Re: Interesting Turnitin problem

James

Interesting challenge, but will it prove anything? I could probably meet your challenge as well, but I'm not sure the majority of my students could, possibly in a short quote but not in a 1-2000 word report. (incidentally my area is also computing).

Turnitin is only a tool to detect matches in text. Personally, I wouldn't use it as a matter of routine to detect plagiarism but rather to confirm suspicions. These suspicions would be alerted on reading the work and be based on my own knowledge and experience, and my own reading and awareness of my students' capabilities. I would also use other tools such as Google and textbooks.

regards

Eileen

Webb, Eileen wrote:
> Jon
>
> I would suggest that if you gave someone a quote and they rephrased that
> quote so that a text-matching system such as Turnitin found no
> similarity then that person would successfully have put it into their
> own words.
>
> If this was one of my students I would probably be happy. if on reading
> the new reworded text it was relevant made sense and answered the
> question I would probably be happier still and consider they had learnt
> something. However, if they then told me they had used Turnitin
> repeatedly until the colour went away, I would suggest to them that
> there was a much more efficient way of doing it.

Eileen,

I have in the past reworded texts to avoid detection by Turnitin. It is
not that hard. If you would like to send me a sample quote I will
demonstrate.

I am a computer scientist, with a background in Physics, so a completely
different subject area to those would be good to make the challenge
worthwhile.

Actually I am on the side of the "educators" rather than the "police",
but the "police" do have a valid argument as I hope to demonstrate.

Looking forward to your reply!

jamesM