The War against Plagiarism

One of the things I’m tasked with right off the bat is to evaluate the success of Turnitin at our college.  I’m looking at several things to get a broad picture of the success of this tool – how many submissions have we had? What story does that data tell?  Which instructors are our most active users, and what do they have to say about it? How is it being used? How can we kick up usage – or do we want to?

Our dean was able to save this resource from the chopping block by negotiating a better cost for us, so this will be a pivotal year that determines whether we continue on with it, or abandon it.

My analysis of the data told me several things.

• ·         We had 2492 submissions collegewide.  That’s about one submission for every two students. 
• ·         The campuses that use the service the most are Online (by a landslide), followed by Anderson, Fort Wayne, and Northwest.
• ·         77 percent of all final submissions had zero to 24 percent unoriginal content (the “green” zone).  14 percent came in at 25 to 49 percent unoriginal content, and less than 10 percent showed 50 to 100 percent unoriginal content.

So here’s my reflection of this data.

77 percent of students’ submissions were in the green zone.  This group either doesn’t have a problem with plagiarism, OR it means that the final submission, which overwrites the original submission, was successful – that the students learned from the first originality report and improved their paper.  This latter scenario means that Turnitin succeeded in its intended purpose.  However, there's no way for me to know how many submissions were, in fact, resubmissions. 

23 percent of student submissions were in the range of unacceptable.  This could mean that Turnitin wasn't used as recommended to improve student writing, or students simply chose not to resubmit after revising.

I don't think we are getting an accurate portrait of the problem of plagiarism in our realm with these statistics; I'm not even sure I can gauge the success of Turnitin based on these numbers alone.  I'm in the process of gathering faculty feedback. 

I’m hoping for an opportunity to spread the word that plagiarism needs an updated approach at the curriculum level.  We live in a different world, and the concept of intellectual property is nearly lost on students, not just at our school but everywhere.   I’m a big believer in the use of Turnitin in the classroom, if it is used properly – and my goal is to blast faculty with the benefits and ways to utilize it successfully with students.  What are your ideas?

If we are unsuccessful and we lose Turnitin – what then?  There are several free tools out there, but there are limitations: 1) most of the free tools check only against web content, not against databases or student paper repositories.  2) They are designed to flag unoriginal content, but lack the tools that provide those teachable moments students need to improve their writing.  3) They’re clunky to use, and one of the advantages to a tool like this would be to empower students to check their own papers and have discussions in the classroom about their findings. 

What are your experiences with plagiarism at your campus? And are you an advocate of Turnitin?  Why or why not?  I’d love to hear your thoughts as I prepare my battle plan.