slashgirl writes, “I’m almost embarrassed to submit this, given that, apparently, university students in NS don’t even know what the word plagiarism means.
From the article: ‘The students’ union at a Nova Scotia university is lobbying to prevent students’ academic papers from being passed through a website designed to catch cheaters.
“They are going to be assumed guilty until they are otherwise proven innocent,” said Chantal Brushett, president of the students’ union at Mount Saint Vincent University.
“All of a sudden they’re being accused of plagiarism when they don’t even know what the word plagiarism means. I want a front-end approach, as opposed to a back-end approach.”
The rest of this sad story is here.“
Alternate view
Yes, plagiarism is wrong, but I see another issue here. turnitin.com is a for profit company. Students are working to produce their own intellectual property. Now their school is requiring them to surrender certain rights over their IP to a company whose purpose is to profit it from it.
I guess this is an exception to what LISWiki says about plagiarism and this happening:
Now if it was an open, non-profit anti-plagiarism project, and the students still complained (and let’s face it, some likely would), that would be a different matter.
Probability
Unfortunately, students are up against probability theory. The odds of students studying the same subject, with the same access to information and with the same or similar assignments set by their tutors, producing an identical set of eight consecutive words is infinitely more probable than monkeys eventually typing the complete works of Shakespeare! Especially when you consider that the same tutor is likely to teach the same subject and hand out the same/similar assignments, year after year – particularly in a subject such as English Literature.
Students will also not have the time, ability or resources to compare their ‘original’ work against “more than 4.5 billion pages of newspapers, academic journals, books and students’ reports” to make sure that they have not unknowingly produced a work that could be seem as having plagiarised other works.
In any case, if students are supposed to produce work that is completely original, what is the point of setting assignments that rely on learning and quoting material that has already been produced?
Also and in my own opinion, the clever and intentional cheat will always find a way to disguise a plagiarised work. So, it is more than likely that the ones who should be caught, will not be!
We in no way condone plagiarism
There has been a lot of talk recently regarding the MSVU Students’ Union contesting turnitin.com; however, I am would like to make it clear what exactly we are contesting.
We in no way condone plagiarism. Our reason for challenging the use of turnitin.com is in part due to the fact that we believe that it is a backend approach to educating students about what exactly constitutes plagiarism, it is in part due to the fact that students are being distrusted, and in part due to the fact that we would like to see a policy regarding the usage of the software, either for or against, at our institution. We do not want the software being used in the absence of policy.
We are not naive enough to think there are not students who plagiarize, because there are and always will be. However, the Students’ Union believes in academic integrity and as such we believe that it would be far more beneficial if student were educated on the subjects of academic integrity and academic writing skills, as oppose to subjecting their work to the for-profit company that is turnitin.com and leaving them to deal with the consequences.
The University, in cooperation with the Students’ Union, is looking at this issue in a non-bias manner and are striving to hopefully create a policy that will best fit the students of MSVU.
Chantal Brushett, MSVU Students’ Union
Precisely
This has been my argument for sometime. And, at that point, how do you prove that you *didn’t* plagarize, if you’re the unlucky person who has selected the same words that were written in 2006 when it’s 2042? And if it is like other schemes I’ve seen proposed they’re going after cut-n-paste snippets, not just people hijacking whole papers.
Granted, there’s problems with the obverse, letting cheaters just lift chunks or whole papers from repositories…
So I’m really glad I got my degree when I did, because the future looks like a damn crapshoot.
— Ender, Duke_of_URL