Vicki,

We have been using the Turnitin tool inside our institutional VLE (Blackboard) for a few years at the University of Liverpool. We have from the beginning introduced the tool within our learning and teaching staff development programmes with a focus on ‘designing out plagiarism’ in order that staff consider the full implications of using the service. Uptake for using the tool has been slow, but I think this reflects on the deeper issues associated with student plagiarism rather than the effectiveness of the tool – staff are realising quickly that a tool that just ‘catches’ students plagiarising is not an efficient process – one member of staff estimated that he has around 10% of his student plagiarising at only one time, which equals 30 students, and it takes him approximately 1.5 hours to deal with each case through the University’s procedures i.e. a week’s work. We also tend to get younger staff on our learning and teaching workshops who are not necessarily in a position to influence changes to modules and programmes.

 

Staff willingness to move to electronic means of coursework submission is a related issue. It can take a while for a department to consider and adopt this over traditional paper submissions – some departments have adopted a dual system but this is problematic for students and staff to manage. The Turnitin building block tool in Blackboard does not offer all the functionality of the main ‘assignment’ tool such as ability to give feedback etc. so we find staff are using the this tool to manage coursework submissions, and then passing it through the Turnitin tool themselves to check for plagiarism.

 

The slow uptake of the tool has caused tension with our computing services colleagues. They generally evaluate the effectiveness of software by how much it is being used and not on its impact on reducing plagiarism. Our approach is to support staff to create a better student support and resources about plagiarism, transition to Higher Education, alternative assessment methods that make it harder to plagiarise etc. Our ultimate objective would be for the tool to used in limited and measured way.

 

In hind sight I think this tool needs careful planning and discussion to create a well thought out implementation plan that is part of a coordinated policy to address the plagiarism issues that consults staff developers, learning technologists, computing services, student registration etc. There has not been a ‘natural’ person within any central service department that can coordinate and fully understand all the related issues - student registration issues, data protection issues of the Turnitin service, development of technical software guides, VLE support, learning and teaching case studies etc. These all need to be coordinated well as staff get frustrated when they have to go to multiple staff in multiple central services departments to get all the information they need!

 

We have not reached any consensus as to whether it is ethical to tell students exactly how the tool works or to keep it mysterious and therefore a better deterrent. Some staff are very concentred that by over using the tool we are creating an environment of mistrust with students. Other staff see the tool as a way of supporting students that legitimately complete assignments against their peers that have plagiarised.

 

Overall the key impact of implementing Turnitin has been to get staff thinking more about the pedagogical issues of plagiarism – the tool is attractive to staff  as, on the surface, it offers a quick solution to plagiarism!