Press Release
Penn State to Use Turnitin.com to Further Enhance Academic Integrity
June 10, 2005
University Park, Pa – Beginning fall 2005, Penn State will offer the plagiarism detection tool Turnitin.com to faculty and students at every Penn State campus as a way to help maintain academic integrity at the University. This decision was based on a successful pilot of Turnitin during the spring 2005 semester with approximately fifty faculty.
Turnitin performs originality checks on submitted papers, checking the submissions against four possible plagiarism sources. These include the Internet; Proquest, a database that contains full-text articles of many newspapers and magazines; Turnitin’s own database of thousands of student papers turned into the site from other universities; and a database of papers submitted from Penn State to Turnitin. Once the paper is checked, an originality report is sent to the submitter. The report highlights possible instances of plagiarism and the source of the questionable text.
Penn State faculty can set up their own Turnitin accounts, and can either submit papers themselves or allow students to do so. This allows more flexibility for faculty in deciding how to handle academic integrity issues and enables them to use Turnitin as a plagiarism prevention tool, not just a detection device. “Turnitin cannot determine what a faculty member should do about a paper that has not cited its sources adequately–it just makes it easier for the faculty member to start the conversation with the student,” said John Harwood, senior director of Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Penn State’s Information Technology Services.
Harwood stated that faculty also can use Turnitin as an educational tool. Faculty can allow students to forward papers to Turnitin and get an originality report before submitting their papers for grading, enabling them to recognize plagiarism that may be unintentional. “One characteristic of ‘the Net generation’ is that our students have grown up with computers,” he said. “Throughout their K-12 experience, they have learned to copy and paste directly from the Web into a word processor.
“Many students don’t necessarily write their papers; they compile them, and they don’t realize that they are committing plagiarism,” Harwood added.
Plagiarism at Penn State has increased somewhat, but reports of plagiarism have not quadrupled as was recently reported. This incorrect number was due to changes in how Penn State officials were informed of suspected plagiarism.However, a survey conducted in November 2004 found that nearly 40 percent of faculty and teaching assistants at Penn State believe academic integrity is a major problem. This number is consistent with data in national and international surveys.
These numbers are a problem, Harwood said, because it reduces the amount of trust between faculty and student, and learning suffers when trust is reduced. However, he also believes that Turnitin will be an important tool in restoring that trust by helping to diminish plagiarism. “The presence of Turnitin on our campus should help both students and faculty feel confident that a student’s paper is the student’s own work,” he said. “For the vast majority of Penn State students who do their own written work, Turnitin helps to level the playing field.”
The Turnitin program is administered by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Penn State’s Information Technology Services. More information about Turnitin can be found at http://tlt.its.psu.edu/turnitin/ and www.turnitin.com/.
Contact:
John Harwood
Senior Director
Teaching and Learning with Technology
Information Technology Services
814-865-3540