
have pointed out. I am not certain that the analogy to requiring 
spellchecking works, since that sort of requriment seems to be part of 
pedagogy to teach students a skill, and Turnitin matching seems to be more 
of a policing function.

In that vein, I am not sure that I understand Marjorie's claim that 
Turnitin is useful for teaching referencing, since no one outside the 
company knows the matching algorithm -- the criteria for text comparison 
are unknown, so it is hard for me to see what the students would learn. 
Perhaps she could say more about that.

DLB

-- 
Dan L. Burk
Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly Professor
University of Minnesota Law School
229 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN  55455
**********************************
voice: 612-626-8726
fax: 612-625-2011
bits: burkx006 at umn.edu