Use with caution: Turnitin.com :: plagiarism detection software

Use with caution Turnitin.comby Valerie Balester, Executive handlerWe were informed this past summer by Instructional Technology serve that students should not include identifying information on work submitted to Turnitin.com. ITS is concerned virtually reservations expressed by the U.S. Department of Education regarding student privacy and FERPA regulations. However, round professionals within the field of composition instruction have other concerns plagiarism detection software ilk Turnitin does more damage, many of us fear, than violating privacy. single of the most influential professional organizations in composition, the Conference on College talk and Composition (CCCC), for example, suggests that plagiarism detection software undermines students authority over the uses of their accept theme (http//ccccip.org/files/CCCC-IP-PDS-Statement-final.pdf).Why, you might ask, should we care? afterward all, student writing is only when practice writing, and it doesnt really co unt for anything. Its 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 twaddle that we have been trying to obliterate with W courses. Students who do not get hold pride of ownership and control over their work leave not give it the time and attention it needs to be excellent.Beyond this raw material concern is the atmosphere plagiarism software detection programs can create, the apprehension that students will cheat, that they are basically dishonest in their work. This atmosphere undermines send and make writing even more distasteful. Its just some other trap, another hurdle to jump sooner graduation. Students are encouraged to collar writing for college as a game rather than as an integral part of their education. We dont want that.The CCCC also worries that programs like Turnitin will make college faculty complacent by shifting responsibility for detection plagiarism onto technology. Its only a matter of time before students learn to beat the software. I have personally tested it with my students, inquire them to cheat many of their transgressions went undetected by Turnitin. Students who run originality reports that come aside clean may still have made mistakes, but if they avow too heavily on the report, they will not know it.After all, learning course credit 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 eld to master, and is the mark of a professional.