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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