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‘Responding to what students tell us’
BSLE 2007
The role of Turnitin within the formative
process of EAP: a tool for learning and
unlearning?
Mary Davis
International Centre for English Language Studies
Setting and rationale for this study
• Extended writing project module on the pre-Master’s
diploma for international students
• This module is seen as the most important, with a
3,000 word mini-dissertation
• Students need to assimilate UK academic
conventions and “unlearn” old ones
• In the 2005 feedback questionnaire at the end of the
module, students stated that if they took the module
again, they would want:
• To improve their writing more between drafts
• To learn more about using sources
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Challenges for international students
• Hayes and Introna (2005:213) found that “plagiarist practices
are often the outcome of many complex and culturally situated
influences”
• East (2002:3) says many international students “come from
educational cultures where copying is an expected learning
practice”.
• Handa and Power (2005:77) “many students end up plagiarising
because they do not fully understand the academic
requirements of their new academic culture”
• Carroll and Appleton (2001) highlight the difficulty for students
as “setting aside previously successful strategies and learning
new ones”. Carroll (2005) recommends detecting, deterring and
dealing with plagiarism in a culturally sensitive way.
• Bull et al (2001:5) remind that “the most common trigger that
arouses academics’ suspicions of plagiarism in assignments is a
change of writing style within a text”.
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Method
• Turnitin included for the first time in the 2006 run of the module.
• Part of plagiarism education programme which included at least
6 hours’ instruction, focus of online discussions, handbook selfstudy exercises, library guidelines, institutional warnings.
• Written task carefully designed to deter plagiarism – based on
individual research question, guided by tutor to be evaluative,
not descriptive – thus following principles for deterring
plagiarism (Carroll and Appleton 2001).
• First drafts submitted to Turnitin (in week 9 of 12 week
semester), originality reports generated, and used in tutorial
feedback. No marks given and no penalties, even if clear
plagiarism at this stage. Open discussion of sources.
• Follow up analysis of perceived improvements in final draft,
student evaluations through questionnaires and focus group, to
assess success (2006-2007)
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Student A – First Draft
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Student A – Final Draft
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Student B – First Draft
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Student B – Final Draft
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Interpreting percentages in Turnitin
• “Which percentage means good or bad?”
• “Does 25% mean my work is 25% plagiarism?”
• Barrett and Malcolm (2006) suggest a threshold of 15%.
• In this study, interpretation of results suggest that the
percentages are not clear cut, and it does not seem useful to
establish a threshold.
• Despite general perceptions of green, not all green results were
safe, while some yellow results did not indicate plagiarism,
although they did indicate over-reliance on sources.
• Peacock et al (2006) argued that the interpretation of Turnitin
needed to be facilitated by clear guidelines and training for
tutors, in order to give good feedback to students.
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Helping with citation
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73% in 2007, 71% in 2006 stated that they thought Turnitin was useful
for learning to write citations accurately:
“We don’t know about citation before we come here. In my
country, we need to use professional language in our writing,
otherwise it does not sound right. We don’t need to put the author,
just at the end.”
“Doing citations accurately is not easy for foreign students. We
really need a useful tool that could help.”
“The software helped me to be more cautious about citation”
“For me, I will never ever forget about efficient citations according
to the first experience of Turnitin, and especially for my
dissertation, I keep it in mind that I should understand every
knowledge in depth in order to avoid plagiarism”
“Sometimes we make a mistake and don’t use citation or not
correctly… this way gives us a second chance”
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Avoiding over-reliance on some sources
• 85% in 06, 82% in 07 thought that Turntin was useful for
avoiding over-reliance on one or certain sources:
• “It helps my work lead to the right track. I would like to use
it for to find out over-relianced sources because I tend to
cite many points from one source”
• “Turnitin is useful for avoiding over-reliance.. because
there is a sort of pressure, from the software to make aware
of use of sources”
• “It helps a lot to avoid over-reliance… because it shows you
the percentage, like this source is 5%, in colour”.
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Thinking about appropriate paraphrasing
• 71% from 06, 64% from 07 thought Turnitin was useful for
thinking about appropriate paraphrasing:
• “International students are not good at paraphrasing. So
Turnitin is useful for students thinking about it.”
• “Turnitin was useful for thinking about paraphrasing.. Well,
that is what the software is all about.”
• “It highlights some part of bad paraphrasing, then we can
correct it”
• “It doesn’t tell us which part or paraphrasing is good – we
get that from the teacher.”
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Avoiding plagiarism
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71% in 06, 73% in 07 thought it was useful for understanding how to
avoid plagiarism:
• “It is very helpful to remind students be careful about
plagiarism”
• “The software shows your mistakes.. Then we can correct
them. At the end, when we submit the final draft, we don’t
want to fail.”
• “I would like to use it again because sometimes we do
plagiarism without noticing it.”
• “ I think checking plagiarism by computer is good because
all students are trying to avoid plagiarism”
• “In my country, I can copy a whole assignment, without
writing a word, and get an A. Here it is different, and at the
beginning, I didn’t know anything. Turnitin helped correct a
lot my mistakes.”
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Tutor guidance or self-access?
• “I would like my own access to Turnitin”
• “It would be good if we could submit 3 times, then I think I
would get it right”
• “If I had my own access, I think I would spend a long time
submitting again and again to get it right”
• “I think it would be very helpful if students could use it.
However, it may help students to do well-organized
plagiarism.”
• “Turnitin is for tutors checking for plagiarism. I don’t
understand it. Maybe we need a guide for it.”
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Drawbacks of Turnitin
• 1. Problems with sources
Different to those students used, not accessible, not on the
database because less popular discipline (Barrett and Malcolm
2006) or no e-book available.
• 2. Problems with correct citations
All other authors’ words included with originality report.
• 3. More work for tutors
Time consuming – administering, uploading, checking,
discussing
(Sutherland-Smith and Carr 2005)
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Conclusions
Students wanted:
• To improve their writing more between drafts
• To learn more about using sources
Students improved:
• in their use of accurate citation
• in their reference to a more appropriate number of sources
• in appropriate paraphrasing
• in understanding how to avoid plagiarism.
Students evaluated this use of Turnitin with first drafts as:
• useful for this assignment
• helpful in understanding more about plagiarism.
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Recommendations
1. Turnitin can be used with first drafts before assessment for useful
learning opportunities in plagiarism education.
2. Turnitin can be more effectively used with tutor guidance to ensure
correct interpretation of originality reports.
3. Turnitin should not be seen as a substitute for other feedback or a
solution in itself, but as a tool to support learning. In this way, it
becomes part of an integrated approach to plagiarism education, as
recommended in the JISC-PAS guidelines for good practice (Carroll
2002).
4. Further exploitation is recommended. Planned research will include a
checklist of specific areas to discuss and note progress on: appropriate
paraphrasing, accurate copying of direct quotations, accurate in-text
citation, discussion of ownership of words and ideas, discussion of the
appropriate number of sources and how much to use them. Further
evaluation will also be collected from tutors.
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Bibliography
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Barrett, R. and Malcolm, J. (2006). Embedding plagiarism education in the
assessment process. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 2 (2), pp.3845.
Bull, J., Coughlin, E., Collins, C. and Sharp, D. (2001). Technical review of
plagiarism detection software report. (online) Joint Information Systems
Committee, pp.1-36, accessed on 9/1/2007 from
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/luton.pdf
Carroll, J. (2005). “Deterring, detecting and dealing with plagiarism”, a brief
paper for Brookes staff for Academic Integrity week, accessed 4/1/07 from
http://www.brookes.ac.uk/services/ocsd/5_research/jude.html
Carroll, J. (2002). A handbook for deterring plagiarism in higher education.
Oxford: Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development, Oxford Brookes
University.
Carroll, J. and Appleton, J. (2001). ‘Plagiarism: A Good Practice Guide’, Oxford
Brookes University Guide Series [on-line] Joint Information Systems Committee.
Accessed on 10/1/2007 from
http://www.jiscpas.ac.uk/apppage.cgi?USERPAGE=6202
East, J. (2005). Proper acknowledgement? Journal of University Teaching and
Learning Practice, 2 (3a) pp.1-11, accessed 14/9/2006 from
http://jutlp.uow.edu.au/2005_v02_i03a/east005.html
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Bibliography
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Handa, N. and Power, C. (2005). “Land and discover! A case study investigating
the cultural context of plagiarism.” Journal of University Teaching and Learning
Practice 2 (3b) pp.64-86.
Hayes, N. and Introna, L.D. (2005). “Cultural values, plagiarism, and fairness:
when plagiarism gets in the way of learning.” Ethics and Behaviour 15 (3)
pp.213-231.
Howard, R.M. (2000). “Sexuality, textuality: the cultural work of plagiarism”.
College English, Urbana. 62 (4) pp.473-491.
Peacock, S., Sharp, J. and Anderson, S. (2006). Pickup a plagiarism practice? A
holistic approach to deploying TurnitinUK as a sustainable driver in altering
institutional plagiarism practice. Centre for Academic Practice, Queen Margaret
University College, Edinburgh. Paper presented at JISC International Plagiarism
Conference, Newcastle, 19-21 June 2006.
Sutherland-Smith, W. and Carr, R. (2005). Turnitin.com: teacher’s perspectives
of anti-plagiarism software in raising issues of educational integrity. Journal of
University Teaching and Learning Practice, 2 (3b) pp.94-101. Turnitin (2007).
Plagiarism prevention. Accessed on 4/1/2007 from
http://www.turnitin.com/static/home.html
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