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Stan Skrabut: Well, thank you ever so much for taking this time to listen to my podcast is certainly means a lot. I know you could be doing other things, perhaps you are, but you’re still listening to me, and I really appreciate it. Well, 20 years ago, the college I was working at was using Turnitin as a tool to check for originality of document. 20 years later, I find myself using it again. Now, I am a huge fan of using technology to improve performance. I also understand that technology can also quickly cause a lot of damage.
It really depends on how you use it. I have used many tools to help with my writing, for example, I’m using Scrivener to gather my thoughts about Turnitin right now. As I’m working on my next book, I’m also using a program called Hemingway app to tweak my writing. I’ve also used Turnitin in the past to check the originality of papers. Unfortunately, I was using it for just that, and it became my spy. I wasn’t necessarily happy with the purpose I was using Turnitin. I failed to use it as a tool to improve writing.
Over the course of 20 years, I have learned a lot. I want to share what I’ve learned so that you don’t make the same mistakes that I did. There are two main reasons motivating me to take a look at Turnitin at this point in time. One, Turnitin happens to be a tool that’s part of my technology stack, and I’m expected to help faculty to use it. Naturally, I want them to use it as a tool for learning, and teaching, and I want them to learn from the mistakes that I made in the past.
Second, one of the Facebook groups I am following has recently had a lot of discussions surrounding the use of Turnitin. There’s some mixed opinions one way or another on how and why to use it. I’m going to highlight a few of those. How Turnitin works. If you’re not familiar with Turnitin, basically, students or instructors submit papers to Turnitin, either directly through the application or through a learning management system that is connected to Turnitin.
Turnitin then conducts a similarity test, creates a report that identifies text matching along with the similarity score. It will show you what parts of your paper or the paper match text that can be found in previous documents that it has looked at or what can be found on the web. Now, it doesn’t grab everything on the web, but it does a really good job. As I’ve noted earlier, I’ve been using Turnitin, or I have had experience with Turnitin for over 20 years now.
I am not the only one, other faculty have used it. Here’s some things that the faculty are saying. First of all, most faculty agree that plagiarism is not accepted. This seems to be an ongoing battle to identify and root out plagiarism. Students, they’re trying to take the shortest path to the end. I’ve talked about this before, their goals may not necessarily be aligned with learning, they may be trying to just get the course done and get the diploma, which is unfortunate.
The faculty are finding it to be exhausting to track down and deal with plagiarism. It takes a toll on their spirit, and just wears them out, and that they’re spending a lot of time dealing with this. Part of it, if you use Turnitin, you’re going to spend a little more time as you grade your papers when you use Turnitin because that’s just a another thing that you have to look at. Faculty also agree that students really don’t understand why this is not acceptable behavior.
I would have to say, in spite of what we think, they really haven’t been taught, although some of you may disagree, that they haven’t really been taught how to write effectively. The reason I say this is because I’m working with grad students, and the things that they’re writing and how they’re writing tells me that they don’t understand how to write in a scholarly way, the way academics should be writing, and citing their sources. They often place their opinion and not support it with what others have said before them.
They didn’t miraculously come up with these ideas, they came from somewhere. Somewhere it’s planted a seed, but they don’t know how to cite that properly. That’s what I’m seeing at a grad student level. I know this is also happening at an undergrad level. Turnitin identifies potential issues. You as faculty still have to check them out, that you can’t take it on face value what Turnitin says, you have to make an assessment. It’s just a tool, it is a check engine light. Somebody’s still got to check the engine. That’s what Turnitin does.
Turnitin and another tool SafeAssign, I’ve had experience with SafeAssign are better used as teaching and learning tools than gotchas. The fact that content is similar doesn’t mean that students are cheating right away that– They can still game the system. That’s what the faculty already understand in terms of using learn it in. When using learn it in, you also have to understand the limitations of learn it in or Turnitin. Learn it in, where did I get that? Of Turnitin, because you will get a lot of false-positive.
Depending on your settings in Turnitin, it will flag quoted material even if it’s cited correctly because it’s just doing a text matching, it’s coming up matching the text and tells you, “Hey, this text match.” Once again, it’s a check engine light, “Hey, I’ve noticed this, you need to go check it out.” If you’re having multiple drafts and you do not tell Turnitin to ignore previous or store the content from a previous edition, that’s going to be flagged also.
Repeated references, maybe they are tagging it correctly, but because it’s cited the same way over and over again, it will identify that which just raises the score telling you that, “Hey, a lot of this document may be similar to other things that have been out there,” and it can be entirely true. Students may plug-in assignment prompts. Sometimes they post the question that you want them to write about and they put that in there. If you have multiple students doing, guess what, that’s similar text, and it’s already been out there.
Also, Turnitin doesn’t do a good job of identifying content that has been paraphrased but not cited properly. A student could go in there, and game the system, and reword things, and not cite it, and it’s still a plagiarism problem. Turnitin won’t pick that up. There are strategies that you can put into place to help use this as a teaching and learning tool. First of all, you need to understand how you will handle plagiarism. You have to have a conversation with yourself.
If you’re going to use Turnitin for your assignments, you need to understand how you’re going to deal with plagiarism. Part of this requires you to look at your institution’s policies on academic integrity, and plagiarism, and what you’re going to do. You’re going to have to determine well upfront how you’re going to handle this. You also need to become well versed in using the tool.
You can’t just pop it into an assignment, knowing nothing about it, and then all sudden you have all these high scores, and you start freaking out because you didn’t take the time to learn how the tool works and how to properly interpret the reports. Play with it. Part of this is to have some practice assignments with your students, so you and your students can learn how this all works together and you get a good feel for how this is going to work in your course. Include a statement in your syllabus.
Another strategy is as you build your syllabus, include a statement that you’re using Turnitin and how it’s going to be used, and how it’s going to affect grades. It’s only fair to the students to let them know. Before putting Turnitin into place, educate your students about it. You should take time to make sure your students are aware that you’re using Turnitin, how it’s going to be used, but most importantly, explain why you are using Turnitin. You will get a lot less pushback if you explain why.
Why is probably the most important word when it comes to teaching and learning. Why are we doing this? Why are we doing it this way? Why is this class fit into the bigger picture? Why? Why? Why? Part of educating your students is provide clear instructions for turning in assignments and subsequently reviewing the similarity reports. Then, have students practice.
Have them do it on a low-stakes or no-stakes assignment, use– Then, follow it up with a class discussion to get everybody understanding how this tool is working, how it’s going to improve their writing and teach them how to use these reports specifically to improve the writing which means you’re going to have to probably have multiple drafts. Part of the education should also be teaching your students about originality.
Take time to explain what originality means in your discipline. How do you write original content or originally synthesized content in a scholarly manner? Most writing is about the reframing of previous ideas. Students, as they’re looking at their similarity reports, can see where they’re using too many quotes or where they’re not paraphrasing enough, and then you can guide them through the process on how to do it correctly. That correct piece is teaching students how to paraphrase and cite properly. As I noted, you should not expect that students know how to paraphrase and cite properly. You have to conduct your own audit and help them improve. As I noted, this is also occurring at the grad student level and with Turnitin, like I said, I use all these other tools to help me with my writing and I still have a long way to go, but the tools help and Turnitin is just another tool that can help them improve their writing specifically in terms of paraphrasing and citing, to make sure that everything is as it should be.
Now, there’s another point of plagiarism that we have to also educate students on. If students are taking a lot of similar classes or classes in the same discipline, they may be using content from previous papers. I know I did and I did it before I knew about self-plagiarizing. I know that is out there. Students need to site themselves as well as secure permissions from other instructors, their other instructors, to be able to use previous written material and how to do it and how to do it correctly. That’s just another leap past plagiarism.
Now to do all this, I recommend that you scaffold your writing assignments with drafts. Turnitin does not have to be used for the sole purpose of detecting plagiarism, as turning into final assignment to do that, but it can be used in multiple drafts to help identify areas where students can improve the writing time over time, over time, and different settings and turn it in which this podcast is not about how to specifically use Turnitin, but really how to put it into practice that will support your teaching and learning. There are settings in there that you can have it not store previous versions and so students get their first draft with their similarity report. They go ahead and make the corrections. They can resubmit. It will take another look at the report or another look at the paper and kick out another report. Now, normally it waits 24 hours before you can do this. That way, you’re not just as they say wordsmithing it, and you’re actually doing– trying to do substantial writing.
Those are ideas that you should take into consideration, use it for multiple drafts, guide them. During a recent course, that was one of the things that I did was actually have multiple drafts of a program plan and had students work through it. We used it to improve the plan and we used it to improve the writing and it out quite well. Students were very favorable in the end with the process.
Now, probably at the time, they weren’t as thrilled, but at the end result, when I got my reviews back, they were very satisfied. Just a quick note about Turnitin on face value, when it turns out the similarity report that originality score is pretty meaningless. It may give you an idea of a lot of errors, it may not really identify the errors, but it’s really meaningless. It is a check engine light. You have to actually dig into the report, look what parts are similar to what’s out there and make a determination based on that, on how you approach it. Is this a valid case of plagiarism or is this a learning opportunity?
My final thoughts, Turnitin can be a wonderful tool if used properly. Using it at its face value will not create a rewarding experience for you or your students. However, it can be used as a learning and teaching tool to show students about plagiarism, citation, and paraphrasing, and how to improve that. It is best used when working with drafts, this will allow students to see how they’re absorbing ideas from others into the writing and make and pursue that.
As you can see, I have mixed views on this use of turn it in. As a punitive tool, I’m not a fan, but as a teaching and learning tool, I think it has great possibilities, but you also have to understand the limitation. Well, that is my thoughts on Turnitin. Before I let you go, here’s a quick plug for my book, Read to Succeed.