Daily Egyptian Spring 05
Turnitin.com now on campus
Andrea Zimmermann
Daily Egyptian
Plagiarists will be easier to catch, thanks to the University's $13,000 membership to Turnitin.com.
The anti-plagiarism Website includes a database of 4.5 billion published works, articles and term papers written by students around the world. Jim Allen, director of University Core Curriculum, said while the site will help identify plagiarism, it is also intended for faculty to use as a tool to help young writers.
"This isn't to hit students over the head to get their attention of the dangers of academic misconduct," Allen said, "but to help students think more clearly about where they get their information and how they use it."
Once faculty submits a paper online, the site compares it to its large database. Then any possibly plagiarized sections are highlighted, and in the attached originality report, the source of each section in question is identified. Badredine Arfi, an assistant professor in political science, said he purchased anti-plagiarism software about six months ago because he believes it has become an increasing problem.
"The Internet can create a lot of temptation for many people," Arfi said. "They can just download it and call it theirs." Since he bought the software, he has caught three students plagiarizing. In line with the University's no-tolerance policy, two of the students were kicked out of school.
The University began using the site this semester. Arfi said warned his students this semester about the site and has used it every week to check his students' papers. Thus far, he has not found any violators.
"I think many students are getting the message," Arfi said. According to a 2003 survey by Rutgers' Center for Academic Integrity, almost 40 percent of college students say they have copied information directly from the Internet or books to their papers.
Brian Haywood, a sophomore studying radio-television from Chicago, said even though he is careful to rewrite and cite in his papers, the thought that the University has a program like this makes him nervous. Haywood said, he has seen many friends plagiarize just to fill their papers, and usually their reason for doing so is because they work, are lazy or are busy. "Sometimes they may not have enough info for the paper so they need to re-word something to make the paper sound good enough," Haywood said.
Alison Newland, a junior studying pre-nursing from St. Louis, said she has never thought about plagiarism and wonders how big the problem actually is. "I don't think it is that big of a problem for the University to spend that much money on it," Newland said.
The $13,000 membership came from the Provost's operating budget and will last for one year. Allen said although the only ones who can use the site are faculty, the future might also allow for student use.
Robert Jensen, associate provost for academic affairs, said students need to develop good writing skills, which is much more than stringing paragraphs together from a variety of sources.
"Students need to learn to synthesize the information and Turnitin will help students learn to do this," Jensen said. "We don't want to use it as some sort of threat to students, but as a tool to help students learn good researching skills."
Last update: Tuesday, February 8, 2005 at 3:17:40 AM
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