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Comments from an AP history
and government teacher in Raleigh, NC.
e-mail betsynewmark AT gmail.com
Commissions earned from selling items through Amazon will go towards buying materials for my classes. Thank you.
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Friday, September 22, 2006
Students protest having their work checked for plagiarism
Students at McLean High School in the Washington area are protesting that their high school is requiring them to turn their papers in to turnitin.com to be checked for plagiarism. The way the site works is that students submit their paper and the teacher gets a report on how much of the paper duplicates passages in their database. The students' objection is that the company is making money off having their papers in the database without compensating them. There haven't been any court cases based on this question so I can't really address that.
However, my school subscribed to the service last year. The computerized check gave me a quick check of all the papers in their database and on the rest of the Internet to highlight similar passages. Most of the returns I got were to primary documents because their program isn't sensitive enough to pick out that both my student and some other student might have quoted the same passage from documents such as a speech by FDR or the Dawes Severalty Act. The main benefit I found from the system was that it put students on notice before they write their papers that it will be checked. So, students put a real effort into trying to find out out how source their usage of other sources. I don't know that kids were getting plagiarized research papers past me before, but I'm pretty confident that no one now is simply cutting and pasting from some website and passing it off as his or her own work.
Of course, a service like turnitin.com only catches work that has been posted on the Internet or submitted by a student. Using turnitin.com might have the ironic effect of forcing students predisposed to cheating to actually go to the library and find a book on their subject.
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Students at McLean High School in the Washington area are protesting that their high school is requiring them to turn their papers in to turnitin.com to be checked for plagiarism. The way the site works is that students submit their paper and the teacher gets a report on how much of the paper duplicates passages in their database. The students' objection is that the company is making money off having their papers in the database without compensating them. There haven't been any court cases based on this question so I can't really address that.
However, my school subscribed to the service last year. The computerized check gave me a quick check of all the papers in their database and on the rest of the Internet to highlight similar passages. Most of the returns I got were to primary documents because their program isn't sensitive enough to pick out that both my student and some other student might have quoted the same passage from documents such as a speech by FDR or the Dawes Severalty Act. The main benefit I found from the system was that it put students on notice before they write their papers that it will be checked. So, students put a real effort into trying to find out out how source their usage of other sources. I don't know that kids were getting plagiarized research papers past me before, but I'm pretty confident that no one now is simply cutting and pasting from some website and passing it off as his or her own work.
Of course, a service like turnitin.com only catches work that has been posted on the Internet or submitted by a student. Using turnitin.com might have the ironic effect of forcing students predisposed to cheating to actually go to the library and find a book on their subject.
0 comments
Students at McLean High School in the Washington area are protesting that their high school is requiring them to turn their papers in to turnitin.com to be checked for plagiarism. The way the site works is that students submit their paper and the teacher gets a report on how much of the paper duplicates passages in their database. The students' objection is that the company is making money off having their papers in the database without compensating them. There haven't been any court cases based on this question so I can't really address that.
However, my school subscribed to the service last year. The computerized check gave me a quick check of all the papers in their database and on the rest of the Internet to highlight similar passages. Most of the returns I got were to primary documents because their program isn't sensitive enough to pick out that both my student and some other student might have quoted the same passage from documents such as a speech by FDR or the Dawes Severalty Act. The main benefit I found from the system was that it put students on notice before they write their papers that it will be checked. So, students put a real effort into trying to find out out how source their usage of other sources. I don't know that kids were getting plagiarized research papers past me before, but I'm pretty confident that no one now is simply cutting and pasting from some website and passing it off as his or her own work.
Of course, a service like turnitin.com only catches work that has been posted on the Internet or submitted by a student. Using turnitin.com might have the ironic effect of forcing students predisposed to cheating to actually go to the library and find a book on their subject.
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