Turnitin.com - Placebo for Plagiarism or Worse?

Foo Shackelford asks: "At my University I have noticed a disturbing trend and was wondering if there are any other students, faculty, or staff who have concerns about the web based anti-plagiarism service called Turnitin.com? Turtnitin.com is supposed to be is a placebo for plagiarism where students submit papers for analysis. While plagiarism is by all accounts bad and should not be tolerated, the implementation of Turnitin.com on University campuses leaves many questions unanswered. If you read their terms of use it appears that students papers become the property of Turnitin.com. Turnitin.com keeps a copy of every student paper submitted and students have no choice in this matter. Where are the rights of the student? Also, there appears to be no warrantee to the accuracy of the service. Where does this leave the student who is accused of plagiarism? It would be nice for those who decide to implement the usage of services like these within their institutions to look beyond the placebo and consider issues of privacy, intellectual property, and most of all trust relationship that they hold with their students. Any thoughts on this?" We last touched on a related issue in this article on students GPLing their work. Might such a solution work here in terms of protecting a student's right to use any work that they submit to other sites/services that have implicit contracts like the one described here for Turnitin.Com?

Comments

Placebo?

[jguevin]

I see how the issues of ownership are troubling, but I don't see why in the post Turnitin is called a "placebo." It actually catches cheaters (my gf is a TA, so I've seen it in action), and because of this acts as a powerful deterrent. If the copyright/ownership/confidentiality issues are resolved, I for one think this kind of service is pretty great.

Re:Placebo?

[jgerman]

Universities are definitely heading for legal trouble if they are submitting papers for review anywhere that is unapproved by the student. That work is the property of the student and no teacher or assistant or anyone has the right to distribute the paper without the consent of the student. Especially not to a service which potentially [potentially] takes ownership of the content.

Not to mention that the student's work is now being used without approval by a site in a manner that the student might not approve of. I for one don't want someone else using my work for gain without my permission. This is not personal use, this is a site for gain.

Re:I've said it so many times...

[room101]

Ah yes, but there is another side to it. College is also about the piece of paper you get at the end, and also, what institution's name is on said paper. This, in fact, is the most important thing to the institution: their name. If they allow cheating (and say for the sake of argument that these are equvalent, so they can either allow cheating or use this service) then their reputation goes down, versus other institutions. When this happens, their status and cash goes down.

Thus, the institution can't rely on pragmatism. They must prevent cheating if at all possible, as it reflects badly on them if a bunch of cheaters (thus, uneducated idiots) graduate from their institution, presenting a piece of paper with the institution's name on it.

Why U Turn On Me, Until The End Of Time Disc 1

[Tupac Troll]

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