The focus of this post is a hopeful response to a long-term of frustration of mine and a source of countless hours of what I've come to call 'Plagiarism Policing.' One of my biggest pet peeves is grading student papers is coming across brilliantly written work that doesn't reflect the students' persona in class whatsoever! More often than not, that usually means they had some help. That's usually about the time I start entering some of their most articulate phrases into Google and find myself on a plagiarism witch hunt.
Turnitin.com offers a suite of web-based educational tools (gradebook, peer review, grading, & originality) that can be purchased at a district, school, department or even an indivual level. Our district recently purchased a license for the Originality piece and the english department offered an in-service training that introduced this powerful tool for two reasons.
First, the Originality component of Turnitin.com prepares a report for both students and teachers that highlights potential plagairism issues and even gives links to sources that the information may have been taken from. For the teacher, each student paper is assigned a rating that essentially indicates how 'original' their work is. The second piece of this software is that once a student turns in an assignment through turnitin.com it becomes part of a permanent database that future papers will be compared to along with an web resources that an assignment might be compared to.
I am very excited to use turnitin.com this fall for the first time. I look forward finally being able to simply read and grade student work for its content and not have to worry about the originality of the work itself. This will literally save me HOURS of additional 'policing' that inevitably accompanies any major student project. More importantly, I think it will provide students with a tool to check their own work if they aren't sure if they have plagiarized or not.
While I think this will be a great tool, it's my understanding that it is quite expensive to purchase a license. Also, it isn't perfect. It will highlight potential problems, but it isn't absolute. Finally, using turnitin.com REQUIRES students to submit their work online...which for some disadvantaged students could be difficult....accomodations must always be considered.
I also found these other links that deal with plagiarism on the iste.org website:
EVE2 (Easy Verification Engine): http://www.canexus.com/eve
Glatt Plagiarism Services: http://www.plagiarism.com
SafeAssignment: http://www.mydropbox.com
Penn State Cyberplagiarism Page: http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/cyberplag
Plagiarism.org (sponsored by Turnitin.com): http://www.plagiarism.org/
University of Alberta Guide to Plagiarism and Cyber-Plagiarism: http://library.ualberta.ca/guides/plagiarism/
University of Texas at Austin's Preventing and Detecting Plagiarism: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/services/instruction/faculty/plagiarism/
(http://www.iste.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Publications/LL/LLIssues/Volume_33_2006_2005_/March_No_6_/March_2006.htm)
1 comment:
Wow! The people that created turnitin.com had a million dollar idea! This website is an unbelievable time-saver in every teacher’s life. And I suppose an academic life-saver for the smart students that might use it to ensure no piece of their work has already been published (provided it’s already in the database and the individual has purchases a license). The links you found on the ISTE website would be most helpful to the diligent student! I’ve shared the Turnitin website as well as the sites from ISTE with my colleagues – thanks!
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