This reminds me of the discussion had many years ago when we were first grappling with the availability of 'cut and paste' from the Internet. People were arguing that there were two losses. One was the fact that search engines enabled students to find stuff which was relevant to their work without having to read and think about it. So copied material was less evidence of learning than it had been in the print only days. The second was that cutting and pasting did not even require the rudimentary passage through the brain that rewriting or copying out did. Thus a further opportunity to produce without learning or understanding.
The current discussion seems to have some elements of this, in particular the second point.
I tend towards Nathan's scepticism about Turnitin as a formative activity. However, recently my son did an MA in which he was allowed one run through of Turnitin, with the requirement that he submit both the original Tii report as well as his subsequent revised draft. He took it pretty seriously - motivated by a fear of careless failure to give credit (as Zygmunt Bauman). Unless he was deceiving me, he did not use it to rewrite plagiarised material so that it was undetectable.
I wonder whether the submission of the two drafts with the first report provides some assurance in this way. I'm not sure whether I'd want to check through too much of that myself, though. I run an LLM programme with some 50 15-20,000 word dissertations a year and I'm not sure how good a use of my time that would be.
Best wishes,
Nigel
Nigel Duncan
Professor of Legal Education
The City Law School
4, Gray's Inn Place
London WC1R 5DX
+44(0)20 7400 3629
________________________________________
From: Potter, Nick <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 25 April 2014 09:49
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Turnitin for teaching
It isn't hard evidence Nathan but if the student has reduced the match between her text and another's is it not at least an indication that she has had to re-word and if so then that may imply that she has had to think about it.
I know it's tenuous but ... !
Nick
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Nick Potter
PhD PFHEA PGCE
Deon Dysgu, Addysgu a Chyfoethogi/Dean of Learning, Teaching and Enhancement
Uned Gyfoethogi/Enhancement Unit
Ffon / Tel: 01792 481224
ebost/email: [log in to unmask]
Trawsnewid Addysg...Trawsnewid Bywdau
Transforming Education...Transforming Lives
-----Original Message-----
From: Plagiarism [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Quinlan, Nathan
Sent: 25 April 2014 09:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Turnitin for teaching
Hello all,
I'm a long-time doubter of formative access to Turnitin. Studies like Davis and Carroll (2009) are thorough and very interesting, but what they show is that access to Turnitin helps students to achieve a lower Turnitin score. Furthermore, students do so with the support of one-to-one tutorials. It's not clear whether Tii or the tutorial is the key ingredient (several in this thread have suggested that the tutorial is necessary). Is there any hard evidence that formative access helps to improve the quality of work, or even understanding of plagiarism, measured in some way independent of Tii?
Anecdotes like Emma's student asking ""What's an OK %" are familiar and consistent with my gut feeling that the Tii becomes a substitute for some real understanding.
Regards
Nathan
________________________________
Dr. Nathan Quinlan
Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering
National University of Ireland Galway
[log in to unmask]
www.nuigalway.ie/mechbio
phone +353 91 492726
fax +353 91 563991
________________________________________
From: Plagiarism [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Emma Duke-Williams [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 25 April 2014 09:18
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Turnitin for teaching
On 25 Apr 2014, at 08:54, Mary Davis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I agree with you on this point, Mike. I've also found that the formative use of Turnitin works best in a 1-1 tutorial where the originality reports are discussed and students get some guidance on their decisions about what to revise or not to revise using the reports. Without some guidance, sometimes students think they've just got to reduce or make the colour go away by taking out source material. - at least in my international pg student context.
>
> Do other list members have experiences of students using the originality reports successfully on their own?
>
> Mary
We also use it formatively, and, like Mary, students need help [lots, often] to know what to do. The most common question I get is "What's an OK %" - many students find it difficult to grasp that 20% from a single source is probably "worse" than 25% comprised of multiple short phrases; equally that 0% is fairly unlikely, as (unless the short phrases are off), as in many industries there are common phrases.
I also tend to point out to students that it's useful to have it enabled (at least at the start) for both the bibliography and for cited sections - as having them similar often indicates they've cited things correctly. Most need 1:1 or small group to help them understand what's going on.
I'd hoped to use it formatively in the peer review mode earlier in the year, but unfortunately our integration with Moodle is such that we don't have access to the peer review mode.
Emma
--
Emma Duke-Williams
School of Computing, Buckingham Building, (BK1:28)
University of Portsmouth,
PO1 3HE.
Tel: 023 9284 6441
Twitter: Emmadw
Blog: http://dukee.myweb.port.ac.uk
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