Nowadays, universities or other educational facilities all around are still facing the same problem regarding student’s writing: plagiarism. Copyright should be protected because it is the most important thing about people’s work. However, the papers produced in one university in a semester are hard to count, and it is almost impossible for schools to check them manually. As a result, plagiarism detecting software is born. Software and websites that provide detecting service are commonly used in universities, and the writings go through those programs are countless. It seems like those programs solve the plagiarism problem for educational facilities, but how about the cost? With the development of internet technology, people are more worry about their privacy than ever. Here are some of my thoughts as a current university student about using online plagiarism detection programs.
As a university student, I have a lot of experiences with online learning tools and educational tools. I feel fine with all these useful tools and I do not realize the problems it caused until I read A GUIDE FOR RESISTING EDTECH: THE CASE AGAINST TURNITIN by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel. As an international student, I took a language program when I first came to Canada, which involves a lot of writing. Instructors will always tell us student to watch out for plagiarism and our work will be tested through Turnitin. During my four years in university, I have lost count how many papers I submitted have been run through Turnitin, that is why I am shocked when I read the article. Until now, the idea of I loses my full right to my work whenever my work runs through the software did not pop up in my head. One of the main reason is that I never personally visit the website of Turnitin and read their terms of use. However, I understand why Turnitin is very popular in university. It is a huge amount of work to prevent and detect plagiarism with the huge amount of papers produced in a university, and Turnitin is the easy way out. In addition, the reason why most of the student and educators did not realize the problem is most of the paper is not important enough to create a copyright crisis. Just like the authors state in the article:”In a recent conversation where he tried to explain why Turnitin’s violation of student intellectual property was a problem, Sean’s argument was countered with a question about whether that intellectual property was worth protecting………. the point to make here is that Turnitin actively profits (to the tune of $752 million) from the work of students(Morris & Stommel, 2018).”, most of the time, students have no idea someone else is profiting by using their work. Furthermore, the Terms of Use section of an app is always very long and detailed, long enough that most people just skip to the end and click “I agree”. Actually, all the details about the app are written in that section. Students are usually informed that their work will be run through software like Turnitin, but they also usually have no idea of what it really means. Most of the students, like me, are just “used to” this kind of things, they never really find out what software like Turnitin does to their copyright. As the case in “A GUIDE FOR…..”, people can not legally blame or accuse Turnitin of anything just because they did not read the terms of use very carefully. I personally have encountered similar problems in a gaming app. For new games, it is almost guaranteed there are some loopholes or so-called “BUGs” in coding, and some people will take advantage of them and claim “It is the gaming companies problem they have BUGs.”. After they are banned, they will argue how they got punished because of someone else’s mistake. In fact, using a loophole instead of reporting it is definitely in most if not every gaming app’s terms of use.
In conclusion, Morris and Stommel’s article is very interesting and got me thinking about protecting my privacy on the internet. I think it is very important to read about the terms of use section of an online tool or app before using it. In addition, educators should inform students if they decided to use software like Turnitin to test student’s work for plagiarism. The students should have full power over their work and know the consequences of using those kinds of software. There are a huge variety of tools can be used online, and it is not too late to change the tool if you are not comfortable with what you read in terms of use.
Original Post:
References:
A GUIDE FOR RESISTING EDTECH: THE CASE AGAINST TURNITIN, Sean Michael Morris & Jesse Stommel, An Urgency of Teachers, (2018). Retrieved from https://criticaldigitalpedagogy.pressbooks.com/chapter/a-guide-for-resisting-edtech-the-case-against-turnitin/
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash. Retrieved from https://unsplash.com/photos/npxXWgQ33ZQ