Turn it in
The last segment on Triple J's 'Hack program tonight was about the recent trend for Australian universities, including mine, to require students to submit essays to this American website.
In high school, I remember being told by a teacher that Google was the best tool they had to detect plagiarism. Turnitin.com takes it a step further; where Google can pull up phrases from websites, Turnitin also claims to detect plagiarism from other student papers -- which is to say, from the database it maintains of papers which students have been forced to submit.
There's only one faculty at my uni which requires students to submit work through this website, and in a clear case of obeying the letter and not the spirit of the law, lecturers are empowered to refuse to mark essays which are not submitted in this way. I'm given to understand that at least one Australian university requires all its students to submit essays through the site, and I'd not be surprised at all to hear that other unis are following suit.
I find this really problematic. To start with, I don't think plagiarism is the widespread problem the site claims (eighty percent of papers? Really?). I honestly believe that the outstanding majority of students, most particularly at a university level, submit essays which are their own work, and the tutors I know universally say that they've only come across a few papers which appear plagiarised.
More importantly, though, I wonder if there aren't issues of intellectual property at stake here? Students are being required to submit their papers to a company which archives them, and I can't find anything on the site which explains exactly how they will be using my work in their business. How do I know that this isn't the legitimate front-end of one of those 'digital paper mills' that the website complains about? I'd also be interested to know whether I'm entitled to royalties or something when my work is used in this way. I'm an impoverished student, I could do with them.
Anyhow, this company is making big bucks from universities, and from the students that are being required to patronise the company. Under normal circumstances, there is no way that I would submit my work to this kind of scheme, yet my university is requiring me to do so in order to fulfil the requirements of my course.
It worries me. It worries me very much.
In high school, I remember being told by a teacher that Google was the best tool they had to detect plagiarism. Turnitin.com takes it a step further; where Google can pull up phrases from websites, Turnitin also claims to detect plagiarism from other student papers -- which is to say, from the database it maintains of papers which students have been forced to submit.
There's only one faculty at my uni which requires students to submit work through this website, and in a clear case of obeying the letter and not the spirit of the law, lecturers are empowered to refuse to mark essays which are not submitted in this way. I'm given to understand that at least one Australian university requires all its students to submit essays through the site, and I'd not be surprised at all to hear that other unis are following suit.
I find this really problematic. To start with, I don't think plagiarism is the widespread problem the site claims (eighty percent of papers? Really?). I honestly believe that the outstanding majority of students, most particularly at a university level, submit essays which are their own work, and the tutors I know universally say that they've only come across a few papers which appear plagiarised.
More importantly, though, I wonder if there aren't issues of intellectual property at stake here? Students are being required to submit their papers to a company which archives them, and I can't find anything on the site which explains exactly how they will be using my work in their business. How do I know that this isn't the legitimate front-end of one of those 'digital paper mills' that the website complains about? I'd also be interested to know whether I'm entitled to royalties or something when my work is used in this way. I'm an impoverished student, I could do with them.
Anyhow, this company is making big bucks from universities, and from the students that are being required to patronise the company. Under normal circumstances, there is no way that I would submit my work to this kind of scheme, yet my university is requiring me to do so in order to fulfil the requirements of my course.
It worries me. It worries me very much.
posted by beck at 6:38 pm
2 Comments:
Maybe it's time to start putting "©2005 Beck, All Rights Reserved" on the top of all your essays. What a mess!
My favourite part is where my lecturer could refuse to mark it if I didn't hand it in.
The government faculty here sucks harder than Linda Lovelace operating a vacuum cleaner.
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