Charles
This is easily solved. If all institutions took the decision to allow
students to use Turnitin as a formative tool i.e. putting the emphasis
on prevention rather than detection then your student would have had the
opportunity to submit her work herself prior to handing it in for
marking. Many students are concerned about being accused of plagiarism
and welcome the opportunity to check the originality of their work
themselves, your student obviously was.
It is possible to set up a formative Turnitin assignment that allows
students to see the originality report and also to submit as many
versions of their work or different pieces of work as they need. If the
dates are set appropriately then the pieces of work they submit will not
be added to the Turnitin database until after the work is handed in, and
marked.
At Teesside we have set up a Blackboard organisation called Academic
Skills. This contains useful information for students on how not to
plagiarise and also allows them to submit any document they wish to the
Turnitin system and obtain an originality report. Students are also
introduced to the Turnitin system in certain core modules and given the
opportunity to use it in this way.
Regards
Eileen Webb
Dr. Eileen Webb
HEA e-Learning Pathfinder Project Leader
Room 12 Pegasus Building
Centre for Learning & Quality Enhancement
University of Teesside
Middlesbrough TS1 3BA
tel: +44 (0) 1642 738028
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-----Original Message-----
From: Plagiarism [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Charles
Oppenheim
Sent: 27 February 2008 14:50
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Interesting Turnitin problem
A student here submitted a Master's dissertation. This was checked
against
Turnitin, which noted that the dissertation was virtually identical to
one
on the Turnitin database and the item in question was a disertation
submitted to a different University. The student was told of this; she
asked what the other University was. When the student was told, she
said
she had a simple explanation. Whilst our University does NOT allow
students to put their own work on Turnitin (only staff can do that) in
the
other University, students CAN test their own work using Turnitin. Our
student had a friend in the other University and had asked her friend to
submit a late draft to Turnitin to see what it might show up. As a
result, the draft duissertation was added to the Turnitin database, and
so
came up as a match when we, a few weeks later, tested her final
dissertation against Turnitin.
This demonstrates a risk, I feel, if many HEIs allow their students to
put
their own work against Turnitin. I, the Registrar at the other
University
and several of my colleagues wasted a lot of time tracking down the
whole
story.
Has anyone else encountered this sort of thing?
Charles
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