

Why I won't TurnItIn - boredguy8
http://readmorewritemorethinkmorebemore.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-i-wont-turn-it-in.html

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Zev
My college has used TurnItIn for (at least) a few years now. At least, some
departments do. I've only had to take one class that used it, Introduction to
Psychology.

I went and spoke to the professor about this, asking if I could email her the
paper, rather than using this service. She said that if it was up to her, I
could but it wasn't and I would have to talk to the head of the department. I
went and spoke to the head of the department and she accused me of wanting to
cheat, due to my objections to the policy. I pointed out that I objected to
the service keeping the rights to my paper to use for checking against anyone
else's paper. She all but said that she didn't care and that my choices were
to use the service or to fail the class -- it was too late in the semester to
drop the class without approval from the dean.

I ended up using the service, I was a freshman and didn't want to fail the
class. Especially not so late in the semester. At the top of each paper was a
notice saying that the work was copyrighted to myself and that I didn't give
TurnItIn permission to use it. I doubt the service noticed, it is automated,
after all.

I've since made a point to ask every professor in a class where I would have
to write a paper if the department uses such a service. They've all said
basically the same thing: "We don't use that service, don't worry," and one
even mentioned the concerns I had as a reason why they didn't want to use it
either.

~~~
enjo
What ownership claims does the service take over your work? Is it simply to
hold a copy to check for future plagiarism, or is it some larger copyright
claim?

My wife employs some rudimentary checks for cheating in her classes
(accounting). Simply checking the author field in excel documents turns up a
cheating rate in the 15% range. I'm actually rather shocked (and alarmed) that
so few professors apparently choose to use these services. They absolutely
should. As a student, I'd demand that they do. After all, kids coasting
through college only serve to damage your degree.

~~~
Zev
As to what the service does, please see my response to kenjackson for a bit
more on this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1741731>

I dislike the accusation and assumption that I'm going to cheat. I resent the
fact that by voicing an opinion on the matter, I was accused of having a
desire to cheat. I loathe being accused of lying because of someone else's
actions. Especially when I've never met, encountered or so much as heard of
this person before. And in my experience, using TurnItIn implies all of the
above.

When it came to talking about the paper and research, every professor started
off by talking about academic trust, don't plagiarize and so on. It seems
hollow to follow that with "Okay. Now that thats said, I don't personally
believe any of it. I think that you're all liars and cheats. So, you have to
use this service."

~~~
kenjackson
No one is accusing you of cheating. Do you refuse to let professors grade your
papers, because if they do they're implying that you have gotten every
question wrong?

And any professor who talks about academic trust is someone you should avoid,
because they're lying. Part of academia is about verification and refutation.
If you can't validate work, you don't believe it. Now it may be the case that
you choose not to validate it, maybe due to trust of the author, but that
trust has been gained not something granted to all academics.

~~~
Zev
_No one is accusing you of cheating. Do you refuse to let professors grade
your papers, because if they do they're implying that you have gotten every
question wrong?_

Well, the head of the department all but accused me of cheating because I went
and spoke to her about the use of TurnItIn. If I had to guess, I'd say that
the only reason she didn't do so outright was because I hadn't turned in (or
written, at that) anything yet. Nor is it like I refused to have my work
graded; I tried to find alternate methods of handing my work in.

 _And any professor who talks about academic trust is someone you should
avoid, because they're lying. Part of academia is about verification and
refutation. If you can't validate work, you don't believe it. Now it may be
the case that you choose not to validate it, maybe due to trust of the author,
but that trust has been gained not something granted to all academics._

"Academic Trust" is usually mentioned in the context of "school policy" and
something thats required on the syllabus. I've never had a professor say
"Well, I trust you. You don't have to use any sources." (However nice that
would be.)

I'm not saying to not verify or validate the work. I am saying that if I take
the time to cite my sources in whatever format the professor specifies, the
professor should be able to determine if I plagiarized or not on their own.
Really now, if someone _doesn't_ cite their work, that should be a giveaway
that there is a potential problem.

And honestly, for undergraduate work, the issue of validation isn't exactly
going to be important. An overwhelmingly large majority of the time, no
original research is being conducted.

~~~
kenjackson
"I am saying that if I take the time to cite my sources in whatever format the
professor specifies, the professor should be able to determine if I
plagiarized or not on their own. Really now, if someone doesn't cite their
work, that should be a giveaway that there is a potential problem."

Do you expect people who plagiarize to site: "Cheap A+ Essays" in their
references? No, you buy an essay from an essay mill. Change a few things here
and there to make it fit for the class, and turn it in.

You actually expect the professor to subscribe to every essay service in the
world? If I was a professor the only way I could deal with this problem is to
write a program that catalogued all essays from this service and do some type
of text match against them. Essentially I'd write TurnItIn, but as a
"theoretical" History professor with no programming skills, this is probably
not easy.

I just don't get how students expect professors to actually detect plagiarism
in most cases otherwise.

I used to grade papers in high school of my peers and while I could often spot
cheating, I could almost never prove it. How did I spot cheating? I could
often tell from within the context of a single paper the writing goes from
horrible to exceptionally good.and then back to horrible. Likewise, I'd
sometimes get 2 or 3 really poor papers and then get a paper where the student
is John Hawkes. In the first couple of papers, no citations or horrible
citations. In this paper the citations are perfect, page numbers, referencing
hard to find journals and the whole nine. But yet, you're still often left
with your hands tied.

~~~
Zev
How people actually cheat is beyond me; I've never had the inclination to do
so.

I do expect the papers to be read by a real person. And in the case you
described, that should be enough for the professor to call the student in and
talk to them. Whats the difference between a person going "I think you're
plagiarizing" and a machine doing the same? Besides a machine doing it faster.

Keep in mind what my objection is here: the storage and use of my works, not
the service itself. Why can't TurnItIn do what you suggested (perhaps in a
sarcastic manner) and subscribe to these services instead?

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1va
I'm not a big fan of this business but I take issue with the "Teachable
Moment" image seemingly created for this post. How does what TurnItIn is doing
constitute an "IP Rights" violation?

Surely in the contract that the school signed they gave TurnItIn permission to
use these data in this way, and asserted that the teacher, by uploading the
document, is ensuring that he or she has the right to grant that permission.
At the very least this pushes the IP issues onto the school, as far as
TurnItIn knows they have every right to use this content in that way.

It seems probable that the admissions paperwork for the school probably
granted the school the right to make limited use of the work the student turns
in. I know when I had to complete a "Bachelor Thesis" the school retained the
right to use that content, at least for publication and probably for sale if
they chose to. Is that uncommon?

Also, I think the problem TurnItIn is trying to solve is less about copyright
violation and more about plagiarism/intellectual dishonesty in an academic
context. You could readily buy a paper or essay from someone to obtain the
copyright permissions, but if you submit that as your own work to the
professor you've violated academic ethics.

~~~
SHOwnsYou
Pretty sure it is vastly uncommon for schools to retain publishing rights to
your papers.

My university has publishing rights (which they purchased) to a single paper
of mine to publish in a journal.

~~~
enjo
Not in my experience. I'm quite sure my wifes PhD thesis belongs, for all
intents and purposes, to her granting University. I believe that is standard
at least at the Doctoral level.

By the same token my honors college undergrad thesis also granted publishing
rights to my University (which is comical given the quality).

~~~
Zev
A thesis is quite different from a random two page paper on a few chapters
reading from last week.

------
SHOwnsYou
I had no idea TurnItIn checked submitted papers against previously submitted
papers.

Today begins my quest to get all of my papers removed from TurnItIn.com's
database.

~~~
boredguy8
I'm curious how that works out for you.

------
hardy263
My university computer programming class is using this to check source code
for assignments.

What irked me is that there's entire buildings full of computer scientists and
engineers, but they can't develop their own plagiarism detection algorithm for
internal use, and thereby safeguarding the works of their students.

It just doesn't make sense to me.

