Thanks.
If the sites did this, then it would make checkers rather useless, i.e., submitted original work could only be validated once and only once by the submitting author and thereafter would be flagged, as plagiarized. Thus, everything would be flagged as plagiarized by all third parties who use the site to verify anything given to them after the author has checked his work himself.
Plagiarism sites track actual publicly written/available (for example on internet sites and bogs etc.- this is why one should not place essays publicly on CC) and printed material that have been digitized. Since your work has not been and is not publicly available it should not be flagged if checked by a professor or anyone else.
As for reliability, well, understand that the term “garbage in, garbage out” means something. Unless you know what the checkers are checking, then there is zero way to assess reliability.
I’m a little confused. Teachers usually assign students to hand in papers through institutionally connected plagiarism checkers, like Turnitin or Safeassign. Those do indicate what sources of possible plagiarism are indicated. (My students submit through Turnitin–I allow multiple submissions and it does not flag a student for similarities with their own work). This looks like some random business/website oriented checker–I am surprised if a teacher is telling students to use it. [Editing to add: it will note similarities to other students at other institutions, not just “publicly available” materials as mentioned in above post.]
But what’s more confusing me is–why would a student need to turn their paper in to a plagiarism-checker independent of submitting to class? The student should know what constitutes plagiarism and if they are doing it or not, right?
So I think I’m missing something here.
Yes, students who actually plagiarize after reading something and do not know it. Very easy to do. Plagiarism is not only exact copying, but also encompasses copying of sentence structure, syntax and overall form.
I had the same thought like @garland said: Students should not submit work for plagiarism checking. And my big concern is the student will be accused of plagiarizing his/her own work (that’s why I asked question 2). On the other hand I saw some websites suggesting students should use plagiarism checkers to check their work and I found couple free checkers. I don’t know what’s right or wrong here.
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Yes. This is part of what I teach for a living. Students need to recognize when patchwriting, copying structure, etc are happening. They need to understand how to paraphrase properly, how to cite sources for ideas and information and not just for exact words, how to have original syntax and not just replace words with synonyms.
Learning these things needs to be a conscious skill. Not crossing your fingers and “sort of” using sources in unethical ways.
That sort of learning comes partly from being ethical in general, partly from knowing the rules, partly in accurate note-taking to know what sources information came from, and partly from meticulous checking and rechecking one’s work.
A plagiarism checker will not pick up echoes of ideas, information, syntax, sentence structure, or overall form. It may or not pick up patchwriting. So there really is no substitution for care and attention to rules, details, and ethics.
So in answer to @coolweather, I don’t think it’s so much wrong as misleading. There really isn’t a shortcut here.
(Also, I just noticed that my edit in my first post is misplaced–it refers to Turnitin, not the site asked about here. I don’t know what that would flag or not as far as personal submissions.)
I am sorry for posting the link to the plagiarism checker site (not affiliated with me). A kid I know used it and it was not recommended by his teacher.
@garland - Does Turnitin keep track of the student’s name, email, some kind of ID assigned by the teacher along with the submitted contents?
My brother’s girlfriend is correcting papers now. One kid already plagiarized on a takehome midterm. She just found a student who paraphrased (barely) one of the assigned reading books without of footnote. She didn’t even have the book with her and recognized it. Got the ebook version to doublecheck and yup, there it was. I don’t know why students are so stupid, but they are. (This is Columbia by the way.)
She’d probably have let it go with a warning not to do it again if there had been a footnote, but the wording was really barely changed. No question that it was a problem.
@awcntdb - What determines a paper published or unpublished? Are student papers turned in to teachers considered unpublished materials? Wikipedia says essays submitted to Turnitin are stored in a database to prevent students from copying another student’s work. Does the database contain published materials then? This is something hard for me to understand if Turnitin does not associate the author with the submitted contents.
Coolweather–if Turnitin says a paper of my student is similar to another student, they don’t give me information. They say I’d have to write to the student’s institution to get permission–which I’d never bother to do. When one student’s paper sounds like another, it’s generally because they’re cribbing from the same site. So no need to see the other student’s paper.
I honestly find most plagiarism on my own, not through Turnitin. That sometimes give me a lead, but I’m really really good at sniffing it out myself.
^ How does it work in this case: A student submits a paper to Turnitin for checking. He later adds a new paragraph to the same paper then submits to Turnitin again. How do you determine whether the paper is plagiarized or not?
I’m a firm believer in using a site that looks for copied work. Both my kids used If for all their papers. DD had to present a paper that was produced by herself and three other students. Thanks to the checker she found that one student lifted almost everything from the internet. DD’s group ended up rewriting that entire section.
The site my kids used is owned by TurnitIn. The paper will not show up as plagiarized on Turnitin when turned in the first time. The site is writecheck.com.
It also provides further proof you are the original author as you have a dated download available showing when you submitted your work to writecheck.
Good luck.
I agree with this. I can’t for the life of me figure out why an honest student who understands academic integrity would have to wonder if she plagiarized or not.
I agree with this statement. My concern would be that so many high school students have no clue how to properly cite. Professional writers also have been caught plagiarizing. The cheating culture in college today can be rampant. DD was working on a project the other week and another student kept snapping pictures of everyone’s computer screen. DD kept the professor posted when she handed in her presentation.
When son was overseas he had 17 proctors in the room for a class of 70 students. Rooms were not assigned until a few hours before finals. The professor needed to be called from a private booth in the classroom for any questions on the exam. Students would need to be escorted into the restroom. Papers needed to be physically handed in and time stamped even after being submitted electronically to Turnitin a few days prior.
We are easly hacked and copied. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to to wear a belt with suspenders.
My daughter had a class where drafts of a paper were submitted throughout the semester to turnitin and then at the end the final paper was submitted. The teacher said he was able to set the turnitin parameters so it would not flag it as plagiarism when the earlier drafts matched the final paper of the same student.
Sure, all this sounds great, IF the students actually get taught this. I suspect many students do not get taught this to the degree you state and teachers in classes other than English Composition just do not have the time to teach this and thus depend on such checkers.
Is it lazy? Sure, but it is easy to say "there really is no substitution for care and attention to rules, details, and ethics’ when you are teaching it. Not so easy when teachers are in a school where these skills are not taught.
This is the same effect as not saving the paper, so that works.
This thread is very informative. Thanks to all, and please continue:-)