‘Have I got a deal for you. You don’t want to be left out in
the cold. If you miss the boat on this, who would want to go to your school?
You would be a laughingstock. Everybody’s doing it. Ok, maybe not everybody,
but a whole heap of people. Thousands have tried it. Most have stuck with it.
And many are unaware of the dangers to themselves or their students. But let’s
not worry about danger now. This is education! What could possibly go wrong?
Who would want to try to hurt you or your students?’
 |
| Best in False Advertising |
Don’t you want to be part of the top 69%? At least, the above statistic leads you to assume that the top 31% did not blatantly reject the greatest anti-plagiarism web service known to man. Or did they? What about the Ivy League schools? Would you imagine Harvard and Princeton to be among the top 10% of the “best colleges”? In many years, they make up #1 and #2. So wouldn’t it be a great way to sell your service if one or both used and publicized your product?
“As far as we know, there is no
current subscription to any plagiarism detection software at Harvard. In
2006, the FAS Instructional Computing Group conducted a pilot of Turnitin for
one course. Subsequently, the university decided not to subscribe.”
–Harvard Library, Ask a Librarian website
The truth
remains: Harvard did a pilot of anti-plagiarism software, and decided not to
sign a contract. Princeton, Yale and Stanford also have chosen their internal
honor codes over an external database run by a private company. However, TurnItIn
has grown to a meteoric rise in educational partnership thanks to standing on the
shoulders of the integrity of past clients. The most famous example is the use
of Harvard University in marketing slogans, either formally or informally.
“Used by Harvard” is often the only explanation given over multiple years of
promotional material, despite the truth of the limited test sample. And even
Duke University, which is mentioned in many articles regarding the software,
seems to have spent more time studying the effects of anti-plagiarism websites
than subjecting their students to them. But the desired effects are
astronomical. Even if Harvard were to refute the inclusion claims, 1000's of contracts have already been signed on their supposed endorsement:
Close to 6,500 secondary institutions worldwide now use Turnitin, including 56 percent of the top 100 high schools listed on U.S. News and World Report's America's Best High Schools. –TurnItIn.com
(Each Ivy League University realized the legal implications and recognized the red flags surrounding the use of such a software. How easy the database stripped a student of their intellectual property by stripping them of their copyright under the U.S. Constitution. Potential for their school to be placed in unwanted litigation. How easily the system could be breached, whereby putting their students at risk for identity theft, and cyber-stalking.)
Principals, board members, deans, academic facilitators – all strive to be the best educational institution around. Even when not in direct competition, the struggle to get ahead and stay ahead breeds interest in all types of pilot programs and new methodology. But the use of TurnItIn also breeds exposure of an undesired kind, as everyone wants to be known for curtailing cheating, but no one wants to be known as a hotbed for cheaters. Increased reliance on TurnItIn could garner unwanted media attention as more false positives are acquired as students lean more and more on internet access and ease of copying than relying on writing and researching skills that are currently disappearing from the daily lexicon. Schools may be breeding distrust in their students, and in turn the students may be finding better ways to beat the system. And education suffers. When honor is removed for convenience and human investigation replaced with cyber-policing, the gap widens between the teachers and students in the areas of trust and greater educational accountability. After all, the teachers are no longer detecting incorrect assignments – they have a computer do the dirty work for them.
Principals, board members, deans, academic facilitators – all strive to be the best educational institution around. Even when not in direct competition, the struggle to get ahead and stay ahead breeds interest in all types of pilot programs and new methodology. But the use of TurnItIn also breeds exposure of an undesired kind, as everyone wants to be known for curtailing cheating, but no one wants to be known as a hotbed for cheaters. Increased reliance on TurnItIn could garner unwanted media attention as more false positives are acquired as students lean more and more on internet access and ease of copying than relying on writing and researching skills that are currently disappearing from the daily lexicon. Schools may be breeding distrust in their students, and in turn the students may be finding better ways to beat the system. And education suffers. When honor is removed for convenience and human investigation replaced with cyber-policing, the gap widens between the teachers and students in the areas of trust and greater educational accountability. After all, the teachers are no longer detecting incorrect assignments – they have a computer do the dirty work for them.
The ‘Harvard Guide to Using sources’ warns of two types of
plagiarism: intentional and unintentional. As evidenced above, there will
always be students trying to beat the system, and the inclusion of
anti-plagiarism software only means there are different tricks to try in
avoiding detection. Just as the experienced cat burglar will find away to avoid
the invisible laser security system, the experienced cheaters will find ways to
thwart the database protocols. In this scenario, there is little that a
computer system can do to completely eliminate all instances of cheating.
Instilling honor among all students seems the best way to encourage discipline
and discourage abuse.
But what about ‘unintended plagiarism’?
You know the scenario: You’ve been working on your paper all semester.
You seemingly have a thousand sticky notes littering your desk from the
multitude of books, essays, and internet sites you have read in preparation for
your work. You are frantically searching for that one thought to end all
thoughts – the final quote to drive the whole paper home. And there it is,
right in the middle of your desk, staring at you this whole time incredulously
like the star athlete that somehow gets picked last in the neighborhood game.
You plug that glorious sentence in and submit the paper, satisfied that you
have reached the conclusion of a long process. But then the unthinkable
happens. That wasn’t an original thought, but something you pulled from your
library musings. You forgot to cite the source in your notes, and passed off
someone else’s thought as your own. Albeit in a fit of nervous fatigue, but
still you are guilty of the crime. How could you? Don’t you care about the honor
code? What will your parents think? Your friends? You can kiss that academic
internship goodbye. And good luck moving on with your education, or cashing in
on those business contacts that your professor had promised to deliver your
way.
How does TurnItIn distinguish between the above two scenarios? Quite
simply, it doesn’t. It doesn’t care if the student was malicious or messy,
underhanded or exhausted. As long as the algorithm tripped a positive result,
the job here is done and they move on, happy to have thwarted yet another
miscreant on the road to academic perfection. There is no suspicion of
innocence, no benefit of the doubt given to the student. The almighty program
has spoken, and another career bites the dust. And the positive example of
cheaters caught substantiates future use by future clients, who equally wish to
lay a heavy hand on those who cheat for the sake of the masses who just want to
learn. But what do we really learn through this exercise?
 |
| Beware of the Optical Illusion of false advertising |
Harvard and Princeton have their own methods of curtailing cheating:
honor and knowledge. First, students are encouraged to embrace the honor code.
Students should think of themselves as higher entities that represent their
families, communities and university well. Second, they are encouraged to know
how to avoid common pitfalls that lead many to plagiarize. Avoid
procrastination. Cite all sources at every step of the research project. Cite
thoughts that are paraphrased and synthesized into your own work. In order to
produce the best work, you must examine multiple sources of information and
consider many perspectives that came before you. Do so honorably. Turn in
knowledgeable, well constructed work. Be careful and consistent in your
research. Allow your integrity to guide the note-taking process, and it will
naturally shine through in the end product. For many universities, holding
students to a higher standard is a more effective measure of combating cheating
than any distant database could ever hope to instill.
The ultimate problem is that the use of false advertising by
TurnItIn is just the sort of thing its website claims to rid the world of.
Whether intentionally or unintentionally, TurnItIn supports the narrative that
the best educational institutions employ its services, no matter how minor or short
lived their involvement. The numbers touted on the website are instantly suspect.
Do former clients count? Are schools included only if more than 50% of teachers
mandate usage? Or is 1% enough to warrant inclusion in marketing schemes?
iParadigms seems to be on a crusade against faulty submission of written work.
But false or misleading claims for the sake of advertising are acceptable and
promoted, if it helps spread the use of a program that only desires to save the
world from evil. It’s time for TurnItIn to turn itself in to the moral
standards it claims to uphold. And that scrutiny of a moral standard can begin
by examining the processes used to determine a positive case of plagiarism.
Invited co-author of this article, Sean McGowan is published author, a teacher of Civics and American History, as well as a Chaplain.
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