Damn. I wanted to be the first to comment on this; a colleague told me
on Thursday morning that Kent were in the THES, but someone in the
common room had swiped it! However, it was an interesting litmus test
to see how many people - family and friends as well as uni staff - who
referred to it in later conversation. You get a "Captain Copy"
reputation, once people know you are interested: so much so, that even
senior staff sometimes ring or email to ask about other regulations
related to fair play - length of time before students are not allowed
to enter an exam, etc - presumably under the assumption that knowing
one area well (sic) qualifies you to know others.

On that note, a colleague sent the following link:

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=14292079&m
ethod=full&siteid=50082&headline=uni-turns-to-technology-in-bid-to-beat-
cheats-name_page.html

Interesting in that it is a Welsh paper, describing a Scottish
University's use of plagiarism detection software (described as a
"programme" in the article), but more specifically, might give the
impression that the university - Robert Gordon University (RGU) in
Aberdeen - wants to name and shame those caught!

"A UNIVERSITY yesterday unveiled a pilot scheme designed to expose
students who cheat by plagiarising work off the internet."

Several areas caught my eye, including no mention of Turnitin,
iParadigms, and only the briefest mention of the plagiarism detection
service and JISC as the developers (!) of the software:

"Students' work is run through the programme, developed by the Joint
Information Systems Committee (JISC), which checks it against the
contents of 4.5 billion web pages from more than 800 million web sites,
as well as previously-submitted essays."

The focus appears to be UUK:

'Charles Juwah, senior educational development officer at the
university, said, "As plagiarism becomes an increasing problem, we felt
it was important to adopt such trials among a variety of deterrent
strategies within the university...We introduced the trial through
Universities UK, which has introduced the service to institutions
across Britain...This software is a plagiarism deterrent and gives
merit for good practice."'

Not sure how it can give merit for good practice, personally...

Here is my email reply to the newspaper:

"There were several omissions and inaccuracies in your article,
entitled "Uni turns to technology in bid to beat cheats". Firstly, JISC
did not develop the software, this was done by a company called
iParadigms, and the software is called Turnitin. The sevice is run from
Northumbria University, under tender, and is officially known as the
JISC Pagiarism Advisory Service (details from www.jiscpas.ac.uk ). The
name implies the advisory and preventative nature of the service, where
the article only focusses on the detection software. This is only one
aspect.
The opening sentence of the article uses the word "expose", which could
be read as "naming and shaming", when the detection aspect of JISCPAS
is actually diagnostic. Furthermore, in the article, one contributer is
quoted as stating that the software "gives merit for good practice".
This is not its function, as it merely marks texts that could have come
from web sites, essay banks and other contributions. The decision as to
whether this constitutes plagiarism is an academic call, left to the
lecturer.
Finally, UUK is less the source of this initiative than the JISC, which
has been researching and evaluating both preventative advice and
electronic detection for several years. I served on the steering
committee for the original electronic pilot, am a member of the current
experts panel for the advisory service, and its official JISC steering
committee. In these roles I have forcefully advocated for consideration
of the students perspective, which is often ignored in media coverage
of the issue. Hence, it has had a strong Welsh contribution,
particularly from the University of Glamorgan, which has been involved
in chairing workshops on plagiarism for several years. I am intrigued
why a Welsh newspaper of some repute would think it more important to
describe an initiative at a Scottish University, when one closer to
home has had a much more active involvement.

Mike Reddy, Cwmaman, Aberdare [log in to unmask]"

If you are still reading, I would like to ask for your help - only a
few hours of your time! If you have ever tried to track down a
potentially plagiarised passage manually, consider yourself an expert
on Google, or would like to hone your internet research skills, I would
like you to contact me to provide source material for a workshop I am
running at the plagiarism conference at the end of June. It will
involve researching a topic on the internet, manufacturing an "essay"
from the results, then marking one or two other contributions, to see
if you can "manually" find the source documents. It will be fun! No use
of the PDS or turnitin is allowed or required. This is to provide a
comparison for discussion at the conference. It will be fun! You get to
plagiarise legitimately, and your reputation will remain intact, as it
will be rendered anonymous!

Please contact me by email at [log in to unmask] if interested.

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