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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