Hi Diane
You are making very valid points here, though the argument in your last
paragraph I have found does not impress many people, or perhaps as many
people as it should. To take this in a slightly different direction, people
might be interested in the Times Higher Ed article here:
http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2032550
I sometimes wonder, when IP becomes the debate, whether we have completely
lost any concept of what the academic project is for.
Iain
Iain Hood
Senior Student Adviser
Student Support Services
Anglia Ruskin University
East Road
Cambridge
CB1 1PT
0845 196 2316
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Schmitt, Diane" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 8:47 AM
Subject: Re: Making money off students - Tail wagging the dog
In the Washington Post article, I think the intellectual property issue is
just a red herring. I think the real issue is pedagogy and getting real
people to provide it.
Many students have never been taugth and do not understand the purpose of
using source texts in academic writing. If students don't understand why
they need to use sources and how to select them and when to quote, summarize
or paraphrase, expensive text-matching software is not going to help.
Turnitin and other text-matching software is limited to identifying copying
and in my experience copying is just a symptom of much deeper
misunderstanding. A lot of money is being thrown at a symptom and the real
teaching isn't happening.
Additionally, as has been noted by others, in the business world and in
university administration a whole lot of copying of other peoples texts goes
on without attribution, why is it deemed to be ok there and not in student
writing? This is what we need to help students understand.
Diane
Diane Schmitt
Senior Lecturer in EFL/TESOL
Nottingham Language Centre
Nottingham Trent University
Burton Street
Nottingham NG1 4BU
Tel 0115 848 6156
Fax 0115 848 6513
[log in to unmask]
________________________________
From: Plagiarism on behalf of Suzanne Ryan
Sent: Wed 27/09/2006 05:51
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Making money off students - Tail wagging the dog
When Turnitin is used primarily to help students understand citation
practice, then it is indeed a powerful educational tool. At the
University of Newcastle in Australia, we insist that students must first
see their Turnitin reports and correct them if necessary prior to final
submission of an assignment. In this way, students have to make
judgements re matching text and to do this they need to understand the
requirements. Nothing focuses a student's mind in terms of learning
about plagiarism avoidance more than seeing their own work in colour.
This not only greatly reduces plagiarism but enhances learning.
On the IP issue, research students and academics may use Turnitin to
protect their work from unscrupulous supervisors and colleagues.
Turnitin is not perfect, but it has made a very big and positive impact
in our University and my School in particular.
S
Suzanne Ryan
Teaching, Learning and Quality Coordinator
Newcastle Graduate School of Business
University of Newcastle
Callaghan NSW 2308
Australia
Phone +61 2 49 216015
Fax +61 2 49 217398
www.gsb.newcastle.edu.au
>>> "Schmitt, Diane" <[log in to unmask]> 27/09/06 7:35 AM >>>
My good for them is based on the uneasy feeling many people share and I
feel quite strongly about is that forcing students to submit papers
through Turnitin or other software is a breach of trust. All students
are being tarred with the "you might be a potential cheater brush". The
article states that another high school that uses the service - Broad
Run, found only 3 cases of cheating in the first year of use and has
found only another 3 cases since 2002. You could infer that Turnitin is
working and cheaters have been deterred or you could infer that not that
many kids at Broad Run high school cheat anyway and that the school is
spending a whole lot of money for nothing.
The media and academics are often far too quick to haul students in
front of disciplinary boards for cheating when in fact they have simply
referenced poorly. I teach students about referencing and it is very
rare that students get it right the first or even second time around.
The students at B
Diane Schmitt
Senior Lecturer of EFL/TESOL
Nottingham Language Centre
Nottingham Trent University
Burton Street
Nottingham NG1 4BU
Tel 0115 848 6156
Fax 0115 848 6513
[log in to unmask]
________________________________
From: Plagiarism on behalf of Mike Reddy
Sent: Tue 26/09/2006 22:12
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Making money off students - Tail wagging the dog
Diane's "Good for them!" is what got me mad. The phrase "making money
off students" put the cherry on the cake. I'm no defender of TurnitinUK
- detection software does not solve the problem of copying, just the
detection (mostly) - but from my understanding of the technical aspects
of the way the database works, the 'use' of students' work is limited to
the thumbprint that is stored. This would not allow Barrie or any other
iParadigms employee to read and, therefore, use an essay; the only way
that an author's IP could be abused. You might just as well say that all
the words I have just used to type this email are the property of
someone else. Of the electrons flowing through the computer that made up
the email. The thumbnails produced by analysing the essays are rather
like the results of me counting how many of each letter were used. Would
the fact that ?? letter Ts were used be an infringement of my IP if you
took the trouble to count it for yourself?
Whether or not IP belongs to the students or the universities - many of
which have clauses defining ownership in the 'contract' signed on
registration, but fewer have the procedures to regain that after
coursework submission and marking - is another matter. Maybe, Diane
could explain her remarks and suggest alternatives to using plagiarism
detection software?
P.S. There really were 124 Ts used. 124 is therefore, my intellectual
property.
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