Teaching and Learning Lessons from Turnitin

Guest Blogger: Bill Donohue

Here we are in Spring, and as we all await those final student products that demonstrate student learning from another successful semester, I know what you are thinking: “I wonder how Donohue’s use of Turnitin that he blogged about in January went this semester.” Fear not; I am here to give you an update!

Throughout the semester, students were required to submit select writing assignments using the Turnitin feature on Moodle. These assignments were ones that I have seen plagiarism in the past from essay mills or Sparknotes.

Overall, I saw five instances of plagiarism, two of which came from the same student. These are interesting cases to discuss as they shed light on both teaching and learning at Lincoln.

In ENG 101, students had to write an essay about Langston Hughes based on a close reading of his poetry and essays. Two students submitting essays to Turnitin had high similarity scores that proved to be opportunities for formative teaching and learning.

Both essays had sentences copied and pasted from internet sources. One student had minimal use of plagiarized sentences, and I addressed the issue through feedback about proper citation on the assignment through Turnitin’s feedback studio. The other had a very high rate copied sentences. I addition to feedback on the essay, I followed up with the student during a writing workshop. An underlying issue for the student was not understanding the writing assignment and the critical thinking concepts we had been discussing and practicing building toward the essay assignment. In a desperate attempt to submit something, the student wrote a biography of Langston Hughes, mainly by copying from internet sources. Not only was this teachable moment about plagiarism, but also a formative learning opportunity regarding the more difficult concept of close reading and critical thinking. The student revised the essay and was able to engage in the independent thinking and writing exercise intended by the assignment (without plagiarism).

In ENG 099, there were three instances of plagiarism for assignments related to the reading of the novel A Lesson Before Dying. Two of the plagiarized submissions were by the same student. My concerns are broader than difficulty with course content as seen in ENG 101.

All three plagiarized papers were emailed to me as opposed to submitted to Turnitin, as required. Part of the reason for need to email the assignments was that the assignments were completed after the due date. Turnitin will not accept submission past the due date. (The regular Moodle assignment submission function allows for a due date and a grace period. Good to know if using one or both tools during a course). I uploaded these emailed assignments to Turnitin for analysis and feedback. However, the emailing of the plagiarized assignments may be an attempt at subterfuge by avoiding the plagiarism checker altogether.

One student had a similarity score in the green at 23%, but the plagiarism detected was enough to fail the student. Although the assignment required analysis, a more difficult task than writing a summary, this is a student who usually does not have problems thinking independently and is quite vocal in class. One reason for the plagiarism might be the desperation to submit a late assignment. However, the student came to class high last week (smelled like marijuana; glassy, bloodshot eyes; delayed responses; evasive). My fear is that the student is heading down a road that will adversely affect academic performance.

The other student emailed both a chapter summary assignment and a character analysis assignment after the due date. Both were heavily plagiarized. The student has been consistently inconsistent all semester. When she is on, she does quite well. But other times, she misses class or does shoddy work, if she has completed the work at all. Other than online feedback, I have not had a chance to talk to the student directly, mostly because she has missed class. In an email exchange on a different topic, she did indicate how “swamped” she is with work, especially in trying to complete overdue work with work that is due next week. Is this another case of plagiarism due to desperation? Does she not know how to properly complete the assignments? Is she struggling with course content? Is she failing at organizing and prioritizing her work? How is she spending her time outside of class? Is she going to make it? What can I do for this student?

Such are the questions that keep me up at night.

One change that I made for a final writing portfolio assignment in ENG 099 was to engage higher level thinking skills. The straightforward character analysis that was plagiarized by two students has been altered to an assignment where students are placed in a position of running for sheriff in the fictional Louisiana town where A Lesson Before Dying is set.  The students need to have an understanding of the character responsible for much of the systemic racism in the town in order to create an argument as to why they should be sheriff instead. The critical thinking started right away in our class discussion of the assignment when one student asked about the time frame. Should they write in the 1940s setting of Bayonne, Louisiana, or current day? We settled on 1940s Louisiana, but without voting restrictions based on race or gender. 

I look forward to reading those assignments and all the final portfolios due next week from another semester of teaching and learning. 

What was your experience with student writing and/or the use of Turnitin in your classes this semester?

Plagiarism Confession

Guest Blogger: Bill Donohue

I have a confession to make. I have plagiarized. On Friday, January 20, 2017, at approximately 11:23 a.m., I committed an act of plagiarism—right in front of my composition students. I am a plagiarist. Turnitin told me that my writing submission was 80% similar, to use Turnitin’s term, to resources that that Turnitin used to check against my writing. As a matter of fact, all my students plagiarized that day.

Before you go snitching on us to the plagiarism police, the act of plagiarism was a demonstration. For the first time in my teaching career, I am using the Turnitin software as a component of the teaching of writing. And thanks to the Turnitin workshop sponsored by CETL and ATS (Thanks Anna and Nancy ;-), I have a solid understanding of how the program works, and I how I can avoid the pitfalls that kept me from using Turnitin in the past.

 This post is going to get long; so if you have had enough reading for a Saturday morning, here are a few discussion questions:

 What is your experience with plagiarism in your courses?

How have you handled plagiarism?

How do you teach students to engage with sources?

What advice do you have for a teacher who has not used Turnitin?

 To be clear, my aim has always been to teach students how to write; how to gather, understand, and use information; and how to use information responsibly. My courses have defined plagiarism, discussed plagiarism, reviewed examples of plagiarism, focused on citation conventions, and generally expanded the student’s knowledge about plagiarism. (Students are always surprised by the issues of minimal citations for paraphrases and self-plagiarism). I create assignments that limit the opportunities to plagiarize. I try to reason with the students by telling them that to become better writers, they need to do the work and receive feedback on that work. If I am giving feedback to work that someone else did or that was copied and pasted from an internet source, then the students are not becoming better writers. I also develop grading systems so that students are not focused on the grade but the writing itself. Finally, I do give the penalty lecture. I talk about how a professor’s job isn’t just to teach, but to create new knowledge. If someone steals those ideas as their own, they are stealing from me. And I review the sanctions for someone caught plagiarizing that can lead to expulsion!

 The notion of plagiarism as theft, and using detection software to police that crime, has never sat well with me as it puts the teacher and student in an adversarial position that does not aid in the teaching of writing. When I have caught someone plagiarizing, the most egregious examples are intentional plagiarism, which is not difficult for me to detect. A google search provides the evidence for me to confront the student. This is never a pleasant experience for both the student and myself. It can provide a teachable moment, and I do my best to work with the student.

Unintentional plagiarism, if it is considered plagiarism at all or rather the misuse of sources, is easier to contend with, although more difficult to detect and labor intensive in some cases. Most often, the citation convention is not employed correctly and the feedback mechanism can indicate to the student the issue without having to be adversarial. The adversarial positioning is one reason why The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) passed a resolution denouncing the use of plagiarism detection software (http://www.ncte.org/cccc/resolutions/2013). Other issues with the use of the software are undermining student agency, threating privacy and intellectual property, ineffectiveness of detection, and distraction from teaching students how to write from sources.

Research, such as the Citation Project (http://site.citationproject.net/), has shown that instances of intentional plagiarism are quite low and that the larger issue is how students are engaging with the source material they are trying to use. Students need to be taught how to use source material. A focus on reading skills, especially when the subject is unfamiliar or complex as in upper division major courses, can aid students in synthesizing sourced ideas into their own arguments in deep and meaningful ways. Better understanding of the topic being written about and what the research says about those topics leads to better integration of ideas and less patch-writing. This approach is more labor intensive as class time, written feedback, and individual conferences may be needed to provide the proper amount of instruction. (Writing Centers are also useful for this instruction.)

 So why am I using Turnitin this semester? Partly, I am doing so because other professors are using the software. As a composition teacher teaching a subject that has a heavy burden of service, I want to make sure students have an awareness and an understanding of the tool so they can use it effectively to aid in their writing. Similar to my warning that plagiarism can have consequences, the use of Turnitin may dissuade a student from intentional plagiarism and compel them to give a more honest, if flawed, attempt at the writing assignment that creates a space for learning.

I use many of the best practices for teaching writing in regards to source work as outlined by CCCC and the Writing Program Administrators (http://wpacouncil.org/positions/WPAplagiarism.pdf). One of those is the creation of assignments that resist plagiarism. An example is from the Integrated Writing and Reading course. Students read A Lesson Before Dying, and an assignment is to write a characterization of five main characters. The intention is for students to use their reading skills to gain an understanding of who those characters are in the narrative. The characterization assignment has students use writing-to-learn in order to examine the characters and use the information for the essay they will write about the transformation of a dynamic character in the novel. In the past, students have copied and pasted from internet resources such as SparkNotes to complete the characterization. While some students realize this is intentional plagiarism, others think that the information is so basic and common that it is fine to copy it.

A way to change the assignment to resist plagiarism is to change the nature of the assignment. Instead of a straightforward assignment that calls for summary of a character’s position, the assignment could engage in higher level thinking such as asking students to write from the perspective of each character. They may write a brief letter from one character to another about an issue in narrative. A reflection assignment would focus on why the writer made the choices that they did in the letter. The problem with this assignment maybe that students struggle to complete it and miss the opportunity to gain a base understanding of one or multiple characters in narrative that are important for the essay they will write. Using Turnitin with the straightforward characterization version of the assignment may help students engage in the true intention of the assignment, which is the application of their ability to read and understand the narrative.

We shall see. And I will write a blog post later in the semester to update you on what happened.