[Air-l] turnitin issue

Fri Mar 9 09:50:20 PST 2007

It seems likely that plagiarism will continue to increase. We are 
moving toward a culture of reusable information: mashups, anamutations, 
machinima, and the like. The ethos is one of reworking existing 
materials.

These developments feel to me like a variation on the media 
producer-consumer relationship we have been locked into for a long 
time. The difference is that people reshape materials to a degree 
instead of consuming perfectly passively. But someone still has to 
produce the original materials. There are thus the creative producers 
(a small number of people) and the larger group of scavenging consumers 
if you think of this negatively, or bricoleurs if you think of it 
positively.

The main form of plagiarism I have encountered is students reusing 
their own work for more than one class. It's almost impossible to guard 
against this. Sometimes they even ask if they can do this -- the 
culture of reusability.

Now if someone can please write a paper on the evolution of departments 
of Informatics that I can reuse I would be most grateful.

Bonnie A. Nardi
School of Information and Computer Sciences
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-3440
(949) 824-6534
www.artifex.org/~bonnie/

On Mar 9, 2007, at 9:25 AM, T. Kennedy wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at:
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>
> _______________________________________________
> The air-l at listserv.aoir.org mailing list
> is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org
> Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: 
> http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
>
> Join the Association of Internet Researchers:
> http://www.aoir.org/
>