Hello Everyone,
I have actually had a student try this, and it was pretty obvious that the document contained images and not text. You can tell by the look of the document, scanned images look like what they are, and I have yet to see any scanner make anything less than a pretty ham-fisted attempt at this kind of thing. Secondly you can go by the file size which will be much larger for a file containing images than text.
Turnitin is a useful guide, but a bit of common sense can catch attempts at cheating like this. I also believe that Turnitin will reject out of hand a file which contains no text. Harder to spot are the use of 'unusual' fonts where, for example, the number 0 is made to look like the letter o in print, then you simply do a find/replace in the document to substitute them. Example from experience! :o)
Regards,
Sonya McChristie
Senior Service Desk Analyst (eLearning Systems)
IT Services, Northumbria University, Newcastle, NE1 8ST
Email - [log in to unmask]
Tel. - 0191 227 4242
Freephone - 0800 923 4242
-----Original Message-----
From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Steve Bentley
Sent: 08 August 2013 16:19
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Images of text - a serious shortcoming in Turnitin?
My recollection is that the webinar very specifically wasn't recorded, because they were showing pre-release features that they wanted to be kept relatively confidential.
From the notes I took at the time, I think somebody suggested that Turnitin could consider introducing OCR technology to convert text held in images to machine-readable text. I believe the response was to the effect that OCR wasn't felt to be accurate enough for that purpose.
Regards
Steve
-----Original Message-----
From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Smith, Gary
Sent: 08 August 2013 16:06
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [BLACKBOARD-USERGROUP] Images of text - a serious shortcoming in Turnitin?
Hi Trish
I don't think it was recorded. Your only hope on that front might be if someone made a personal recording and contacts you privately. I'm afraid I didn't.
If you're active on Twitter, you might try reaching out to @TiiTabitha - she's the woman who has run the Turnitin Talk webinars that I've attended this year. And sign up for the September briefing here: http://pages.turnitin.com/talk.html
There's also a Turnitin mailing ist hosted by JISC that might provide a better hunting ground for you. I think this link should work:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=TURNITIN
Cheers,
Gary
On 8/8/13 3:42pm, "Trish Murray" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Hi Gary,
Thats interesting. Was the webinar recorded ... that I could search for it and see what was discussed?
Thanks, Trish
On 8 August 2013 15:39, Smith, Gary <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Hi Trish
I recall this topic being mentioned at the last Turnitin Talk webinar, so I know that Turnitin are aware of the issue. I don't seem to have taken any notes as to what they might be going to do about it though. It's maybe something that they're still looking into - early stages.
Regards,
Gary Smith
Learning Technologist
The Glasgow School for Business and Society Glasgow Caledonian University
On 8/8/13 2:07pm, "Trish Murray" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]><mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>> wrote:
Dear all,
We have discovered that a small number of students have submitted plagiarised text as an image ... which then is not picked up by Turnitin.
Have others had this problem? Has anyone got any suggestions as to how we might recognise this? Is this something that Turnitin themselves could address by identifying images that are mostly/entirely text?
Your thoughts on this subject would be much appreciated.
Regards, Trish
Glasgow Caledonian University is a registered Scottish charity, number SC021474
Winner: Times Higher Education's Widening Participation Initiative of the Year 2009 and Herald Society's Education Initiative of the Year 2009.
http://www.gcu.ac.uk/newsevents/news/bycategory/theuniversity/1/name,6219,en.html
Winner: Times Higher Education's Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers of the Year 2010, GCU as a lead with Universities Scotland partners.
http://www.gcu.ac.uk/newsevents/news/bycategory/theuniversity/1/name,15691,en.html
--
Dr Trish Murray
Faculty University Teacher (L&T)
Faculty of Engineering
The University of Sheffield
Mappin Building
Mappin Street
Sheffield S1 3JD
Tel (0114) 2220424
Email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Glasgow Caledonian University is a registered Scottish charity, number SC021474
Winner: Times Higher Education's Widening Participation Initiative of the Year 2009 and Herald Society's Education Initiative of the Year 2009.
http://www.gcu.ac.uk/newsevents/news/bycategory/theuniversity/1/name,6219,en.html
Winner: Times Higher Education's Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers of the Year 2010, GCU as a lead with Universities Scotland partners.
http://www.gcu.ac.uk/newsevents/news/bycategory/theuniversity/1/name,15691,en.html
|
