[Air-l] turnitin issue

[T. Kennedy]

I've been (trying) to follow this discussion concerning turnitin with
interest. I use turnitin in ALL the courses I teach - as Marj concisely put
it - as a tool to detect replicated text. 

Turnitin is not full proof - already pointed out; it picks up any replicated
text, which may include direct quotes from websites, journal articles etc -
but also if they put in their reference page and so forth - the percentage
of matching text can be misleading. It is up to the faculty and TA (etc) to
go through the report - check the original site of the text see what's going
on.

There have also been times when students have recycled papers from other
courses and when I've requested the original source, I am not able to get it
without permission of the instructor of that first course (sent via email).
This tells me that w/s/t intellectual property - not everyone can easily
access student papers even if they wanted to.

I think we are missing one of the larger issues here - WHY are so many
students plagiarising in their written submissions? (in fact, I also ask
them to post their written text of seminar presentations - and it
continually surprises me how many students just lift material from other
sources without acknowledgment in their presentations). And why do students
still feel it's ok to copy and paste copious amounts of text in their
papers? 

The argument:
"However, the assumption that students need to prove innocent (rather than
innocence unless otherwise proven) bothers me a great deal."
No one is assuming anything, as submitting a paper to turnitin is not a
finger-wagging session with accusations of guilt. If nothing else, I've used
this tool to show students how to cite properly and how to reword arguments
(and then cite) affectively. But let me say this - if we didn't have so many
students plagiarizing daily - then we certainly wouldn't need this program
would we? We certainly wouldn't have extensive notations in university
calendars and we certainly wouldn't have uni depts attaching notes to course
syllabi or noting plagiarism in them. 

(as an aside - does the existence of radar cameras to detect excessive
speeds by drivers on highways also presume that everyone is speeding and
should be ticketed, or is it a tool to catch those who do speed? Do I
contact the ministry of transportation and tell them to not use these
cameras because it's an infringement of my personal freedoms and assert that
not everyone speeds so why track me? I don't think so.)

We've moved beyond the core issue here and overlooked the key issue; the
amount of plagiarised student submissions is increasing steadily. In EVERY
one of my classes in the last six years I have had at least one student
(probably an average of 3 per class) plagiarise in their papers. To be
honest, I can only stomach so much of the "I didn't know I had to reference
that" story - despite the numerous handouts, links to writing centres and
in-class discussions I've had with students about how to cite properly,
what's considered plagiarism and so forth. Long before turnitin arrived, I
spent endless hours searching suspicious student text in search engines like
google (with results I might add). Would this be a considered unethical as
well?

As others have pointed out - universities are full of rules, regulations and
policies - and this is another one. If people are hesitant, then again -
there are other options that can be made available to the student - and I
think this is part of a larger pedagogical issue and how we feel we should
measure student performance and learning. But again, I am more interested in
why the prevalence of plagiarism in our classrooms. 

Tracy 

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Marj Kibby
Sent: March 9, 2007 2:46 AM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Re: [Air-l] turnitin issue

Turnitin is a tool. It can be used for good or for evil. :-)

Turnitin doesn't detect plagiarism. It locates text that matches text in
its database.

How we use that facility is up to us.

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
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