We thought of the possibility of students submitting different pieces of
work as well but figured that we'd catch it if they did because even if
the plagiarism report was clean we'd spot the plagiarism in the hard
copy (most of our plagiarism is the cut and paste from the internet
variety and it's glaringly obvious). Once detected, we'd look at the
report and see that the pieces of work were different and then the
student would be in *big* trouble.
A bigger problem for us is students not submitting electronically at
all. Our solution is that we won't mark the hard copy if they don't
submit electronically.
Sandy
Burkhard Schafer wrote:
> This was indeed one of the options we discussed. What was pointed out
> to me though was: how do you know that electronic copy and backup are
> identical? A clever student could upload a bad but "own work" essay,
> and submit the plagiarised one for assessment...
> The alternative was to submit electronically, and then our teaching
> office would print them out for the lecturer - which has costs
> implications with very large classes
>
> Burkhard
>
> Sandy Steacy wrote:
>> Just a couple of suggestions based on the last post.
>>
>> In order to make things as easy as possible for the lecturers, we
>> require our students to submit their work twice - once in hardcopy
>> for marking the other electronically for plagiarism assessment. The
>> latter is via submit.ac.uk, in other words our students upload their
>> own work to the website, we do not.
>>
>> I then use the system in two ways: i) I skim the reports for any
>> assessments getting high scores and ii) I check up on any papers that
>> seem suspicious to me when I mark them. Note that all my teaching is
>> at undergraduate level.
>>
>> Sandy
>>
>> Burkhard Schafer wrote:
>>> Dear Janet
>>>
>>> I trialled it for our LLM some time back and recommended against it,
>>> BUT mainly because of the specific issues of our programme.
>>>
>>> In a "mock essay" for improving essay writing skills, and with a
>>> cohort of 35 students, I asked three to plagiarise in their essay,
>>> the others were supposed to follow guidelines and procedures, and as
>>> there was nothing at stake, I assume they did.
>>>
>>> Nonetheless, the system returned 33 as "potential plagiarism" - law
>>> students simply have to use literal quotes a lot, from court cases
>>> and statutes,and as these are all online, and the system as it then
>>> was did not identify properly cited references (and the
>>> particularities of citing court cases makes this difficult anyway),
>>> they of course all got lots of material highlighted. Of the two who
>>> were not so identified, one would simply have failed precisely
>>> because s/he did not refer to any authorities. The other one was one
>>> of my "intentional plagiarisers" who was really clever. The other
>>> three were identified - but not for the material they had actually
>>> plagiarised! By contrast,I had identified all three unassisted by
>>> technology - though the test was easy for me, and tough on Turnitin:
>>>
>>> One had handed in a translated chapter from a German textbook
>>> (cheeky sod), the other had copied from an article that was only
>>> ever published on paper, and rightfully forgotten, so nobody ever
>>> quotes it in an online document (one of mine, as a matter of fact,
>>> double cheeky sod)and the third had changed the sentences
>>> sufficiently to get away with it.
>>>
>>> Even though the system was free at the time, there were some "costs"
>>> - moving to electronic essay delivery, increased admin also for the
>>> IP waiver form, and for me, I found reading/marking the analysed
>>> essays on screen rather a strain on the eyes, time consuming and
>>> difficult. While none of these costs were prohibitive, the system
>>> would have to have provided more benefits - by marking the essays in
>>> the traditional way, was much faster AND more reliable/efficient in
>>> detecting plagiarism.
>>>
>>> Couple of comments:
>>> the newer versions of the system ought to be better, and I was asked
>>> to test it again by my school. If the number of false positives is
>>> deceasing significantly, that would change things.
>>>
>>> The lack of benefits was clearly linked to the nature of the
>>> course,and one of my conclusions was that it is not good to make a
>>> central decision, but to devolve it to subjects or even degree
>>> programs. For instance, if we used essays in the much larger
>>> undergraduate classes, my answer might haven been different:
>>> collaboration more than plagiarism would be the main concern and
>>> turnitin is good for that. For plagiarism, we would expect more of
>>> the simple "cut and paste" variety than from our more sophisticated
>>> Master students, also the issue of plagiarism from foreign language
>>> material would be less of an issue. The manageable size of the
>>> master class allowed me to set more personalised questions which
>>> made collusion difficult, and using essay banks impossible - again,
>>> with different types of classes, this may not always be possible and
>>> they may profit from turnitin as the "second" (or third) best
>>> alternative
>>>
>>> As a geek, I'm in theory rather a fan of the system and its
>>> technology, and it helps sometimes to investigate individual pieces
>>> which are already looking suspicious. I do have some concerns
>>> regrading its impact on the sector as a whole, and the potential for
>>> further de-skilling of academics, but that's a different story
>>> altogether
>>>
>>>
>>> Burkhard
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Burkhard Schafer
>>> Senior Lecturer
>>> University of Edinburgh
>>> School of Law
>>> Joseph Bell Centre
>>> Old College
>>> Edinburgh
>>> EH8 9YL
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> 0044-(0)131-6502035
>>> http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/staff/view.asp?ref=69
>>>
>>> Janet Gladstone wrote:
>>>> Colleagues,
>>>>
>>>> My Institution (Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College)is
>>>> hopefully commencing a pilot of Turnitin in the near future. I have
>>>> been asked to find out what the practical experience of other
>>>> Institutions has been with this system and would be most grateful
>>>> for your input.
>>>>
>>>> As well as being interested in your general experiences there are
>>>> also a number of areas where we have specific queries:
>>>>
>>>> Do your students have to give permission for their work to be
>>>> electronically scrutinised?
>>>>
>>>> Does electronic submission cause any issues?
>>>>
>>>> Does using Turnitin increase staff workload significantly? Have you
>>>> had any issues regarding Intellectual Property Rights?
>>>>
>>>> Many thanks for your input on this.
>>>>
>>>> Regards
>>>>
>>>> Janet Gladstone
>>>> Senior Assistant Registrar (Quality Assurance)
>>>> Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>
--
****************************************
Dr. Sandy Steacy
Geophysics Research Group
School of Environmental Sciences
University of Ulster
Coleraine, N. Ireland BT52 1SA
ph: +44 (0)28 7032 4242
fx: +44 (0)28 7032 4911
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