Slashdot Mirror
Student Fights University Over Plagiarism-Detector
(Maly) writes "CBC is reporting that MCGill University has lost a fight to have students first turn papers over to an anti-cheating website before handing them in to professors. The student refused to hand in three assignments to the service, received a zero on those assignments, then fought the ruling. The story doesn't have many specifics, such as the venue of the fight (court or some internal university tribunal), but it is an interesting case. As a recent graduate of the social sciences, I find that practice appalling. The student is right to refuse, as he gets no compensation from the service for making money off his original work (assuming it was original!!). Although I don't like the idea, and I'm glad I never went through it, I suppose its analogue would be mandatory drug tests in sports."
Technology is seen as infallible by a great many people - suppose a paper accidentally failed the pagiarism test - is there any way to appeal? who are you going to beleive, some snot-nosed plagiarising punk or a godlike magical website?
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
I have two takes on this story. First, I do find it a bit offensive to presume cheating on the part of students and to require them to "prove" they didn't cheat rather than the burden of proof running the other way. I do believe that if you expect certain behavior from people and let them know your expectations, then they are more likely to confirm them. This is the same reason that I find the anti-cheating posters in our classrooms at Wright State University offensive -- students know they aren't supposed to cheat, so the posters just create the impression that it's a pervasive part of the academic experience.
Second, that little quip about financial compensation is completely off-base. Students pay to learn, and once the prof has decided that they'll have a better learning experience if they submit to the site (presumably because they will feel forced to think for themselves instead of copying from term paper mills) they have no "right" to compensation. The practice is offensive, but from an educational standpoint, it is little different than the professor using their papers in class as examples for others. Either way, other people benefit from the student's work without compensation for the student. That's the way education works. The fact that antiplagiarism sites make money from their line of business (and the examples submitted by the students) is of no import, as long as they aren't selling the essays as part of an anthology or something. It's a feedback loop within the educational process and even though I disapprove of the practice, nobody's "rights" are violated.
Make cheese not war 8:)
With many profs. having hundreds of students, exactly where are they going to find the time to make sure your paper is an original. And TAs coming from overseas, I was happy if they could even speak english in the of chance that i need help. With this situation at hand, many have taken the easy route and cheated by searching/buying papers online.
I hope students are required to hand their papers in to anti-cheat sites, before hand. Hey Id like to make sure people are all getting a fair shake.
later,
epic
"Im drowning here, and you're describing the water!"
I am a teacher... And you guys wouldn't believe how much stuff students just copy from the Internet, or from other students.
:-(
It's important to make students understand taht plagiarism just doesn't help them. They're losing a great opportunity to learn, and to develop their writing skills and intelligence, and maybe abstract reasoning, or whatever the subject requires from them. But unfortunately, some of them just don't care -- and these will slowly, er, "contaminate" (sorry, I'm not politically correct - really) the others with the idea that "you just need pass the course". you can learn what you need "later". This kind of system helps to keep things under control (sort of), by discouraging them. I'd be happy i this wasn't necessary, but as far as I see, there's no other option (in particular for people like me, who have classes with 100 students, or something close to taht).
Of course, it's much better if you have just a few students, and can read and detect plagiarism yourself. But hey, nobody wil give me a 10 student class. It's too expensive.
Well it seems the examiner has the right, even the duty to examine the papers which have been submitted. Checking for plagiarism seems fair, and also that he is using technical aids for doing so.
The article also mentions:
"The reality is that the high monitoring of students really isn't about catching cheaters, it is a substitute for hiring enough faculty members to take the time to read student work," said Ian Boyko, national chair of the student federation.
It seems that all the system does is check for plagiarism. Assuming it does that in a sensible manner (not providing false positives without pointing to the reference material) then it's just relieving the examiners from boring repetetive work.
A seperate issue is if they don't just have to have the paper checked, but also integrated into the database. I tend to think papers submitted to the university examiners should be public domain, though.
On the other hand if you're talking about plagiarism of published works, then yes, tutors should be able to spot this. But I think we're talking about plagiarism of course essays rather than published papers. Of course, examination systems have laways got round this problem quite simply.
If the teacher is truly concerned about cheating and plaigerism, then the teacher/official should be the one paying the service and submitting the works to the 3rd party business, not the student.
The student's obligation is to do the work of the assignment and turn it in. Grading and detection of falsehoods/duplicity/cheating/etc are the responsibilities of the teachers, not the students.
What's next? Submit your work to a business which does the grading?
My site gets hit by turnitin and at first, I was amused. But if a teacher is forcing a student to go through this process, then that teacher is basically saying that their students are not trustworthy and is an assumption of guilt by default.
Shame on the teacher for requiring that of their student and attempting to fail the student. Shame on the school for letting it happen.
Winged Power Photography
All College/University material, regardless of whether it was lectures/notes given or work sumbitted by students is IP of the University, so it can decide what and when to do with it.
At least that's the reality I've encountered so far from all the places I've been to
The fairest policy I've seen (and that is by no means fair IMO) was to declare all work joint IP of the student-College, but the College handles it and decides what to do. The student only has "advisory" rights and gets a share of any of the possible profits arising from the IP.
This means that "His Original Work" is a euphemism and if he doesn't like it, well he should have checked what he was signing when he enrolled. I certainly did.
/. Where the truth
Many (most?) schools treat students like a burden. Educate the brats, get them to behave, beat them into line, do whatever it takes to break them and mould them into proper members of society.
If students regularly cheat in written exams, it's a good sign that the exams are pointless. The proper response is to ask "why are students so unmotivated that they don't bother to make an original contribution", not "how can we catch and punish the bastards one more time."
Sadly it's always simpler to turn complex questions into easy "wrong and right" issues.
It's obvious from the Internet that the majority of people can be, in the right circumstances, incredibly creative and original. The challenge is to create these circumstances, not to enforce a dogmatic and broken system of education that students are obviously not interested in.
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If the intent is to protect against cheaters, then the teachers should submit the papers to the service for verification. The student should not have to be the one who is being required to turn in their papers to a service.
It is a matter of being treated like a criminal first.
The other problem would be false positives when people write with similar styles in two different parts of the nation/world. Given enough "samples" in their filter, the accuracey drops because you now have a much higher likelihood of turning up a match.
I Agree that plagiarizing work is wrong. But I do not agree that everyone should be treated like a cheater just because some in the student body are.
Winged Power Photography
That's exactly why automated plagiarism checks make sense: If it's similar enough to be flagged by a text comparison program, then you're not showing that you learned something, just that you know CTRL-C CTRL-V. You're not expected to come up with the next uncertainty principle, but being able to explain something in your own words is a requirement, because it shows a) that you understood it and b) that you can give structure to complex thoughts. The latter will be very helpful should you ever have an original thought of your own.
Isnt that the job of lecturers/professors? They're supposed to know the material and recognise when something is copied.
So professors are expected to be familiar with every recycled term paper that is going around on the internet or being sold by term paper mills?
In reality, professors are going to catch plagiarism only if the student happens to copy from a source that the professor is very familiar with. A system where some students get hauled before disciplinary hearings while many others who are doing the same thing get away with high grades hardly seems fair, either.
Unfortunately, students often get away with petty plagiarism all through college, and then move on to graduate school or professional careers where sources are more easily identified, and the penalty for plagiarism tends to be much heavier.
Teaching students what constitutes original scholarship is part of the legitimate mission of the university, so outlawing tools that enable professors to catch cheaters ultimately is harmful to the student.
Still, asking the student to submit his paper to an originality checker seems a bit like a slap in the face, and from a practical point of view, letting the students know just how their papers are going to be checked makes it easier for them to circumvent those measures. It would probably be better simply to inform the students that there papers will be checked for originality without telling them how.
The student is right to refuse, as he gets no compensation from the service for making money off his original work (assuming it was original!!).
I feel the same way everytime I'm forced to reply to an email at work. Why should Mircosoft make money off my original work? Why can't I just enscribe my message onto clay tablets I make myself.
Everyone seems to think they have some right to profit these days. The nerve.
Man I wish the professors here used this service. You people have no idea how many college students cheat and copy each other's work. One of my roommates actually uses the same work his brother used 3 years ago when he went here.
Here am I working my ass off because I believe in doing my own work so I can learn while everyone else tries to cheat.
That, obviously, is wrong.
Look, a technology like this anti-plagiarism service is just a tool. It may flag an assignment as havng been plagiarised; and having flagged that, it should present the evidence to the teacher who should be the one deciding whether it warrants action or not.
I have been a TA and a teacher. I have caught plagiarists. Usually, if it is just a small code fragment, you just let it go. After all, all of the students are reading from the same books, and looking a the same sample code, and hence could come up with similar snippets. The problem comes when large chunks of the program are the same. Or, if there's been an obvious attempt to hide the copying (changing every variable "i" to "ii").
Often, what used to give the game away was the use of an odd data structure, or an odd language feature. For example: 95% of the students would use a "for" loop, and then 2 assignments would show up with a "repeat until" or a "do while". When asked, the original author would have a pretty good explanation; but the cheater would not have any.
Coming to this case: the student has no right to gripe about this. Saying that he's being considered "guilty until proven innocent" is asinine. By the same token, his assignments shouldn't be graded either: he should just get an "A" to start with!
Would it have been better if the professor had taken his assignment and submitted it to the service? After all, the professor can use whatever tools he likes to help him do his job. And catching plagiarists is a part of his job, unfortunately.
The University will be paying (probably a lot) to this company to check student papers for plagiarism. So how does the University measure whether it gets value for it's dollar?
Obviously it will look at the number of students who are reported to have plagiarized. If no students turn up as cheating, then either the company's scan doesn't work, or the University's students are so honest that there is no reason to pay for the service.
In either case, the company reviewing the papers has a pretty strong incentive to adjust their software to generate more positives. "Gee, well, we're just trying to err on the side of caution. It wouldn't be fair to the Good Students to let someone through who might be cheating!"
I'd even wager that the company in question has already projected that a certain number of papers will be rejected each year. What happens if they miss that agreed upon quota?
Sorry, but under these circumstances it seems unreasonable to suggest that some 19 year old student can successfully defend themselves against a large corporation that has already been endorsed by the University.
Three Squirrels
After all, it's not like the students are paying customers of the University or something. Universities in general are actually WORSE than the *IAAs in terms of pre-emptively accusing people of wrongdoing...inspite of having a "mission" to educate and improve society, all they do anymore is integrate people into the pettiness of corperate culture!
The problem is that nobody has the balls to sue the copyright infringing plagarism detector.
They are copying the work, for the sole purpose of destroying it's marketable value. This is very illegal. I hope someone nails them a few times, at the maximum penalty they'll be gone.
Also as a student I should not have to give rights of my work to anyone.
Academic fraud is a problem, but the end doesn't justify the means.
See there is a big difference between what you are doing and what the service is doing. You wrote a script to help you do your job. The only money you make off of it is your salary. The papers you get might be stored on your harddisk for future referance and checking but your not effectively using them as any sort of asset. If you were out there running ads "Over 5000 papers to varify against" and selling the service then it could be argued that you were using student papers to make money, becase the papers would be assets to your business. There is nothing wrong with automaticly checking for plagiarism there is something worng with you makeing money off work I did without my consent.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Your implied economic argument is too simplistic. Say, for the sake of argument, that you are a student at this university, and that you are a plagiarist. The university is also protecting its other students (and itself) from the results of your cheating by trying to determine wheter or not you have committed plagiarism. If they fail to do so, you could well end up out in the real world having faked your way through part or all of your university education. This devalues the degree you and your classmates received, which harms them. It also harms the reputation university in question, so they are unable to attract the caliber of students they did in the past.
And, contrary to what you might think, it does not take a huge public scandal for this sort of devaluing to occur. I work for a large investment bank and there are several schools that my fellow development managers and I simply discount when screening new hires straight out of college, simply based on experiences we have collectively had in the past with other students from those schools.
As a paying customer, you should be glad your school cares as much as this one (if your school does, and if you are in school). Your dissatisfaction might be better focused on the fact that students are being asked to hand over original works to a for-profit institution with no compensation. That was the crux of the student's complaint in the article as well.
I had an Engineering teacher once who was too lazy to make up different tests for his courses every year. He got upset that the IEEE student chapter was archiving student's copies of his tests for use in future years (which, since he rarely changed the questions on the tests, was like an answer key), so he required all classwork and tests to bear a copyright notice with his name and the students' name on it. He specifically told the IEEE chapter that they could not copy his class materials. Faced with this, they stopped archiving the tests, even though they probably could have still archived original copies and just not permitted anyone to make any reproductions.
Of course, a student is in a much weaker position to assert his or her rights, since he needs a grade from the teacher more then the teacher needs to grade his paper. But I'm sure there's more than one law student who was anal enough to try this...
Because we all know that software to recognize patterns in text is perfect. That's why no one ever gets spam anymore!
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Parent post is currently modded "funny". I can't tell if it was intended to be funny, but regardless there is an underlying serious issue: that of on whom the burden of proof lies in questions of guilt or innocence. Both Congress and the Bush administration are systematically orchestrating numerous radical reductions to the legal protections formerly held by citizens. These protections should be given much more care and public debate than they're getting. I sincerely hope that the debate doesn't simply amount to chuckles at strawman positions.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
In effect, a company like Turnitin would only be interested in the student papers from universities that use their service, simply because students from the same university are much more likely to exchange papers without using the internet than with those from other universities. In the case the internet is used, Turnitin is perfectly capable of finding this information for itself, perfectly legit, because it is publically available.
The university that uses Turnitin when explicitly asked would undoubtedly allow Turnitin to use the univerity's entire archive for detecting plagiarism for *their* students. Maybe they would not allow it to be used for other university's students, I would doubt that however.
The point is however that there is very little worth (except maybe for advertising) in collecting papers from one university and trying to apply them to the next, unless these papers are available on the net, in which case they're freely available anyway. Concluding, I think the 'making money of the student's work' argument is far-fetched.
I remember being asked to submit a paper electronically once. I happily compiled by printing the paper, and then scanning it at low DPI into a PDF file without using OCR. They couldn't say anything because they asked for it in 'electronic format' without specifying further.
How proud you are! You were able to deliberately make someone's life more difficult, and I'm sure you bragged about it to your friends, and they smiled and told you how "cool" you were that you made things tougher on a grown-up.
A professor has a certain amount of time, and many professional duties. Scholarship, teaching, and service. By asking you to submit things electronically, the professor was hoping to spend more time doing what you are paying him for, reading your work carefully. But yes, by finding a loophole, you were able to take his time away from grading the smart kids' papers so he could read your smartass paper.
And now you brag about it in slashdot. Someday you may be an adult in a position where you are asking for results from somebody, and I hope you don't have to deal with "You didn't say they couldn't be in base 8" "You didn't say they had to be in English" "You didn't say I couldn't smear excrement on them first"
It annoys me when people deliberately make other people's jobs harder.
God is real unless declared integer
I absolutely hate TurnItIn.com, but sadly many teachers at my school use it. I have never cheated in my life, but as others have mentioned, I feel I have to prove my innocence.
I'm wondering if I have legal grounds to sue them, as every paper I have submitted to them has had the following attached to the bottom:
Copyright (C)2003-2004 (My Name). All Rights Reserved.
Any unauthorized use, reproduction or storage, either electronic or printed, in whole or in part, without written or verbal permission, is a violation of international copyright laws.
Permission for TurnItIn.com and/or iParadigms.com to retain a copy of this work for more than 14 days, or to incorporate this work into their database(s) is explicitly DENIED.
They have terms and conditions people automatically agree to when they use TurnItIn.com, it would seem my terms for them receiving my papers would be valid, as they will obviously ignore them and retain my papers.
Even more disturbing is the fact that these cheaters, when caught, get nothing more than a slap on the wrist. They are not kicked out of the school, the department or even the major. They are sent on their way with a note made on their "permanent record."
I'm quite sure that cheating is just as bad in other departments/majors as well. Something should be done about this.
The problem is at least two fold:
1) The testing company keeps the submitted essay and then uses it to test further submissions. They are now using the submitted essay for their own profit, and the student is effectively forced to allow this.
The equivalent drug test would be where the blood/urine sample has a value on a secondary market and the original owner loses the right to dictate how this sample is used.
2) Also, there are many procedural issues that relate to plagiarism that make the issue worse. It has been defacto at McGill that if you submit group work and one contributor has plagairised - intentionally or not - then all members of the group are held accountable. Teams often divide work for efficiency. To then require that every team member vet every other member's work is simply impossible in theory and impractical in general.
The equivalent drug test would be to ban everyone on any team that has had any member fail a drug test. For people caught in this net, the heavy-handed practise feels unfair and indefensible.
For people with professional standing (e.g. accountants) this has long reaching impact far beyond some elective where a team member missed citations.
In practise, it can seem like the guilt by association with a death penalty.
One of the problems with using google is the student themselves can put their paper fragments on the net either to mask other searches or to wind up the lecturer, or even to drop the university into a nice juicy lawsuit so they can get a degree, their fees paid and a bonus.
You actually need snapshots from before the paper existed to do anything meaningful.
The second problem is that lots of little businesses sell people guaranteed *new* papers.
There are things that can be done more constructively to deal with such problems, and at least verify the student knows some of the subject - one of the most obvious being to randomly pick a few students each submission and invite them to a 30 minute defence of their essay.
Spare me all this special pleading about the students being "assumed innocent until proven guilty". If that were the case then TAs shouldn't be so nasty as to check out a suspiciously well-written passage, they shouldn't even consider it a possibility.
This is all about cheaters whining because they'll be caught more easily. I agree that it's exactly like drug-testing in athletics and as someone that's been involved in both academia and athletics and hasn't cheated I welcome the introduction of these tests.
Speaking as a former assistant professor, I have no patience at all with past colleagues who complain about their students cheating. It is an easy matter to have students do their assignments incrementally, starting with bibliographical reports and oral presentations (with questions), where cheating is much more difficult, before handing in the written paper on the same topic.
If professors keep on assigning the same trite, tired topics year after year instead of taking the time to develop new ones, and simply rubber-stamp grades onto half-read papers instead of monitoring each student's progress, they are cheating as much as the students (and yes, I've taught classes with more than 100 students).
Except they DO make money of my paper. They sell access to a database. Part of the reason that database has value is that it includes my paper.
Make love, not sigs
Most teachers have a policy against re-submitting work. The reason is usually that they are offended that they have taught you nothing you didn't know in High School. It's particularly offensive to these teachers when the old work is well-written and they can't tell the difference, because it really insults their entire career, and everything that they believe about the subject.
What you did was not plagarism, but it probably was against policy. It surprises me that there was no name attached to the original work. I suppose you could do something like officially copyright your work as you turn it in, so that there's no question that you wrote it.
If your H.S. teacher turned it in without your permission, it may have been a violation of copyright law. You could actually sue to get the paper removed from the database (although since you submitted it in college, and presumably agreed that it would be turned in to the service, it would probably be replaced in the database).
Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.