Sounds like a bad Ponzi Scheme. Any college student smart enough to be confident they'll get good grades is also smart enough not to fall for such a scam.
Or maybe the founders just expect that many kids to be fail out on both counts?
Is this really news??
Most positive product review are sappy BS about the product being the best thing since sliced bread or the internet, with very little insightful commentary. That leads me to believe they're always fake. I consider product reviews a form of advertising. And since most consumers, who are already easily influenced (such as by TV commercials and other mass advertising) won't bother looking for articles about fake reviews, the fake reviews will do their job, and convince people to buy the product.
If you really want to find out about a product, you can dig through all the BS to find a review with insightful commentary (and then do some cross reference to verify the claims), but that can be difficult. I find it more helpful to read all the negative reviews of a seller or product. If the negative reviews don't paint a horrible picture, you can use them to weigh the product's or service's faults against its claimed benefits.
While I cannot attest to their legality and availability in Canada, in the US not only can this age group open a checking account and receive a VISA or MC debit-card (that can be used just like a credit card), but anyone can purchase a pre-paid VISA or MC, regardless of age. For more info, google: prepaid credit cards
I don't know how long ago you are referring to, but as a current user of TurnItIn, it amazes me that students at or above the High School level could be frustrated by TurnItIn's user interface. I will grant that one aspect could be slightly more clear, and will discuss that below.
First, modern students should have a basic understanding of navigating the web. In this day and age, that should be happening in grade 9 or earlier. (If they can't browse the web, I guess we don't need to worry about them plagiarizing anything online, do we?)
Second, they should already have a healthy level of curiosity. Without one, there's simply no way they're going to learn anything school has to teach them.
In a current class of mine, during Week 1, I was the only person in my class to submit the TurnItIn Originality Report along with my essay. Is that because it was difficult? No.
Everyone else either 1) did not read the syllabus or the assignment, which both specified that TurnItIn must be used, or 2) they assumed that, since the professor forgot to provide the class ID and enrollment password, they weren't actually required to use the site, despite the syllabus and assignment both stating it was required.
Just in case people were having trouble, my professor asked me to write a brief tutorial for the rest of the class, so I did. I even included screen shots. It might have taken me 30 minutes to put together, tops, after editing the screen shots and putting them on the web. Which brings me to the school's responsibility. If you are going to require a student to use a tool like TurnItIn, and they are or may be having problems accessing it or figuring it out, you should take the (little) time to whip together a clear tutorial.
It took me no more than 2 minutes to sign up and generate my first originality report. The one little issue I had was accessing my report. I saw a progress bar that said "7%" -- I assumed this was the percent of my report it has finished comparing to its database. I kept refreshing for a minute, but the number never changed, so I went into exploration mode (here's the curiosity part), discovered the progress bar was a link, and clicked it. It opened the originality report, which was when I realized I had been looking at a bar reflecting the % of non-original content, not a progress bar.
True, my own school failed to initially create a tutorial, despite the fact that this was a brand new tool, but they quickly remedied that by asking a student, who successfully used it (me), to create a tutorial.
I attend one of those nation-wide "chain" universities that requires use of TurnItIn for some classes. They make the student submit the work, then download the TurnItIn Originality Report it generates, and upload it with your work to the class Drop Box. Obviously, all works are submitted electronically in those classes. The professor does, or course, have access to the work and report via TurnItIn.com (they'd have to, since you could fake your report). You are supposed to have less than 20% matches.
From what I've seen of its behavior, it appears to compare your paper to the URLs you provide (you did cite your sources, right?) as well as other websites (Googling your sentences, perhaps?). If it really is comparing your work to other archived works, the archive must be very limited.
The only hits on my works have been my Works Cited citations (exactly matching other bibliographies -- go figure), direct quotations (properly quoted and cited), and in one essay, my intro sentence exactly matched the sentence on some website I'd never been to. Not a terrible surprise there, when millions of things have been written on the very basic topic I was writing about.
Millions of students and professionals have been writing repeatedly about the same topics for decades. At first I was worried, how could I possible produce something that a computer would consider "original"?
So far, there have not been any matches to a single bit of any student papers, only to web sites. To be honest, that seems odd. I might be a weird person, but could I really have that unique of an outlook on such standardized topics? Doubtful. This suggests to me that 1) either they haven't been collecting student papers for long, or 2) they're not collecting student papers at all.
Perhaps TurnItIn is a scam, with nothing more than a very simple web crawler and search engine, checking your work against your own linked references and maybe whatever some websites its visited in the past.
I've seen people worried about referencing their own past works. This national university covers that topic in its (many) references to plagiarism. They require you to get permission from your current professor before you use your old work (and they can deny it), you must provide a copy of the old work with the new work, and your new work must be based on less than 25% of your old work. That's right, not only does the school feel it is possible to plagiarize yourself, but they specifically don't want you to, without their permission.
That might seem silly, but thinking about it, it really is in line with other, older citation policies. If you're in a class writing an essay on a topic, you're not likely to be a peer-reviewed published author on the topic. In school, your citations are meant to be published authors that are peer-reviewed, or that otherwise have sufficient "authority" on the subject.
My opinion about using TurnItIn? I like it. My essays become school property anyway, for them to do with as they please, even if that means selling it. In '95-'98, attending the Univ of Arizona, our professors told us our papers may be compared to national databases. We weren't worried about it then, and I'm still not. To be honest, I'd rather the cheaters got caught and got kicked out of school for it. The fewer opportunities open to losers like that, the more opportunities for people that deserve it.
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Sounds like a bad Ponzi Scheme. Any college student smart enough to be confident they'll get good grades is also smart enough not to fall for such a scam. Or maybe the founders just expect that many kids to be fail out on both counts?
Is this really news?? Most positive product review are sappy BS about the product being the best thing since sliced bread or the internet, with very little insightful commentary. That leads me to believe they're always fake. I consider product reviews a form of advertising. And since most consumers, who are already easily influenced (such as by TV commercials and other mass advertising) won't bother looking for articles about fake reviews, the fake reviews will do their job, and convince people to buy the product. If you really want to find out about a product, you can dig through all the BS to find a review with insightful commentary (and then do some cross reference to verify the claims), but that can be difficult. I find it more helpful to read all the negative reviews of a seller or product. If the negative reviews don't paint a horrible picture, you can use them to weigh the product's or service's faults against its claimed benefits.
While I cannot attest to their legality and availability in Canada, in the US not only can this age group open a checking account and receive a VISA or MC debit-card (that can be used just like a credit card), but anyone can purchase a pre-paid VISA or MC, regardless of age. For more info, google:
prepaid credit cards
First, modern students should have a basic understanding of navigating the web. In this day and age, that should be happening in grade 9 or earlier. (If they can't browse the web, I guess we don't need to worry about them plagiarizing anything online, do we?)
Second, they should already have a healthy level of curiosity. Without one, there's simply no way they're going to learn anything school has to teach them.
In a current class of mine, during Week 1, I was the only person in my class to submit the TurnItIn Originality Report along with my essay. Is that because it was difficult? No.
Everyone else either 1) did not read the syllabus or the assignment, which both specified that TurnItIn must be used, or 2) they assumed that, since the professor forgot to provide the class ID and enrollment password, they weren't actually required to use the site, despite the syllabus and assignment both stating it was required.
Just in case people were having trouble, my professor asked me to write a brief tutorial for the rest of the class, so I did. I even included screen shots. It might have taken me 30 minutes to put together, tops, after editing the screen shots and putting them on the web. Which brings me to the school's responsibility. If you are going to require a student to use a tool like TurnItIn, and they are or may be having problems accessing it or figuring it out, you should take the (little) time to whip together a clear tutorial.
It took me no more than 2 minutes to sign up and generate my first originality report. The one little issue I had was accessing my report. I saw a progress bar that said "7%" -- I assumed this was the percent of my report it has finished comparing to its database. I kept refreshing for a minute, but the number never changed, so I went into exploration mode (here's the curiosity part), discovered the progress bar was a link, and clicked it. It opened the originality report, which was when I realized I had been looking at a bar reflecting the % of non-original content, not a progress bar.
True, my own school failed to initially create a tutorial, despite the fact that this was a brand new tool, but they quickly remedied that by asking a student, who successfully used it (me), to create a tutorial.
I attend one of those nation-wide "chain" universities that requires use of TurnItIn for some classes. They make the student submit the work, then download the TurnItIn Originality Report it generates, and upload it with your work to the class Drop Box. Obviously, all works are submitted electronically in those classes. The professor does, or course, have access to the work and report via TurnItIn.com (they'd have to, since you could fake your report). You are supposed to have less than 20% matches. From what I've seen of its behavior, it appears to compare your paper to the URLs you provide (you did cite your sources, right?) as well as other websites (Googling your sentences, perhaps?). If it really is comparing your work to other archived works, the archive must be very limited. The only hits on my works have been my Works Cited citations (exactly matching other bibliographies -- go figure), direct quotations (properly quoted and cited), and in one essay, my intro sentence exactly matched the sentence on some website I'd never been to. Not a terrible surprise there, when millions of things have been written on the very basic topic I was writing about. Millions of students and professionals have been writing repeatedly about the same topics for decades. At first I was worried, how could I possible produce something that a computer would consider "original"? So far, there have not been any matches to a single bit of any student papers, only to web sites. To be honest, that seems odd. I might be a weird person, but could I really have that unique of an outlook on such standardized topics? Doubtful. This suggests to me that 1) either they haven't been collecting student papers for long, or 2) they're not collecting student papers at all. Perhaps TurnItIn is a scam, with nothing more than a very simple web crawler and search engine, checking your work against your own linked references and maybe whatever some websites its visited in the past. I've seen people worried about referencing their own past works. This national university covers that topic in its (many) references to plagiarism. They require you to get permission from your current professor before you use your old work (and they can deny it), you must provide a copy of the old work with the new work, and your new work must be based on less than 25% of your old work. That's right, not only does the school feel it is possible to plagiarize yourself, but they specifically don't want you to, without their permission. That might seem silly, but thinking about it, it really is in line with other, older citation policies. If you're in a class writing an essay on a topic, you're not likely to be a peer-reviewed published author on the topic. In school, your citations are meant to be published authors that are peer-reviewed, or that otherwise have sufficient "authority" on the subject. My opinion about using TurnItIn? I like it. My essays become school property anyway, for them to do with as they please, even if that means selling it. In '95-'98, attending the Univ of Arizona, our professors told us our papers may be compared to national databases. We weren't worried about it then, and I'm still not. To be honest, I'd rather the cheaters got caught and got kicked out of school for it. The fewer opportunities open to losers like that, the more opportunities for people that deserve it.