About Turnitin
Since Fall 2001, Academic Affairs has funded a campus-wide subscription to Turnitin.com, a plagiarism detection database, as a service for faculty and students concerned with plagiarism.
The problem: Plagiarism has always harmed students who adhere to standards of academic honesty; but the Internet, in addition to its benefits of providing a wealth of resources to scholars, has also made it much easier for students to find and copy other people's work and use it as their own.
- Many books, articles, encyclopedias, working papers, unsolicited opinions and rants, and other types of sources are now freely accessible online.
- Many classes have students create web sites for class assignments, which include papers and other work by the students, making their work openly accessible to others.
- Subscription databases (e.g. JSTOR, Lexis Nexis, Ebsco, Questia) include the full text of academic and general interest journals, magazines, books, and other sources.
- To combat increasing costs for academic journals and to make their work available to other scholars sooner, many scholars are moving toward publishing their work online.
- Online "paper mills" offer term papers for sale or trade (e.g. Cheathouse.com, School Sucks, Screw School, The Paper Store)
This has opened up an enormous world of resources for scholars to use in their work. On the other hand, all these sources provide text in electronic format, ready to be copied and pasted into a paper. Given the vast amount of text available on the Internet, attempting to find possible unattributed sources for a suspect paper is a daunting task.
One solution: Plagiarism detection software such as Turnitin.com, developed by a group of professors at UC Berkeley who were concerned with the increase of digital plagiarism.
How it works:
- Upload a paper into the Turnitin database
- Turnitin's software uses "a series of algorithms to turn textual information into a 'digital fingerprint' that can identify matching patterns, including those from texts substantially altered by paraphrasing or word substitution."
- The paper is matched against the contents of billions of web pages, pdf files, paper mill essays, an increasing number of articles and books from online subscription databases, and a growing archive of previously submitted student papers.
- Turnitin produces an "originality report" which points out any suspect passages and lists links to web sites or contact information for previously submitted papers from which content appears to have been taken (Turnitin does not allow access to student papers without student or faculty permission).
You can upload papers into Turnitin after students turn in an electronic copy of their papers (by email, on a disk, etc). Or, you can allow students access to the account and have them upload their own papers.
Turnitin also offers a "peer review" option allows students in a class to view and anonymously critique other students' anonymous papers. This enables assignments such as having students analyze each others work, and then revise their own original submissions based on both faculty and student critiques, thus involving students in a version of the collaborative scholarly process of professionals in the discipline.
Limitations:
- Currently does not currently cover many full text online subscription services such as Lexis Nexis, but they are negotiating to add coverage for more journals, books, and other publications available by subscription online.
- Does not include everything available from paper mills; also, does not cover papers for hire (new papers written on demand by paper mills), unless/until submitted and included in database.
Note: To address legal concerns for privacy (such as FERPA - Family Educational and Privacy Rights Act), remove any personally identifiable information from the paper and do not use the student's actual name if you are submitting papers without the student's knowledge or consent. Use a code name or number for you to identify the student but which cannot be used by others to identify the student.
How to Use Wesleyan's Subscription to Turnitin.com:
Faculty can set up an account in which you can create a file for each of your classes. Faculty or students can then submit papers to a class file in the Turnitin database. Or, faculty can contact Kendall Hobbs in the library to request to have individual papers checked against the Turnitin database.
To set up an account: Contact Kendall Hobbs in the library with the following information:
To use your account:
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To set up an account:
To use your account:
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The Problem - The Wider Context: Academic Dishonesty Do students cheat? (whether by plagiarism, sharing answers on an exam, collaborating when individual work is requested, fabricating bibliographies, etc)
- Studies surveying students consistently find better than 50% (sometimes up to 90%) of students report having cheated at least once; many (one fifth to one third or so) are habitual cheaters (depending on how "habitual" is defined). Many (though not all) recent surveys (from the last decade or two) find higher rates of cheating than in the past. Very few (a few percent) are caught. (See bibliography below)
Why do students cheat?
- Unintentional cheating: honest misunderstandings of what constitutes plagiarism, unfair assistance, etc.
- Pressure for grades: from parents, or for getting good jobs or into graduate school.
- Cheating by authorities (e.g. improprieties by high school teachers and administrators concerning high-stakes tests)
- Focus on results rather than process (grade or diploma rather than acquiring knowledge)
- Large, impersonal classes or universities, "impersonal" professors, etc
- They can get away with it (not likely to get caught, or not likely to face serious consequences even if caught).
- Faculty often look the other way: complicated procedures for reporting and prosecuting, etc
- Others are getting away with it, so I have to cheat out of self-defense
How do they justify cheating? Studies indicate that students tend to agree with the values of academic honesty, but they can find ways to interpret them as not applying in particular circumstances:
- Deny personal responsibility: parental pressure, unfair workload, everybody else does it
- Deny injury: it's a small part of grade, if I had time I would have done better on my own
- Shift the blame: inadequate teaching, negligent or negative professors, unreasonable or unclear assignments, favoritism shown to others (e.g. tutors or extra help sessions for athletes)
- Appeal to higher loyalties: helping a friend, or not reporting a friend's cheating
Why do students not cheat?
- Clear understanding of what is expected of them: specific assignments, course requirements, professor and institutional rules on academic honesty
- Odds and consequences of getting caught (potential costs of cheating higher than potential rewards)
- Knowledge that academic help is available if needed (from professor, librarians, writing workshop, or other campus academic resources)
- Assurance that others are not cheating (both so I don't have to keep up, and others accept and adhere to institutional expectations, i.e. academic dishonesty is seen as socially unacceptable)
- See value in process and results of learning, not just resulting grade; value academic honesty
Ways to combat academic dishonesty:
- Smaller schools, smaller classes - smaller private liberal arts schools tend to have lower cheating rates
- Honor codes, especially where students have a significant role in establishing and administering academic integrity policies, and policies are widely known and understood as well as regularly enforced. Explain and emphasize importance of academic integrity (show that the school takes academic integrity seriously, and includes and respects students)
- Clear definitions of expectations for a class (what is expected, what's unacceptable, how work is evaluated, due dates; show that the professor takes academic integrity seriously)
- Provide examples of good work (previous papers, exams, etc) (so students know the type of work that is expected; also, assures equal access to these study materials that likely show up in e.g. fraternity "test files")
- Assign (or help students form) specific topics and require critical analysis (less likely to find already written papers on general topics)
- Select and review topics for papers early, review progress (can't postpone work, harder to find or "commission" work from paper mills; also, they know the professor is available when they need help)
- Require a revision of first submission (and in general, remind them of [or, teach them] good writing strategies, e.g. the importance of drafts and rewrites)
- Use early, shorter papers to learn students' writing styles
- Assign more tests, quizzes, papers, etc: less weight per grade, more practice, chances to improve grade.
- Change assignments each time course is offered.
- Exams: proctor, remind students of rules (both general, e.g. honor code, and specific, e.g. use of notes etc), seating arrangement, multiple versions of test, photocopy exams before returning
- Types of assignments - presentations, with q&a; group projects; web sites, or posting work to WebBoard or a class listserv (knowing peers will see one's work tends to increase quality of work; also, work seen as taking part in a public, scholarly dialog, not just another hoop to satisfy course requirements, especially if time is included for responses and revisions)
Bibliography
- Crown, D. (1995) Changes over time in academic dishonesty at the college level. Psychological Reports, 76(3): 763-768.
- Davis, S., Grover, C., Becker, A., & McGregor, L. (1992) Academic dishonesty: prevalence, determinants, techniques, and punishments. Teaching of Psychology, 19(1): 16-20.
- Kerkvliet, J., & Sigmund, C. (1999) Can we control cheating in the classroom? Journal of Economic Education, 30(4): 331-343.
- LaBeff, E., Clark, R., Haines, V., & Diekhoff, G. (1990) Situational ethics and college student cheating. Sociological Inquiry, 60(2): 190-198.
- McCabe, D. (1999) Academic dishonesty among high school students. Adolescence, 34(136): 681-687.
- McCabe, D. (1992) The influence of situational ethics on cheating among college students. Sociological Inquiry, 62(3): 365-374.
- McCabe, D., & Pavela, G. (2000) Some good news about academic integrity. Change, 32(5): 32-38.
- McCabe, D., & Trevino, L. (1996) What we know about cheating in college: longitudinal trends and recent developments. Change, 28(1): 28-33.
- McCabe, D., & Trevino, L. (1993) Academic dishonesty: honor codes and other contextual influences. Journal of Higher Education, 64(5): 522-538.
- Murdock, T. (1999) Discouraging cheating in your classroom. Mathematics Teacher, 92(7): 587-591.
- Newstead, S., Franklyn-Stokes, A., & Armstead, P. (1996) Individual differences in student cheating. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87(2): 229-241.
- Pullen, P., Ortloff, V., Casey, S., & Payne, J. (2000) Analysis of academic misconduct using unobtrusive research: a study of discarded cheat sheets. College Student Journal, 34(4): 616-625.
- Roig, M. (1999) When college students' attempts at paraphrasing become instances of potential plagiarism. Psychological Reports, 84(3): 973-982.
- Roig, M., & Ballew, C. (1994) Attitudes toward cheating of self and others by college students and professors. The Psychological Record, 44(1): 3-12.
- Stebelman, S. (1998) Cybercheating: dishonesty goes digital. American Libraries, 29(8): 48-50.
- Stern, E., & Havlicek, L. (1986). Academic misconduct: Results of faculty and undergraduate student surveys. Journal of Allied Health, 15(2): 129-142.
- Straw, J. (2000) Keep your eyes off the screen: online cheating and what we can do about it. Academic Exchange Quarterly, 4(3): 21-25.