[Air-l] turnitin issue

[Marj Kibby]

In my first year cultural studies course I give students a turnitin
report of a paper I wrote for the purpose that has a range of citation
errors and a number of correctly cited quotes.

In small groups they go through the report, decide which 'matches' are
ok, and which are citation errors that need to be fixed. They add
references, quotation marks, paraphrase, etc as required. 

We discuss what the various groups have done, and they are encouraged to
go through their own reports before final submission of the papers.

Turnitin is set up to allow submission for a week or two before the due
date, and for students to see their own reports immediately.

I think where Turnitin is solely used as a detection tool, there is a
tendency to look just at the percentage of matching text - but I haven't
found that particularly useful. I think you need to examine every
instance of matching text to see just why and how it matches.

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
>>> James Whyte <whyte.james at yahoo.com> 03/10/07 3:34 AM >>>

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.