Tag Archive for 'Plagiarism proof'

New Strategies to Reduce Plagiarism

Published on July 14, 2010 in Plagiarism. 0 Comments Tags: , .

“Curriculum redesign as a faculty-centred approach to plagiarism reduction” is research paper published by Sue Hrasky and David Kronenberg from the University of Tasmania, presented at the 4th International Plagiarism Conference in June 2010.

In it, they first look into two fundamental strategies on approaching plagiarism: proactively educate students on plagiarism, proper citation, and acceptable collaboration; and/or reactively catching and punishing instances of plagiarism. Both of these traditional approaches puts the onus of responsibility on the student. When an accusation of plagiarism occurs, the blame rests with the student rather than with the faculty or the institution.

Both methodologies work better together, but Hrasky and Kronenberg’s research is in search of identifying more holistic and proactive counter-plagiarism strategies that address aspects of curriculum design as a way to minimize plagiarism and share the responsibility for countering plagiarism across students, individual faculty, and the institution.

Download and read the entire paper or read the abstract

Hrasky, S. and Kronenberg, D. (2010). Curriculum redesign as a faculty-centred approach to plagiarism reduction. University of Tasmania. Retrieved from http://www.plagiarismadvice.org/conference/previous-plagiarism-conferences/4th-plagiarism-conference-2010.

Can Students “Trick” Turnitin?

Published on June 10, 2010 in Plagiarism. 17 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Some students believe that they can “beat” Turnitin by employing various tactics. Instructors should rest assured that these tactics do not work as our algorithms take such “tricks” into account. In addition, the best practice for ensuring that students are not able to “beat the system” is to review all Originality Reports – regardless of the percentage shown as the Similarity Index. Instructors who look at the Originality Reports will be able to tell if something untoward has occurred.

What tricks do students try?

One trick is to replace a common character like “e” throughout the text of their paper with a foreign language character that looks like an “e” but is actually different (for example, a Cyrillic “e”). This method does not work because our algorithms replace such characters with the corresponding standard English character. The special character will still appear in the Originality Report; however, the word it is in will have been matched against words containing every character that looks like that character. This allows us to show you matches to words with both the special character and the standard character.

Another trick (touted by a video on the web) is to use Word Macros to disguise copied text. This method also does not work since Turnitin’s algorithms strip macros from Microsoft Word Documents for Word 2003 and below. When we strip a macro from a Word file, whatever character the student originally had in the file will appear. For instance, one of the videos recommends starting with a “~e” and replacing it with a standard “e” using macros. When we strip the macros the “~e” will appear in the paper. This means the “~e” will appear in the Originality Report, GradeMark, and the file available for you to download from the service. For Microsoft Word 2007, we don’t accept macros-enabled (.docm) files (we do accept the standard .docx files).

Another method consists of replacing all the spaces in a paper with invisible (white) text. This also does not work since Turnitin will not accept papers that appear to have this condition based on abnormal word lengths. In addition, the text-only Originality Report displays all text regardless of the color used by the student.

A fourth possible trick is to put quotation marks around the entire document. This does not work because Turnitin does not automatically exclude quoted material. Only the instructor can change the default setting to exclude quoted material from Originality Reports. The Originality Report would also show the quotation marks at the beginning and end of a paper in the same size text as the rest of the paper. If the instructor chooses to exclude quoted material, Turnitin displays a warning when a large percentage of a paper appears within quotation marks.

The Turnitin algorithms are updated on an on-going basis to make the Originality Reports more accurate and informative. As an instructor, your best defense is to ALWAYS review your students’ Originality Reports – even for Similarity Indexes shown as zero.  All of the “tricks” discussed here rely heavily on the idea that the instructor will not look at the Originality Report. All attempts to game the system become pretty obvious when the instructor examines the Originality Report. So make a quick scan of each Originality Report part of your standard practice when evaluating papers.

Plagiarism Proofing Assignments with Turnitin WriteCycle

Published on April 8, 2010 in Plagiarism. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

In our first blog “Does Turnitin Detect Plagiarism?” we said that Turnitin does not detect plagiarism but, rather, generates a similarity index indicating text matches to the Turnitin databases. Instructors and their students can use that information to determine if  there are issues with intentional or unintentional plagiarism. So, while Turnitin does not specifically “detect” plagiarism, instructors can work towards plagiarism proofing their written assignments by implementing Turnitin and WriteCycle tools in their courses using some well-documented best practices.

Research suggests that assignments can be made more difficult to plagiarize if instructors:

• Emphasize the recursiveness of writing.1
• Require significantly revised multiple drafts.1
• Break an assignment into parts that are to be turned in at different stages of the creation process: pre-writing, drafting, revising, reflecting.1

This idea of plagiarism proofing assignments makes sense, suggesting that students are less likely to leave the work to the last minute—when research and writing skills may deteriorate or students might be tempted to use writing that is not their own—if they are engaged in writing as a process.

However, this type of assignment set up can seem burdensome to instructors, especially for content-area instructors who may not have the time to collect, manage and grade multiple drafts or assignments from each stage of the writing process.
Instructors can engage students in process writing by asking students to provide feedback to one another through collaborative peer  assessment activities and by encouraging students to assess their own progress through reflective self-assessments, but instructors need a tool to facilitate this work. WriteCycle (the combination of Turnitin Originality Checking, PeerMark online peer reviewing and GradeMark digital feedback) is such an instructional support tool that can:

• Engage students in the process from the beginning stages of writing.
• Hold students accountable for developing awareness, skills and scholarship.
• Develop prewriting with substance as students collaborate and discuss writing topics.
• Offer opportunities for self-assessment through Revision and Reflection Assignments.

Assessing students’ prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing is a daunting task for instructors given the sheer volume of writing activities for even a small number of students. Turnitin WriteCycle aids instructor management of written assignments throughout the writing process as it …

• Provides a central location on the web for instructors to manage and view student work.
• Helps instructors monitor and assess student progress throughout the writing process.
• Offers students better feedback and more meaningful feedback from various sources, such as Turnitin’s Originality Report, PeerMark’s online, collaborative peer reviews.
• GradeMark’s QuickMarks and rubrics.

When students are engaged in writing tasks, they are less likely to plagiarize, and Turnitin WriteCycle asks students to actively participate in self-assessment, peer collaboration and process writing. Instructors can monitor student progress throughout the writing stages of prewriting, drafting, revision and editing but further ensure that students receive more feedback and better feedback on their written work. Thus, Turnitin WriteCycle is a tool that does not detect plagiarism, per se, but can help instructors—and students—prevent it.

1 Writing @CSU (1993-2010). Strategies for a writing classroom. Retrieved from http://writing.colostate.edu/guides/teaching/plagiarism/classroom.cfm