Weblog of Wesley Fryer

by Jeff
Getchell, Assistant Director, Center for Distance Learning and Teaching
Excellence

7 March 2005 TxDLA
conference

This is not meant as a
commercial for turn-it-in.com, although that is the solution they went
with

href="http://www.turnitin.com"
target="NewWindow">http://www.turnitin.com

UT Telecampus is implementing “safe
assignment” instead of
turn-it-in.com

Our rollout for this
will be in March 2005 (this month)
- today
we will cover the implementation process, reaction from faculty and students,
preparations necessary for proper
implementation
- what’s
next
- have about 700 faculty to support,
many are Luddites!

Reactions from
faculty and students have been surprising at
times
- in some cases the technology has
been the reason people have complained, however with services like turn-it-in
there is actually not a lot of technology
involved
- at TCU, reaction has been
negative from faculty because of the trust
issue
- same at Pan American, faculty
having problems with creating perception that they are guilty until proven
innocent
- issue of trust is a big bone of
contention with students also
- some
administration officials are dragging their feet at other institutions because
of reticience to define plagiarism and what the policy consequences will
be

There can be liability concerns as
well

Turn-it-in is a service, but you
can also purchase software that runs from your hard
drive

They
purcha
- for 17,000 students, paying about
10K
- are anticipating maybe by fall 2006
around 20,000 students

In summer 2003
saw a demo at UT System in Austin
- April
2004 was an ABC Primetime segment on student cheating featuring
Turnitin
- Annoucement to faculty that
funds being requested for anti-plagiarmism
service

Turn-it-in has a great deal
of training material available

in
PrimeTime segment, the majority of students did not
plagiarize
- one student had plagiarized
everything except his name
- students had
been interviewed before they knew their instructor was using
turn-it-in
- in post-interviews, students
said they will do whatever it takes to get the good grades, get into good
schools, get good jobs, ec
- mentality of
some of the students was this
way

Took 3 months for them to work
with their purchasing department for
turn-it-in
- worked at length with key
campus players, including Dean of
Students
- Turn-it-in is a good service
from the administrative perspective because it provides very concrete
evidence
- Dean of Students went to the
Student Government organization, they were supportive of
this
- then went to the Provost, got his
support
- Provost took this to the faculty
Senate, they also approved
- had 4 major
players giving support for this
initiative

Center for Distance
Learning solicited faculty who would be willing to be early adopters for this
service
- got about 30 early adopters from
broad range of disciplines
- wanted faculty
to use the service and if possible attend an orientation
session
- Did want feedback on training,
issues with their implementation, and the support offered as a department to
them

Developed a syllabus statement
on the recommendation of turnitin
- informs
the students that this service can be used for any written
assignment
-
www.uah.edu/library/turnitin
- also informs
students that it can become part of this larger database (proprietary) that
turnitin has

Our handbook of campus
operating procedures defines what plagiarism is, what the consequences can be,
etc.
- ideally this is a learning
opportunity that faculty can have with their students to show proper citation of
material in papers
- can even use this as a
self-test, to allow students to submit their assignments first to the
tool
- this can identify statements not
cited, or when the citation is made
incorrectly

Student privacy issues:
if another student has submitted the same paper or element, the instructor does
not see their identifying information, just their instructor
information
- 4.5 billion pages of info in
turnitin at present, includes snapshot of the Internet, journal subscriptions,
and everything that has been submitted to the
database

Turnitin’s position on
student copyright is that they don’t keep the text, they turn it into an
algorithm (a bunch of numbers) so only the matching information is placed in the
report for the faculty
member

Baseline training for
faculty
- overview of
plagiarism
- overview of
turnitin
-
requirements
– canned statement in all
syllabi that service may be used
– same
annoucement in class
– submit all papers,
not just certain ones
– use is
optional
– students may elect not to use
the service without penalty
- course
creation process for instructor
- account
creation process for student

policy
to submit everyone’s paper unless they opt out is to avoid discrimination
charges, fairness

Turnitin looks for
matches in text, not actual plagiarism: it is up to the instructor to determine
if the text has been properly
cited

Is an option for (quick submit
option) instructors to submit an assignment for review, where it does not become
part of the turnitin database
- also can be
a problem if instructor has student submit rough drafts, and those are kept as
part of the database, then you could have lots of matches in final review of
document

At UNT after implementing
this, typically you will see a sharp spike in reported
plagiarisms
- big benefit of using this is
as the deterrent effect

Anecdote from
UNT
- when professor announced he was going
to use turnitin.com, he didn’t use it but the papers submitted to him that term
were the worst papers he had seen in 20 years, indicating they were probably the
student’s authentic work

Turnitin
suggests that students be given the option to opt out (this was not required by
someone like their university general counsel’s
office)

Have not had formal training
for students
- have had formal training for
faculty and support staff (help
desk)

Have worked a lot with faculty,
and they are largly very frustrated and intimidated by the copy and paste
reality of today’s information age, full-text journal articles,
etc.

My question to presenter: are
faculty changing the way they are assigning work to students as a result of
this, asking different questions?
- his
answer: no. Not yet. Have not heard anything from
faculty

Will be doing
this

Alternatives
-
target="NewWindow">www.mydropbox.com

- EVE2: href="http://www.canexus.com/eve/index.shtml"
target="NewWindow">www.canexus.com/eve/index.shtml

- Integriguard went to the dark side and
become a paper mill
- copycatch: href="http://www.copycatchgold.com"
target="NewWindow">www.copycatchgold.com

- Glatt Plagiarism Screening Program:
target="NewWindow">www.plagiarism.com

- Safe Assignment (UT Telecampus) – going
with this because of integration with
Blackboard

WebCT evidently does not
have integration with this type of service
yet
- rumor is Turnitin is working with
Blackboard

Participant comment:
sometimes we lose sight of our job, if students have not cited properly it is my
job as an educator to teach students how to cite
properly
- some are using this as a
“gotcha,” but that is not how this tool can and should be used in all
cases

Another comment: we need to
reward good research, getting support for positions,
etc.
- we need to demonstrate our valuation
of research in the way we teach, the ways we assess, etc.