My son sent me a web reference on the Turnitin system UCLA and many other universities use to check student papers for plagiarism. Much of the article complains about shortcomings of the system, i.e., things it does not find for various reasons. But toward the bottom, the article reveals that Turnitin has a service for students that tells them what their plagiarism rating is. That is contrary to the impression given instructors – and presumably to university officials who are paying for the service – that student paper ratings are known only to the instructor. The student gets only a receipt for the paper, not the rating. That’s true unless that student subscribes to Turnitin’s “Writecheck” service.
Full article at http://davideharrington.com/?p=594
As you can see above, the Writecheck website says it is part of Turnitin. It is not someone else’s emulation of the Turnitin system.
UCLA is paying for this service. Is it worth it given what Turnitin is now doing?
PS: Apparently, Turnitin did not see the unconscious humor in calling its student paid subscription service Writecheck. Maybe it’s because fewer people pay by check these days.
Update: Insider Higher Ed has a piece on this issue: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/09/09/turnitin_writecheck_lights_fire_in_plagiarism_debate
4 comments:
I think this service is offering students the chance to get their "similarity rating" *before* they turn in the paper to the instructor.
Personally, I've had a mixed experience with Turnitin. It's certainly useful as a central repository of papers, and it makes deadlines easy to enforce. But I found that papers rated as most "original" (which means they have the least similarity to other text strings in the database) were the most incomprehensible. There is going to be a baseline of "similarity" between all papers in a class, especially if they are based on common readings.
There are settings within Turnitin that we can turn on that allows students to see their Originality score and report anyway, which I think is the same thing that Writecheck does.
Instead of worrying so much about cheating, we should use Turnitin as a tool to teach and talk about proper citation, not being the plagiarism police.
I let my students see their Originality report and resubmit their essays multiple times if they have time.
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