I won’t quote even a word from this story

UCLA is among the many universities that subscribe to Turnitin to detect plagiarism in student reports.  We noted some time back, however, that students have access to services – such as the one above – that help them to lower their plagiarism scores.  The one above purports to help students avoid “accidental plagiarism” (whatever that is) by telling them what their score on Turnitin would be.  They can then diddle with the text of the paper to lower the score. One has a sense that plagiarizing a paper and then “fixing” it via such services would be more work than…

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…

August 1, 2010Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age By TRIP GABRIEL NY Times At Rhode Island College, a freshman copied and pasted from a Web site’s frequently asked questions page about homelessness — and did not think he needed to credit a source in his assignment because the page did not include author information. At DePaul University, the tip-off to one student’s copying was the purple shade of several paragraphs he had lifted from the Web; when confronted by a writing tutor his professor had sent him to, he was not defensive — he just wanted to know…