[CALIBK12] Turnitin.com

[Janet Hasbrouck]

Hi Shelee,
 
We use Turnitin, but I don't think this has ever come up. We have had students, parents and their lawyers try to deny the cheating and plagiarism when it is detected. If you want to do some research, there have been several law suits filed by students for this very reason and the students lost the cases. I think that Turnitin has some links on their site under news releases or something like that. A Google search or eLibrary or Ebsco search would certainly give you some articles to read about the basis of the decisions.
 
Just my thoughts, but I would assume that in the situation you describe, the student's paper would still be subjected to scrutiny by the teacher checking for citations, etc, and the use of Google or other search engine searches of distinctive phrases, comparison to Sparks Notes, etc., the way we did before we had Turnitin if anything looks suspicious. We have particularly been gratified when it turns up papers turned in by siblings, trying to get by with not doing their own work.
 
Our teachers try to always use it in a uniform way. One example is having all assignments due in Turnitin at 7:30 in the morning. For those students without Internet access, they can come to the library before class at 8:00 and submit their work then.
 
Call me someday if you want to talk about this, but I don't know what else I can offer.
 
Janet HasBrouck, Librarian
Arcadia High School, Arcadia CA
 
 

>>> Shelee Wilkerson <wilkmike at earthlink.net> 12/2/2008 3:17 PM >>>

Does anyone out there use turnitin.com? If you do, have you ever run into a situation where the student refuses to use it? It was just brought to my attention that one of our students is refusing to use it because it is his "intellectual property" and does not agree with their terms and conditions. If you have run into this how did your school/administration deal with it? I am just curious. I was cc'd on the memo to administration and had to laugh. I give them credit for fighting the fight.

Shelee Wilkerson
South Pasadena High School


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.sjsu.edu/pipermail/calibk12/attachments/20081202/2f327a53/attachment.html