A contract to bring the first online plagiarism prevention service, Turnitin.com, to IU Southeast was awarded at the end of the fall 2008 semester, with services set to begin by the start of summer session I.

Katherine Wigley, instructional designer at the Institute for Learning and Teaching Excellence, said Turnitin.com is a resource for faculty and students to screen academic papers for plagiarism.

“For students, it’s a great tool to check citation references in papers,” she said. “Turnitin.com is going to highlight the section of quoted text.”

Students can then compare the originality report they receive to their works cited or references page to ensure that proper citation was given.

Originality reports calculate the percentage of the
paper that is allegedly plagiarized after comparing it to billions of pages of content in the Turnitin and IU databases.

The reports also include an anonymous copy of the material suspected of being reproduced.

For faculty, it can be used to compare a paper suspected of containing plagiarism.

“Often times, it’s obvious when a paper seems suspicious because it’s not in a student’s voice,” Wigley said. “They can use Turnitin to see if it was plagiarized.”

She said it was also a tool for faculty to teach students the proper way to cite papers and paraphrase.

“At IU, there’s definitely a commitment to use the tool slanted much more toward student learning,” she said.

Before the new contract was awarded, IU Southeast had a discount agreement with Turnitin.com.

“It was based on our full-time student enrollment numbers,” Wigley said. “So, it made it cost prohibitive for us to purchase it for our campus.”

IU Bloomington negotiated the contract that brought the services to each satellite campus for three years.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen after the third year,” Wigley said, “but I suspect it’ll be renewed.”

Turnitin.com wasn’t made available during the current semester because the IUS administration wanted to ensure faculty were properly trained on its use and students were aware of its implementation.

Faculty members choosing to use it are asked, but not required, to include information about the service in the syllabus that they give students on the first day of class.

“We consider the syllabus to be a contract of sorts,” Wigley said. “It lets you know what the instructor has in store for you [and] we want Turnitin to be like that.”

Colleges and universities have the option of allowing papers they submit to be stored in the Turnitin.com database where they can be used by other institutions to screen for plagiarism.
 
IU Southeast chose the option to have their submitted papers stored exclusively in the IU database which means that only IU campuses will be able to view them for comparison.

While Turnitin.com is meant to be a faculty and student resource, not all students will have access.

Only students whose professors have chosen to use the service to supplement their class will be able to check their papers for plagiarism.

Wigley said students that find themselves in a class where it is not being used can ask their respective professors to make it available.

“For the most part, students don’t have an account until their instructors create it,” she said.

The service will not automatically be available to every student because it will be used primarily as a faculty resource.

“Because it’s a faculty tool and because it’s a classroom resource, those are faculty decisions,” Wigley said. “They get to decide how their classes are run.”

Students will still be required to use the style guides and, if it is available, should not rely on Turnitin.com to avoid plagiarizing someone else’s work.

“Before there was Turnitin, there was no use of Turnitin,” Wigley said.

“The onus is absolutely on the student to submit good work.”

Leigh Ann Meyer, director of the Writing Center, is piloting Turnitin.com during her summer writing courses to get an idea of its effectiveness.

She said faculty should use it to educate students on the importance of properly citing sources instead of strictly as a tool to catch those that plagiarize.

“A lot of times plagiarism is accidental,” she said. “We’re going to use Turnitin.com in a positive way.”

Robert Lennartz, assistant professor of psychology, and Yu Shen, professor of history, said they use Google to check any suspicious papers for plagiarism and will probably use Turnitin.com when it becomes available.

“I don’t know a lot about it,” Lennartz said, “but it sounds like it’s potentially useful.” 

“It will be good to check for originality,” Shen said.

James Bonsall , Student Government Association president, said the issue was concerning to students and there wasn’t enough education on plagiarism.

“At least they’re doing it the right way,” he said. “They’re letting students know and giving them a chance to correct their mistakes.”

Robert McGonnell, MBA student, had a skeptical outlook on the service.

“It could be helpful to those that have the intent of not plagiarizing,” he said. “Those that want to will turn a blind eye to it.”

Student and faculty surveys will be conducted during the spring 2010 semester to get feedback on the service which will then be used to re-evaluate policies and procedures.

By TRAVIS STURGILL
Staff Writer
trsturgi@ius.edu