[Air-l] turnitin issue

Sat Mar 10 12:17:14 PST 2007

An excellent analysis of TurnItIn and significant educational/ethical issues
can be found here: 

Jenson, J. & de Castell, S. (2004).  ³Turn It In²:  Technological Challenges
to Academic Ethics.  Education, Communication and Information, 4, 2/3:
245-67.

Cheers,

Mary

On 3/9/07 9:50 AM, "Bonnie Nardi" <nardi at ics.uci.edu> wrote:

> 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/
>> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> 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/