Heads up for students - many Profs now using turnitin.com

[Analog]

I teach at a state university, and I was told to start using turnitin.com to fight plagiarism. I have yet to use it, but I will. I guess the university pays money to allow faculty to use this system. I'm kind of curious, so I'm going to give it a 'test' on some material that is purposely plagiarized, and see what happens.....:evil::evil:

BTW, if you don't know about turnitin.com, it is a search engine that looks for plagiarism in a document...

 

[NakaNaka]

Or kids could just write their own damn papers, it's not that hard.

 

[The Stigenator]

here is what bugs me.

I had a class that required us to "quote" from the book.. and then teh prof goes oh its plagarism. Everyone had to do it, but she somehow wanted us to change it. I always started my quotes either within " " or with a statement saying its quoted from.

I hate plagarism, but isnt research a form of plagarism.


To copy from one is plagarism, to copy from many is research.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: The_good_guy

I hate plagarism, but isnt research a form of plagarism.

Not if you acknowledge your sources.

No reason to give them a heads up, if they're cheating they deserve to be caught.

 

[Danman]

My professor used this last year for my English class. I didn't mind it, but I forgot to turn one of my papers into the site so I lost a letter grade. So stupid IMO, but it's my fault that I forgot.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: The_good_guy
here is what bugs me.

I had a class that required us to "quote" from the book.. and then teh prof goes oh its plagarism. Everyone had to do it, but she somehow wanted us to change it. I always started my quotes either within " " or with a statement saying its quoted from.

I hate plagarism, but isnt research a form of plagarism.


To copy from one is plagarism, to copy from many is research.

You DO realize that's what you're supposed to do, don't you? Quotes (" ") with a footnote saying what cited source it was from is usually REQUIRED in a paper.

Plagarism is copying without citing, plain and simple.

 

[The Stigenator]

no the thing was that i had acknowledge teh sites along with the books. The questions were posed to all students. And everyone who searched for it, got all the same answers...

so she claimed plagarism in forms that ppl copied it or quoted it. I am like how do you prevent that.. in that situation there is very limited knowledge available about the author and we are tyring to find info about him. The amount of info is limited and everyone has got it.

That prof was horried.. never again dr. valerie anderson.

 

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by: The_good_guy
no the thing was that i had acknowledge teh sites along with the books. The questions were posed to all students. And everyone who searched for it, got all the same answers...

so she claimed plagarism in forms that ppl copied it or quoted it. I am like how do you prevent that.. in that situation there is very limited knowledge available about the author and we are tyring to find info about him. The amount of info is limited and everyone has got it.

That prof was horried.. never again dr. valerie anderson.

Do you purposely use teh for the? Or do you just happen to keep making that typing error?

 

[The Stigenator]

Originally posted by: Nocturnal

Originally posted by: The_good_guy
no the thing was that i had acknowledge teh sites along with the books. The questions were posed to all students. And everyone who searched for it, got all the same answers...

so she claimed plagarism in forms that ppl copied it or quoted it. I am like how do you prevent that.. in that situation there is very limited knowledge available about the author and we are tyring to find info about him. The amount of info is limited and everyone has got it.

That prof was horried.. never again dr. valerie anderson.

Do you purposely use teh for the? Or do you just happen to keep making that typing error?

its a typing error.

 

[AFB]

Originally posted by: Nocturnal

Originally posted by: The_good_guy
no the thing was that i had acknowledge teh sites along with the books. The questions were posed to all students. And everyone who searched for it, got all the same answers...

so she claimed plagarism in forms that ppl copied it or quoted it. I am like how do you prevent that.. in that situation there is very limited knowledge available about the author and we are tyring to find info about him. The amount of info is limited and everyone has got it.

That prof was horried.. never again dr. valerie anderson.

Do you purposely use teh for the? Or do you just happen to keep making that typing error?

Same reason he didn't capitalize

 

[imported_KirbsAw]

Originally posted by: amdfanboy

Originally posted by: Nocturnal

Originally posted by: The_good_guy
no the thing was that i had acknowledge teh sites along with the books. The questions were posed to all students. And everyone who searched for it, got all the same answers...

so she claimed plagarism in forms that ppl copied it or quoted it. I am like how do you prevent that.. in that situation there is very limited knowledge available about the author and we are tyring to find info about him. The amount of info is limited and everyone has got it.

That prof was horried.. never again dr. valerie anderson.

Do you purposely use teh for the? Or do you just happen to keep making that typing error?

Same reason he didn't capitalize

Also the same reason you didn't punctuate.

 

[ironcrotch]

Originally posted by: KirbsAw

Originally posted by: amdfanboy

Originally posted by: Nocturnal

Originally posted by: The_good_guy
no the thing was that i had acknowledge teh sites along with the books. The questions were posed to all students. And everyone who searched for it, got all the same answers...

so she claimed plagarism in forms that ppl copied it or quoted it. I am like how do you prevent that.. in that situation there is very limited knowledge available about the author and we are tyring to find info about him. The amount of info is limited and everyone has got it.

That prof was horried.. never again dr. valerie anderson.

Do you purposely use teh for the? Or do you just happen to keep making that typing error?

Same reason he didn't capitalize

Also the same reason you didn't punctuate.

ZING

 

[DAGTA]

Good, I hope all the cheaters get caught and fail the course.

 

[everman]

So what's to stop students from using it to change plagerized information just enough to get past filters?

 

[Anubis]

the problim with something like this is that i have had them flag on material that was NOT plagerized

 

[thecrecarc]

Originally posted by: yellowfiero
I teach at a state university,

ur a (gasp) TEACHER!?!?!? do u actually LIKE to stay in school for the rest of ur life?!?!?

 

[acemcmac]

I was only asked to do this once and I refused. Those "search engines" are a sham and they don't deserve to have my work in any digital form whatsoever. When profs say they're going to use this, I submit in locked PDF with printing disabled. They'd have to printscreen, stitch, print, scan and ocr to get it digital again. Nothing ever came of it.

:beer:

 

[DAGTA]

Originally posted by: acemcmac
I was only asked to do this once and I refused. Those "search engines" are a sham and they don't deserve to have my work in any digital form whatsoever. When profs say they're going to use this, I submit in locked PDF with printing disabled. They'd have to printscreen, stitch, print, scan and ocr to get it digital again. Nothing ever came of it.

:beer:

When you are a student at a University/College, all of your work done to pass a course and earn credits is the property of the University/College. They have the rights to do with that work as they please. Most schools/professors are understanding and will allow you to publish your own work or use it for your own success outside of college, if you ask, but they are not required to. By the student agreement, the institution owns your work done for any class credit.

 

[Dacalo]

I used it for my philosophy about year and half ago.
Was fine with me and many students didn't mind

 

[DrPizza]

I used to personally search all of my students papers without the use of some other site... I decided for myself if it constituted plagiarism or not. Some of the accusations are ridiculous, particularly if it's a simple sentence stating a fact (or educated opinion) that can only be stated a certain number of ways. For example, the sentence: "Shakespeare is the most famous author of all times." I typed that here.... then I searched the web, and WOW, it found an exact match. Did I plagiarize it from that site? It's exactly word for word.

Now, if I were researching authors, and happened to use that site as a source, and based on what I read there, I rewrote it to say "the most famous author of all times is Shakespeare," THEN, if I didn't cite the source, it WOULD be plagiarism. (for those of you in high school who don't have a complete understanding of plagiarism, EVEN IF you rewrite the sentence in your own words, as long as you gathered that knowledge from another source - it's plagiarism if you don't site that source.

As a result of the overwhelming majority of papers that I've ever received being extensively plagiarized, I no longer assign papers. (I used to offer them as extra credit projects... only 1 person ever got the credit, every other paper was plagiarized, and it took me too much work to prove it for each paper.)

 

[BooGiMaN]

i say to hell with that site...fvkc those professors..fvck them all...

(boogiman is no longer in school so he doesnt give a rats ass )

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: acemcmac
I was only asked to do this once and I refused. Those "search engines" are a sham and they don't deserve to have my work in any digital form whatsoever. When profs say they're going to use this, I submit in locked PDF with printing disabled. They'd have to printscreen, stitch, print, scan and ocr to get it digital again. Nothing ever came of it.

:beer:

Wow, does being an ass come naturally to you, or do you have to work at it?

 

[Analog]

Originally posted by: thecrecarc

Originally posted by: yellowfiero
I teach at a state university,

ur a (gasp) TEACHER!?!?!? do u actually LIKE to stay in school for the rest of ur life?!?!?

Uhh, I left grad school back in '88, worked for 12 years in the private sector before getting the professorship...

 

[Rapidskies]

I just used this site over the summer to submit a paper. It tells you right away what percentage of your paper is plagerized. Mine came back with one hit from some paper some guy wrote at the University of Florida and it said our papers matched less than 1% so all was good. I guess I don't care one way or another.

 

[The Wildcard]

Hmm this shouldn't worry any student who writes his own paper, lol.