Ann writes

Did you REALLY write this?

Our college recently purchased access to Turnitin, one of the more widely used plagiarism detection tools. I have used it in one class, but gave it a pass in another. While I have seen some glaring examples of plagiarism in my classes, I am still conflicted about the Turnitin process.

On one hand, using another person’s work can not and should not be tolerated. On the other hand, there is a certain “big brother” aspect to Turnitin that bothers me. In addition, there are legal issues like potential copyright and FERPA violations.

Bottom line, if we choose to use plagiarism detection tools, I believe we must also be providing extensive ongoing education on information literacy, including plagiarism prevention. This information literacy education must begin in primary and secondary schools, and continue to be reinforced in higher education. We face challenges with this idea, however, as curricula become more crowded, test scores are viewed as priority outcomes, and time is crunched. We have less time to nurture the skills of in-depth reading and critical thinking, not to mention dealing with apparent shorter attention spans all around.

A recent article, Is Google Making Us Stupid? , describes how people of all ages (not just the so-called “net gen” age group) have reported that their thinking has become “staccato” as a result reading online, following hyperlinks, and looking for bite-size chunks of information. Reading and processing lengthy articles and books has become more difficult. Perhaps as a result, many of us have become used to grabbing synthesized nuggets, sometimes unconsciously, and using them without citation. Of course, the issue of plagiarism is much more complicated than that, and certainly existed prior to digital technologies, but the cut and paste/grab and go lifestyle seems to be a factor.

I’m curious about your thoughts on plagiarism. Is it more prevalent now? Are you using Turnitin or something similar? Any ideas on how we can we build information literacy into our teaching? And I promise I won’t run your comments through Turnitin….

Tags: information literacy, plagiarism