Turnitin.com

[The Spawn]

Submitted by Maria, Feb 11, 2007 23:03

I find it strange that leading schools are trying to crack down on plagiarism when they require so much research and documentation that they don't allow an original thought. I was once told by a teacher that when writing a research paper, no thought should come out of my own head, but that all the information should be someone else's. I have been through Turnitin, and i have to say that the software is flawed, as well. It randomly matches sets of words, even if the works in question are on two totally different topics, and then says that the writer took it from somewhere. When this can be fixed, I will trust the site more, but for right now, I wouldn't rely on it to make plagiarism less of a problem.


I was reading this article and just wanted to have a chat about it.

Anyone remember doing papers in school, or doing them now?

Was originality limited?

And what do you think about this high tech war against plagiarism?

 

[kytrigger]

The high tech war on plagiarism is just the response to new high-tech ways to plagarize.

Every teacher I know of that uses a system like turnitin.com does their own research after getting the results. They get hits back saying plagarism, but then actually look at both papers to see if they personally think it's copied or if it's just coincidence.

IMO I never had originality limited. There is a difference between being forced to use several different sources on a paper, and being forced to draw the exact same conclusions as those sources. Of course, I never had a crappy teacher that told me "no thought should ever come out of my own head" when writing.

 

[Erzengel]

Exactly. I think I wrote several papers during college before "turnitin.com" and I basically got most of the ideas, I might have changed a few words but basically it was before the technology caught up so to speak.

Hey I'm out of school, I think it's great that those little bastards have to use that website. Suck it, cheaters.

 

[Manic]

What students fail to realize is that by copying and rephrasing someone else's work, the teachers aren't testing how well they learned the material; they're testing how well they can side-step plagiarism for 20 straight pages.

 

[Road Warrior]

The site is flawed. I highly doubt that anyone actually copy and pastes someone elses work. What everyone does is put what they read in their own words. Like, for example, read a paragraph and put that paragraph in your own words.

 

[Erzengel]

You'd be surprised how stupid and lazy some kids are.

 

[The Spawn]

Side stepping = foot notes?

 

[The Spawn]

Side stepping = foot notes?

 

[CyberFaust]

yes, it is limited, i told my teacher today that really famous poem in these here parts is about *********ion, she didn't agree, i have a D now