September 2007 — eLearning

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A War of Words

by Jim Paterson

The founder of Turnitin's anti-plagiarism application, John Barrie, who developed the system as a graduate student to help instructors and students respond to online cheating, says the service is just a tool, like the computer itself, working best in concert with a good teacher. He compares it to a proctor at a test or a referee on a field, whose presence doesn't imply everyone is cheating or playing unfairly.

His company now promotes its three-step process— checking a work for originality, allowing for peer review, and enabling the teacher to grade the work more quickly online than would be possible manually. And he recommends teachers use the company's brand-new Learning Center, which helps students learn appropriate ways to do research.

Barrie says his product came on the scene at a time of an epidemic of plagiarism. "Students were using the internet like an 8-billion-page cut-and-paste encyclopedia," he says, "buying term papers online and e-mailing manuscripts to friends—and nothing had stopped the problem until the arrival of Turnitin." Barrie claims his company, which receives some 60,000 assignments into its database daily and is used by about 6,000 schools, has cut plagiarism rates by more than 80 percent on the campuses where it is used.

"Plagiarism detection software teaches students that writing assignments are a cat-and-mouse game in which they are the teacher's adversary."
—Rebecca Moore Howard, Syracuse University

Barrie and other makers of anti-plagiarism programs say their tools work best as a deterrent. They advise teachers to forcefully advertise their potential use of the applications; the threat of being caught is often enough to halt potential student copying. A study printed in the journal PS: Political Science and Politics showed that telling students about the use of a detection tool dramatically diminished plagiarism, while simply warning them not to plagiarize had, according to the report, "no effect whatsoever."

"Students were using the internet like an 8-billion-page cut-and-paste encyclopedia…and nothing had stopped the problem until the arrival of Turnitin."
—John Barrie, Turnitin

At Glenbard High, however, Maribeth Mohan hasn't had to resort to warnings or threats. Instead, she wields technology as a means to help students do the right thing rather than to nab them doing the wrong thing. Her 31 composition students cut and paste relevant material they have found onto a note card, then are required to paraphrase the material, with Mohan's guidance. Next, they are prompted to cite the information properly, and finally, they organize the notes into an outline or a draft document electronically.