The vast number of resources available to students on the Internet makes cheating in today's academic environment both tempting and easy. This fact is prompting discussion of extending the University's use of software that catches plagiarizers.
The Web-based software, called Turnitin, uses an algorithm to process student papers and search for similarities between them and works in its database. Its database consists of material on the publicly accessible Internet, commercial pages from books, newspapers and journals, and over ten million student papers.
Turnitin is used by both high schools and colleges, including the University of Iowa and the University of Colorado.
At its meeting on Nov. 22, the Educational Policy Committee (EPC), one of the University's student-faculty committees, discussed the pros and cons of the software.
"There was a diversity of opinions," Chemistry Professor Samuel Kounaves, the chair of the EPC, said. "We're investigating the issue right now."
Kounaves said a subcommittee of the EPC has been formed to do further research on the software and to get input from the administration, faculty and students. The subcommittee will present its findings to the EPC at its next meeting on Jan. 24, at which point the EPC will decide whether or not the University should purchase the software.
The biology department is using Turnitin in its Biology 13 course this semester and used it in Biology 14 last spring. Both courses are core requirements for biology majors.
Each student in Biology 13 is registered for an individual account with Turnitin and has an identification number, and the course itself is registered for one large account.
Professor Michelle Gaudette, the lab coordinator for Biology 13 this semester, said Turnitin "seems to be very helpful."
Students in the class submit a hard copy of their lab reports to their lab instructors, but they also electronically upload a copy to the Turnitin Web site. The software then processes each paper and creates an "Originality Report" for each paper.
This report ranks the originality of the paper as a percentage, with a ranking of 0 percent indicating a perfectly original paper and 100 percent indicating a completely plagiarized paper. It also color-codes the text of the paper, with blue indicating original text and red indicating plagiarized text.
Gaudette said an advantage of the software is that it makes students more aware of plagiarism, which she said is usually unintentional. "Sources often say things more eloquently," she said. "It [Turnitin] forces them [students] to develop their own style."
She said that by being more conscious of the need to explain concepts in their own words, students spend more time processing material and achieve a higher level of understanding.
Sophomore Veronica Coppersmith, a student in Biology 13, said at first she was "sketched out" by the Turnitin software. "Of course you're going to have similar lab reports [as other students]," she said.
The software flags all similarities between student papers and published works, but Gaudette said most of the similarities are innocuous. Phrases like, "The rate of photosynthesis is...," are bound to occur in multiple papers," she said.
One issue that came up at the EPC meeting in November was intellectual property rights. "Some people feel there are issues of intellectual property," Kounaves said, "If you are a student, your paper will be on the system for a number of years."
Kounaves said the EPC discussed whether use of the software was necessary, or whether it was sufficient to rely on an honor code for academic integrity. He said he wondered to what extent students were aware of the University's plagiarism policy.
The University is currently in a trial period with Turnitin. If the University decides to purchase the software, it will cost $5,000 per academic year for University-wide use and an unlimited number of accounts.
According to senior Jason Bauer, one of the students on the EPC, any department that wishes to use the Turnitin software next semester will be able to do so through the Dean of Students Office. He said the psychology department has expressed interest in using the software.
Coppersmith said she now feels comfortable using the software and is glad that people who cheated on lab reports in the past now have to work to earn the grades.
