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Last month's, "Link of the Month" was
TurnItIn.com. This month, Patrick Pluscht, Director of the Center for
Distributed Learning (CDL), gives us "the goods" on this service. -- Ed.
By Patrick
Pluscht, Director, Center for Distributed Learning
As an instructor, it’s very likely you have
suspected one or more of your students of submitting an assignment
which was not the individual’s own work. It happens. So
what do you do? Many instructors have had some luck using the
search engine Google to scour the Internet for occurrences of
suspicious text and then confronting a student with any results that
suggest academic dishonesty. This approach is better than
nothing at all, but the University has now empowered its faculty to
systematically combat plagiarism in the classroom by licensing a
powerful plagiarism prevention tool provided by TurnItIn.com.
So what constitutes plagiarism and how is it
penalized?
According to UNT’s Center for Student Rights
and Responsibilities (http://www.unt.edu/csrr/csrr_home.htm),
plagiarism is “(a) the knowing or negligent use by paraphrase or
direct quotation of the published or unpublished work of another
person without full and clear acknowledgement and/or (b) the knowing
or negligent unacknowledged use of materials prepared by another
person or by an agency engaged in the selling of term papers or
other academic materials.” Penalties for student academic
misconduct range from a verbal warning to expulsion and could
include the revocation of a degree previously awarded to a student
who is guilty of egregious academic misconduct.
So how does TurnItIn.com help prevent
plagiarism?
On the surface, TurnItIn.com is a powerful
search tool with access to both current and archived versions of the
Internet as well as databases of scholarly publications, literary
works in the public domain and the millions of student papers that
have previously been submitted. The product of TurnItIn.com is
an “originality report” which identifies any passages in a paper
that are found to be duplicated in one of TurnItIn.com’s other
sources. However, TurnItIn.com does not judge what is and what is
not plagiarism. Instead, it provides an instructor with the
evidence to make that assessment. If properly cited, a
document that TurnItIn.com has been identified as having a large
amount of duplicated text would not meet the definition of
plagiarism. This judgment call remains with the instructor. The instructor has the option to ignore properly cited selections
and resubmit the paper for analysis. The mechanism by which TurnItIn.com prevents plagiarism is both passive and active.
It allows a faculty member to actively review papers and screen for
assignments with a high likelihood of plagiarism and it provides the
faculty member with “proof” should it be necessary to pursue
disciplinary action. The knowledge that TurnItIn.com is being
used by the faculty has proven to deter many students from
plagiarizing because of the fear of being caught.
Does TurnItIn.com violate a student right to
privacy?
Although TurnItIn.com does keep a copy of each
student submission in its database for comparison to all future
submissions, it does not release the identity of the student nor the
actual student work to others. Instead, it provides the
contact information for the instructor to whom the original work was
submitted and then confirmation of the duplicated material is
negotiated between the faculty members.
Are students upset about having their work
submitted to TurnItIn.com?
You might expect that those most likely to be
caught would be disappointed about its use at UNT and you’d probably
be right. However, the systematic use of TurnItIn.com levels
the playing field for all students. Those with access to a
term paper from a fraternity brother or a cousin who previously took
the course may get through TurnItIn.com the first time without being
caught, but it’s a risky proposition. Likewise, the paper a student
might buy off the Internet may have just been purchased by someone
else whose instructor uses TurnItIn.com. In a positive way,
instructors can use TurnItIn.com as a teaching tool by allowing
students to submit a draft directly to TurnItIn.com with subsequent
revisions up until the final due date. In this way, students
can observe instances where they have improperly cited others’ work
and endeavor to practice proper citation. Shortly after TurnItIn.com
was implemented late last fall, the Center for Student Rights and
Responsibilities saw a dramatic increase in the number of plagiarism
cases being submitted. Does this mean students started
cheating a lot more often late in the semester? No, this is a
predictable result of using TurnItIn.com. From the experience
of other universities, it’s also predictable that UNT will see a
sharp and lasting drop in the number of plagiarism cases in UNT if
the community embraces its use.
Who can use TurnItIn.com?
The Center for Distributed Learning purchased a
one-year license to TurnItIn.com that allows any UNT instructor to
generate an unlimited number of originality reports for UNT student
work. Additionally, instructors can allow or disallow students
to directly submit their own work and to see the associated
originality reports. UNT’s license is set to expire in late
fall of 2005; however, financial support to renew the license will
be sought from each College and School in proportion to their
historical use of the service. If faculty adopt and encourage
the use of TurnItIn.com, it will certainly be successful.
How can I begin using TurnItIn.com?
To begin using TurnItIn, an instructor will
first need to send an email with the instructor’s name and
college/school to Patrick Pluscht,
pluscht@unt.edu, requesting access to TurnItIn.com. An
email with an Account ID and an Account Join Password will be sent
back to the instructor. Once this information is received, the
instructor can visit the TurnItIn.com website to create a personal
profile and begin using the service immediately. The Account ID
and the Account Join Password are the same for every UNT user to
gain initial access to TurnItIn.com and, therefore,
this information may be freely shared with any UNT instructor though
it must remain confidential from all others. Online training is
available directly from TurnItIn.com. The following link
provides a great animated quickstart tutorial which steps an
instructor through creating a profile, setting up a class and
assignments, submitting papers and understanding an originality
report:
http://www.turnitin.com/static/training_support/idfvl1.html.
Other training materials including
comprehensive instructor and student manuals are available for
download at:
http://www.turnitin.com/static/training_support/.
Thank you for your contribution to preserving Academic Integrity
as a core value of the University of North Texas.
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