[Air-l] turnitin issue

Tama Leaver tamaleaver at gmail.com
Thu Mar 8 15:55:08 PST 2007


Well if we leave the ethical questions aside (which is a hard thing to do!)
the legal advice given by the university lawyer and my institution (in
Australia) was that we should change the faculty regulations so that
submission via Turnitin was a course requirement and thus consent is given
to use Turnitin at the moment of enrolement.

That said, the legal issues that may arise (but haven't yet in Australia)
have stopped the majority of faculties here using Turnitin.

-- 
Dr Tama Leaver
Associate Lecturer (Higher Education Development)
Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (M400)
University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway
Crawley WA 6009 Australia
Ph: (+61 8) 6488 1502
Fax: (+61 8) 6488 1156

www: http://www.catl.uwa.edu.au
www: http://www.tamaleaver.net
blog: http://ponderance.blogspot.com
edublog: http://tama.edublogs.org

On 3/9/07, Mark Warschauer <markw at uci.edu> wrote:
>
> 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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