"Turn it in" (2 Viewers)

[MaryJane]

Hmm.. I thought Skittled was going to write about this, but seeing he hasnt, I'm going to steal his thunder!

Today in our psych tute, our tutor started talking about the Turn it in program. I'm sure you all know what it is, and what it does (and for those who dont, it detects plagiarism in your assignments by scanning it in a database full of both academic and student writing). So, she was talking about how our Social PSY234 essays didnt go through the system, but she gave us some interesting facts, which might prove helpful in future assignments:

1. It picks up plagiarism if you have strung four words from another persons work together (including 'the', 'and', and sentences starting with "therefore", "hence" etc).

2. You can only get 15% plagiarism feedback before having marks deducted. If its an extreme amount of plagiarism, we all can guess what the consequences are...

3. It checks your references too (apparently, although I have heard differing accounts of this fact), and references arent enough! You need quotation marks around someones words: you cant just write...

suggesting that pigs can fly (Jeff and Bob, 2000). You need those lovely little " " on either side, or its plagiarism. However, I believe this will be at the markers discretion as to whether they really mark it as plagiarism.

4. The markers mark the hardcopies before they get the report back from Turn it in, meaning that you cant write a plagiarism-free essay and believe to get full marks.

5. If you're picked up on plagiarism for a work you say you didn't read, regardless, the markers will not believe you because, when you think about it, the chances of you directly plagiarising someones work that you havent read is pretty hard. That, and its a sad fact, but noone has original ideas anymore.

6. ATTN: PSY104 students! Did you know your essays were scanned through the Turn it in system? (I'm assuming you did because you have to sign a contract allowing it). Well, our tutor is a marker, and she has run them through the system. Well, she said that most of the essays contained plagiarism (but thats ok as long as its under the 15%). And thats fine, but uou know how I said that the most plagiarism you're allowed to have is 15%? 15% of students had their essays come back with plagiarism reports of OVER 40%, which means that you're sure to not only fail, but get a warning regarding your continued education at MQ.

So its a pretty scary system... Skittled doubts its abilities to scan every single paper put through its system, but then, if they narrow down the search to the topic, I think it would be easy to do.

P.s. James and Clairegirl, PSY235 is using Turn it in next semester.

 

[xeuyrawp]

Hey MJ,
Thanks for the post. It's sad that students either feel they suck enough or leave it too late to resort to plagiarism; which is made worse byt he fact that the teachers really won't give a damn about any kind of excuses...

I read up on Turnitin before I Submitted my essay, but I don't like the fact that it will keep an entire record of my work on server. What if I submit another essay which plagiarises my old one...? I can think of heaps of other qualms besides my paranoia that they're selling the essays on ebay.....

But yes, my Phil lecturer told us that we had an option to select "Don't scan my essay/keep it for record" for legal reasons, but I never saw any such option. Also, it'd annoy my tutor who would have to manually check for stealing other peoples' work= more work for him = bad marks for me.

 

[redruM]

this will help

 

[doe]

i got accused of plagiarism. it really pissed me off the way they handled it too. two little fuckers stole a copy of my comp assignment and handed it in as their own, and the automatic plagiarism thingy they have for comp assignments pulled me up. i checked my marks online and they were negative (wtf!) so after a lecture i go speak to the lecturer and ask why my marks were negative, "you plagiarised" was her answer, in front of all the other students (very embarrasing). i had to go get a statutory declaration from the police and give it to her. i dont think she even checked the assignments or spoke to the 2 that stole my assignment, they just got negative marks and that was it. it was the whole guilty untill proven innocent thing, and the "proof" relying solely on her trusting me not to lie to the police that really pissed me off.

it you get pulled up, challenge it. if you plagiarise, get the fuck out of uni.

i dont really blame my lecturer, i blame the fuckers who stole my assignment and mostly the lack of resources provided to the lecturer to do proper checking.

plagiarise is a hard word to spell.

 

[MaryJane]

Wow doe that really sucks! I was actually wondering what the process was regarding plagiarism... they're not v.sensitive about it, are they?

But yeah, I just thought that it would be good to know.. and it will help me too redrum! no more than four words in a row.. tutors trust us too much!

I'm so drunk, better go... it took me forever to think about the word sensitive and remember how to spell it, night night lovely gorgeous edible bosers! Love Maryjane your humble plagiarism reminderer from bos!

p.s. I didnt write the plagiarism stuff when I was drunk, its the truth.. and Doe, yes plagiarism is a hard word to spell.. just copy and paste.. thats what I've been doing for this post!

 

[Skittled]

She sooo stole my thunder. Grr

I doubt the computing abilities of turnitin because for it to scan every essay, and record it, and then compare every 4 words to every other 4 words of every other essay and article and textbook and book and and and and...

...I can't help but think it'd take years to scan just a single student's essay for plagarism.

On the other hand, maybe that'd be easily circumventable, I assume, if they could identify a rough 'topic', which would significantly cut down the amount of assignments you have to compare to... But that'd take some pretty complex algorithms to identify subtle differences in topics --ie in my self-esteem essay, where people used "self-esteem" or "well-being", but never both, to mean the same thing-- or changes in context, where, say, referencing has occurred elsewhere and you start a new sentence saying something like "they said...", or similar.

I'm not doubting that turnitin is powerful, only questioning how perfect it is. Our tutor seemed to have an awe-inspiring impression of it, however I can't help but questioning it...

(...hope that makes sense!)

-Drunk Skittled

 

[MaryJane]

circumventable is a big word when you're dunk... did you use dictionary.com? Thats my best friend... maybe I should reference it so I dont get done for plagiarism?

 

[glitterfairy]

Actually, talking to my tutor in CUL100, they aren't going to accept Turnitin's word as law. Apparently if there is a large amount of plagiarism, they will check it manually as well... because there *is* that huge possibility of stringing together the same 4 words.

That being said, they might just be nice to first-years... some of the scenarios above sound really scary :S

 

[fornstar]

i got a tad paranoid

cause i had my articles and summarised the main points

then i went and typed up my essay

and im like "fuk did i summarise it in my own words???"

so i looked at what i wrote and compared it 2 the articles ... hope it went ok

 

[MaryJane]

They can only put it through the turn it in system if they ask for you to sign a permission form.. so if you didn't sign a form, they arent going to use the system.

 

[iambored]

i didn't realise they were so serious about scanning assessments, i thought it was to scare people off but not true, it definitely sounds like a scary system

 

[Cyan_phoeniX]

how does it work if they dont have a computer copy of your work? how does a computer read a scanned page? sounds interesting.hehehe.

doe, that would suck big time. i let someone in law see my final copy of my assignment. hearing that, its worrying me further, because i hardly know the person. i have evidence its my assignment and all, but still..weh.

 

[AsyLum]

I've been accused three times of writing plaigarised essays.

Three times i've had witnesses placing me in the library madly writing it up during lunch without the aid of a book. (high school)

(one time a teacher accused me and said it was exactly like the one in the textbook, i showed him up by telling him i hadnt even purchased or seen the textbook and he could go search my house if he wanted. needless to say he was very quiet for the rest of the year)

I feel proud.

 

[Orange Juice]

im starting to get worried... i didnt use any quotations... and didnt even reference everything... cuz i thought if i didnt cite it i wouldnt need it... i think theyll get me from stealing stats... fuck psych... if i fail this... im so dropping it

 

[...]

hmm

regarding using stuff you have written before

apparently even if u did write the work, and for another piece of work you used it without referencing it, thats still plaigarism
don't ask me why, i read it somewhere, i think uni of newcastle forum had a thread about this

 

[boinkBOINK]

www.turnitin.com
sounds so scary mang
scared the hell outta me
still does
*wonders if he plagerised
hmmm...

 

[golfstick]

I'm trying to work out a way of submitting my work to turn it in myself, first, by getting some sort of illegal username, so I can double check.

At any rate, I will be coming out swinging if this new system accuses me of plagarism. I will lay the fucking smack down like I have never before.

 

[Skittled]

how does it work if they dont have a computer copy of your work? how does a computer read a scanned page? sounds interesting.hehehe.

Optical Character Recognition has been around for a long time... actually Darren Bourke talked about it in Psy237, the other day. Basically, as long as you've written in a clear font, (and the fonts you will use are pretty predictable... Arial... Tahoma... the 'Times' family...) they could scan it through without difficulty

Apparently first year students were asked for a computer copy of their work with their hardcopy. Our tutor talked of times when the student's hardcopy and electronic copy differed: the harcopy had references removed, to make the student look smarter and get better grades, while the elctronic one had extra references to try and make the turnitin report more favourable...

At any rate, I will be coming out swinging if this new system accuses me of plagarism. I will lay the fucking smack down like I have never before.

There're no new thoughts anymore, really. Unfortunatley they're not teaching us to think for ourself. Everything's based on something else, or a combination of a few something-elses, so you need to reference.

Especially as a student, I don't think they think we've got enough understanding of the subject to start developing our own theories which should be given credit in the form of essay marks.

 

[doe]

There're no new thoughts anymore, really. Unfortunatley they're not teaching us to think for ourself. Everything's based on something else, or a combination of a few something-elses, so you need to reference.

Especially as a student, I don't think they think we've got enough understanding of the subject to start developing our own theories which should be given credit in the form of essay marks.

university is very much an exercise in conformity. you will do things exactly as they say on penalty of failure. you can try and bend the lines but if they dont like you or what you did they can always fall back to "policy" and fail you.

 

[philly17]

It's a lot more seriuos than u all think my cousin who is in 3rd yr chiro got in trouble recently with the uni cliaming she plagarised 5 DIFFERENT essays, the problem is it was the same question as the year before and text list as year before, so by them claiming she copied yr before is just plain slack. She had to go into this meeting with all these officials and they started asking all these questions accussing her it was soo slack! Anyway the decision hasnt been made yet but yeah it can be serious.