Web site fighting plagiarism gains new popularity

In an effort to combat plagiarism on campus and make students more aware of their writing, the Web site Turnitin.com is gaining more publicity at GCSU.

The Web site, which has a database located in Modesto, Calif., is a resource tool that checks papers submitted by students for plagiarism.

Faculty members can set up accounts on the Web site, and then once students have submitted their papers to the site, the database scans the papers and checks them against the Internet to search for any potential plagiarism issues.

“It really is a wonderful tool for our faculty and students to use and I have more and more faculty contacting me about using it,” said Wesley Smith, Director of Web enabled resources at GCSU.

Smith said that last year approximately 15-20 percent of faculty members used the program and he would like to see it grow on campus.

“We don’t use it as much as I would like here. It hasn’t been highly publicized until recently,” he said. “It saves (the professors) a lot of the labor of looking for plagiarism on their own, and it forces the students to be more conscious and aware of their work.”

“It’s a different system, but I think it’s a really helpful tool,” Katie Dunn, a junior psychology major, said. “I think it’s effective because it helps me see how well I can rephrase ideas and put sentences in my own words.”

The program will cost the university approximately $6,000 to $8,000 according to Smith.

“It’s based mainly on the number of students using the program, and the more that use it, the more that cost will go down,” Smith said.

When the program checks submitted papers against the database, a color coding system is used to check the degree of plagiarism. The colors range from blue, meaning no plagiarism, to red, meaning severe plagiarism. The colors in between are green, yellow and orange.

“It could be something as little as a student forgetting to close a quote or not formatting something properly, or it could be as severe as copying something straight from the Internet,” Smith said.

The penalties for plagiarism are usually pretty severe at most colleges. Plagiarism is a stated violation of the GCSU Honor Code.

“It’s really up to the individual professor to determine the real degree of plagiarism in the paper,” Smith said. “The Web site is a guiding tool for them.”

Smith said that overall, plagiarism does not seem to be much of a problem at GCSU.

“It’s nowhere near as bad here as at other schools,” he said. “I think a lot of that has to do with it being a four-year school as opposed to a two-year school. The students are more mature, and the junior and senior students are good role models for the freshmen and sophomore students.”

“I think it’s harder than ever now to plagiarize,” Dunn said. “There is just so much out there and so many ways of detecting it.”

While senior English major Olivia Dowd thinks the program may be helpful, she said it can be confusing as well because some professors use more than just Turnitin.com as a method for submitting papers.

“When there are different ways used, it overcomplicates things some,” Dowd said. “It would be much easier to have the professor stick to one method instead of having three different options used. So I didn’t get a great first impression of the program.”

Another problem with the tool is that it is seen by some as being too picky with details.

“It actually might even highlight words such as ‘of’ or ‘the,’” Dunn said. “Those aren’t words that can be plagiarized. So it’s a little bit of a funny system.”

Still, the program is seen by many as helpful.

“The students here are more aware,” Smith said. “Many students may not have a grasp on what plagiarism is, so we’re hoping this Web site will help educate them on that.”

Smith said that faculty members looking to use the program should contact him for the necessary passwords to set up an account. Workshops for the program will be held this month.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 2 2009. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry