With the crunch of midterms, finding time to write that history
paper or analyze that Shakespeare poem may seem like an impossible
feat.
But students will want to think twice before running to the
Internet to download a paper in times of desperation, as UCLA
renewed its license this year for the commonly used online
anti-plagiarism service, Turnitin.com.
With the increasing simplicity of the Internet and its wide
variety of sources ranging from academic journals to notes on
literary analysis, students are even more tempted to take an
alternative academic path when the pressures of school rise.
For that one panicky, stressed, or just lazy student, the
Internet seems to provide an instant relief since students are now
able to buy complete papers online for prices as low as $50,
seemingly ensuring an A grade.
Though in previous years it may have been difficult for
instructors to catch students buying their term papers online,
Turnitin.com makes it easy to detect electronic plagiarism,
blatantly pointing out students’ wrongdoings.
Over 100 students are referred to the Office of the Dean of
Students every year because of issues related to cheating or
plagiarizing.
“Something has to happen,” said English Professor
Gordon Kipling. “Cheating incidents are high.”
Besides self-harm, cheating, if enough students participate, can
take a harsher toll on the greater campus.
“Each time a student plagiarizes, it won’t terribly
hurt UCLA, but if a large number of students do it, we will lose
our hard-earned academic reputation ““ a degree would become
worthless,” said Cary Porter, associate senior dean of
students.
Created by former teaching assistant John Barrie in 1998 at UC
Berkeley, Turnitin.com is now used in over 60 universities ranging
from locations in New Zealand to Singapore.
Barrie never intentionally sought to compile an anti-plagiarism
mechanism. The idea was formulated through a study in which Barrie
was showing the positive influences of the Internet on education.
But the negative effects looming behind were too large to
ignore.
“None of us was interested in catching students
cheating,” Barrie said. “But the problem was becoming
bad, and there was one striking thing ““ not one said what to
do about the problem.”
In his classes as a teaching assistant, Barrie was already using
an earlier version of Turnitin.com that he had created to stop
plagiarism, so he decided to share his knowledge with others.
Turnitin.com, used exclusively through the Internet, compares
students’ papers and work with three databases consisting of
the Internet, a database of published materials ““ such as
academic journals and newspapers ““ and finally, every single
student paper that has been submitted through the site since its
creation in 1998.
After running the papers through its databases, Turnitin.com
assigns an originality percentage to the paper in addition to
highlighting and color coding all parts of the paper that have been
copied, and providing the sources from which they came.
Instructors, based on the evidence provided, are left to make the
decision of whether the student has plagiarized.
Turnitin.com can also detect plagiarism on lab reports.
Though some professors at UCLA have been using the service since
2001, its availability has not been as widely publicized as it
should be, said chemistry and biochemistry Professor Steven
Hardinger, who was one of the first professors to use it at
UCLA.
“I expect once word gets out among students that we will
get an increase in the number of referrals (for plagiarizing)
initially, but we hope when students do find out, it will go to
zero,” Porter said. “(We) certainly have a number of
referrals where professors have used Turnitin.com.”
Many instructors who do use the service are very content with
the results.
Political science Professor John Zaller used Turnitin.com for
his 199A independent research course last year and said the service
was very precise, as it highlighted everything that was quoted and
provided the original source.
Zaller did not catch anybody plagiarizing and added that
utilizing Turnitin.com is definitely not the ultimate answer to
catching students who cheat.
“If anyone had bought a paper it would have caught that,
but if someone hired someone, it won’t catch it,”
Zaller added.
And of course, cheating on examinations ““ another major
concern for professors ““ cannot simply be detected through a
convenient Web site.
“(It’s used) not necessarily to catch cheating but
to deter cheating,” Hardinger said.
Hardinger, who deals mostly with pre-med students, sees the
heavy amount of pressure students undergo and consequently the high
pressure to cheat, but he advises students to stray from
plagiarizing.
“For that (single) two-point cheating temptation, you
could ruin your career,” he added.
Though Barrie feels that the “use of Turnitin.com should
be as mandatory as a proctor in the MCATS or LSATS,” the tool
is optional for UCLA instructors.
Some instructors, such as English teaching assistant Grace Park,
are hesitant to use the service.
“It sets a bad tone. If I were a student I would feel that
the teaching assistant assumes that I’m a student who cheats,
and I don’t want to treat students like criminals and assume
they are unethical. … It sends a negative message,” Park
said.
In order to deter students from falling into a path of cheating,
Park tries to assign more comparative paper topics, and clarifies
the penalties of cheating at the beginning of the quarter.
“I noticed it comes up in large lecture classes. I think
it comes up because students feel they are invisible. No one cares,
they are just a number. … Students behave better and feel more
responsible in smaller classes,” she added.
Costing the university $15,000 a year for the entire campus to
utilize this tool, Porter anticipates that though the site is
valuable, it will remain optional for instructors to use, he
said.
This quarter, in History 13C (a 20th century U.S. history
course), when students turned in their papers, they were also asked
to turn in an electronic version of the paper so the teaching
assistants could run it through Turnitin.com.
Though some students think the service is a good way to keep
people from cheating, some are still hesitant to praise the
tool.
“I think it sets the standard that teachers don’t
trust us. We are being babied along and (they’re) saying that
some students may cheat, so we have to treat you all like you
cheat,” said Julien D’Avanzo, a second-year undeclared
student who is currently enrolled in History 13C.
D’Avanzo also believes the school is taking the issue of
the amount of students who cheat out of proportion by using this
service.
“They make it seem like it’s an epidemic, but
it’s just a few students here or there,” he said.