Turnitin turned down
p2p news / p2pnet: “Academic cheating is a growing problem that’s become easier since the onset of the Internet,” says the promo blurb for Turnitin, a US-made application designed to stop students from plagiarizing other peoples’ work and turning it in as their own.
“Now teachers at all levels have to be more vigilant to catch cheaters in the classroom,” it says, going on:
“Every paper submitted is returned in the form of a customized Originality Report. Results are based on exhaustive searches of billions of pages from both current and archived instances of the internet, millions of student papers previously submitted to Turnitin, and commercial databases of journal articles and periodicals.”
But Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, is banning the use of Turnitin.
“We in no way condone plagiarism,” the Canadian Press has student union president Chantal Brushett saying, but she says the program raises a host of human rights, legal and intellectual-property issues.
Students must consent to having their papers submitted to the database, “but since it’s a course requirement, they’re over a barrel,” the story states, continuing, “Professors have other means to check on papers, she says, such as working with university librarians or typing a fishy-sounding line into Google.
“There’s no need to be submitting papers to a for-profit company based in the United States, in order to check for that plagiarism, if it exists.”
The ban starts in May and the decision will be reviewed after three years, adds CP.
Also See:
Canadian Press – Turnitin.com turned off at university, March 8, 2006
March 9th, 2006 at 7:15 pm
My college uses Turnitin, and i don’t like it one bit. It’s pretty obvious when students plagiarize. Sites like this shouln’t be taking place of the teachers job anyways.
March 9th, 2006 at 7:52 pm
Nothing wrong with turnitin.com. Only you losers out there have anything to worry about.
March 10th, 2006 at 3:03 am
I do not want the company profiting from my work without paying me in return.
March 10th, 2006 at 5:32 am
universities outsource their intellectual property to save them money on having to actually read your papers. It’s all about the cash.
March 10th, 2006 at 5:35 am
universities outsource their intellectual property to save them money on having to actually read your papers. It’s all about the cash.
March 10th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
and laziness! professors didn’t have turnitin.com prior to 1994, because there was no such site. What did they do then…people were caught for plagarism before 1994! Do your job professors, that is what we pay you for!!!!