Use with caution: Turnitin.com

Use with caution: Turnitin.com

by Valerie Balester, Executive Director

We were informed this past summer by Instructional Technology Services that students should not include identifying information on work submitted to Turnitin.com. ITS is concerned about reservations expressed by the U.S. Department of Education regarding student privacy and FERPA regulations. However, some professionals within the field of composition instruction have other concerns: plagiarism detection software like Turnitin does more damage, many of us fear, than violating privacy. One of the most influential professional organizations in composition, the Conference on College Communication and Composition (CCCC), for example, suggests that plagiarism detection software “undermines students’ authority over the uses of their own writing” (http://ccccip.org/files/CCCC-IP-PDS-Statement-final.pdf).

Why, you might ask, should we care? After all, student writing is just practice writing, and it doesn’t really count for anything. It’s not like our writing, by which we make our bread and butter. But when we treat student writing as inconsequential, so do students, and the result is the careless, poorly written drivel that we have been trying to obliterate with W courses. Students who do not feel pride of ownership and control over their work will not give it the time and attention it needs to be excellent.

Beyond this basic concern is the atmosphere plagiarism software detection programs can create, the expectation that students will cheat, that they are basically dishonest in their work. This atmosphere undermines trust and make writing even more distasteful. It’s just another trap, another hurdle to jump before graduation. Students are encouraged to see writing for college as a game rather than as an integral part of their education. We don’t want that.

The CCCC also worries that programs like Turnitin will make college faculty complacent by shifting responsibility for detecting plagiarism onto technology. It’s only a matter of time before students learn to beat the software. I have personally tested it with my students, asking them to cheat; many of their transgressions went undetected by Turnitin. Students who run originality reports that come out clean may still have made mistakes, but if they rely too heavily on the report, they will not know it.

After all, learning citation properly is far more than learning a set of rules, a style, the correct placement of commas and capital letters. Learning citation is first and foremost learning how a discipline creates and disseminates knowledge. It is subtle, takes many years to master, and is the mark of a professional.