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Internet detective turnitin.com looks for student plagiarism
March 19, 2003 | |||||
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KOKOMO, Ind.—To discourage plagiarism in student writing, IU Kokomo has signed a one-year contract with turnitin.com. Pronounced “Turn It In,” the Web site compares submitted student papers with a vast database of documents on the Internet. Within 24 hours, the sender receives an “Originality Report” that indicates whether a paper has similar or exact wording found in one or more Internet sources or in turnitin.com’s database of previously submitted papers. Those reports can be shared with students “as a teaching tool and not just as a way to catch the ‘bad guys,’ ” said campus administrator Sharon Calhoon, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence. Use of the anti-plagiarism tool is optional for faculty and “worth a one-year trial to see if it works,” she said. IU Kokomo faculty say the ease and the popularity of pulling abundant, often “free” information from Internet sites has lead some students to believe either that they don’t need to document their sources, or that they won’t get caught claiming someone else’s work. Lifting and combining Internet text, students may unintentionally “write” a whole paper without much original content, said Scott Jones, Ph.D., an assistant professor of English who has researched how electronic media affect professional writing skills. “It’s a ‘cut and paste’ society,” he said. Some plagiarism, especially among freshmen, is accidental, agreed Nadene Keene, D.A., co-director of IU Kokomo’s Learning Enhancement Center and supervisor for the center’s writing tutors. “Often, these students don’t know that they need to paraphrase and cite sources. Some don’t have the skills to do it.” In cases of overt plagiarism, Calhoon believes, “If students know up front that their professor is going to use turnitin.com, they are less likely to plagiarize.” Students must agree in writing to have their work submitted, Calhoon said. Because the for-profit Web site keeps all submitted papers in its comparison database, she said, legal counsel to Indiana University has confirmed students’ rights to guard their proprietary writing. “IU recommends that, if students refuse to submit their papers [to turnitin.com], an instructor has the right to require alternative assignments,” Calhoon added. Alternatives might include submitting multiple drafts of a paper or written documentation of research sources. “Many faculty have stopped giving term papers which require students to gather information and synthesize it, because those papers are so easy to buy from an online paper mill,” Calhoon said. “Now that we have turnitin.com, faculty can choose to have students do the kind of term paper that requires synthesis of information from many sources. We think that’s an advantage for the students, because we can once again help students gain those information analysis and synthesis skills that will serve them well once they graduate.” In a random survey, 14 IU Kokomo students split almost evenly when asked if they would sign permission slips for their writing to be submitted to turnitin.com. Eight said they would decline—among them, an English major who felt that plagaisim was “not a big problem” at IU Kokomo. “High school students are more likely to buy papers from online paper mills,” she said. “I don’t want anyone besides my professors seeing my papers,” added an Education major. Six survey respondents would allow turnitin.com to review their assignments. “You should be paraphrasing [Internet sources] anyway,” said one of the six. “Seeing the Orginality Report and how it’s used should make students more comfortable” with the technology, she said. To use turnitin.com, instructors set up accounts and e-mail-type “in boxes” at the site for each class whose assignments they would like to have checked. Teachers can set the minimum percentage of matching text they want reported. Instructors can also have students submit their own papers and receive copies of the Originality Reports. A report includes the number of documents that have “similar or exact passages” to the paper, the percentage of matching text in each, and hyperlinks to the sources’ Web sites. Turnitin.com highlights suspect passages in the student’s work, and color-codes them to passages in the possible source. Using a split screen, teachers can also show a student a side-by-side comparison of a submitted paper with an Internet document, again with the matching text highlighted in the same color. “This exercise can be a valuable learning experience for a student, who may not be aware of how closely his or her paper matches the original,” Calhoon said.
According to the Web site, www.turnitin.com is the “world's first Internet-based plagiarism prevention system,” and provides service to “nearly 5 million students and educators . . . in over 50 countries.” Calhoon said some academic departments at IUPUI already use the system.
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