Results from Faculty/IAS Survey regarding Turnitin (114 respondents)
1. Have you used Turnitin in the past?
a. Yes, as a student
4
b. Yes, as an instructor
31
c. Yes, as both a student and instructor
1
d. No, I have never used Turnitin
78
2. Please rate your past experience (overall) using Turnitin tools:
a. Very positive, constructive in my teaching and/or learning
20
b. Somewhat positive
11
c. Neutral
3
d. Somewhat negative
2
e. Quite negative. Use of Turnitin detracted from my teaching and/or learning
0
f. I have never used Turnitin
78
3. In a typical semester, how many student writing samples do you receive and grade
for originality and/or appropriate citations?
a. Less than 20
29
b. 21-40
17
c. 41-60
7
d. over 60
61
4. In a typical semester, how many of your classes include assignments in which the
use of Turnitin could be helpful?
a. 1
30
b. 2
26
c. 3
25
d. more than 3
25
e. I would use Turnitin in no classes
8
5. Based on your current understanding of the Turnitin tools, which of them are you
likely to use? Check all that apply.
a. None
15
b. Originality Check (within D2L)
72
c. Grademark (within D2L)
36
d. Peermark (outside D2L only)
20
e. Not sure but will try one or more
33
6. Based on your current understanding of Turnitin, how many hours of time would
you expect to save in a typical semester by using these tools?
a. Less than 5
41
b. 6-10
30
c. more than 10
21
d. I would not use Turnitin
16
Comments:
 I would be especially interested in exploring how students are influenced by faculty
use vs. peer use.
 I assign multiple writing assignments for each of my classes each semester, I really
hope we get Turnitin. I think it would be a wonderful resource. I have colleagues at
other universities that use the program and love it.
 I used this tool at Purdue University for many semesters. Letting students know we
used the tool headed off many issues; they spent more time on citations, and soon
the rumor mill circulated stories of "getting caught", and even less problems
appeared. I usually used it as a teaching tool for my first-years; I turned on the
ability for them to see their submissions too. If there was a problem we could easily
look at it together. There is NO WAY I can check every paper for plagiarism, Google
every suspicious passage, and dig out last semester's papers to see if someone reused a submission. This tool is a must in the Internet Age. MUST MUST MUST! I
signed up for the pilot here this semester, but the problems prevented me from
using it. But I am up for it as soon as it is fixed.
 As I understand it, the purpose of Turnitin is not merely to prevent plagiarism, but
also to help students recognize good writing in a discipline. The peer review
processes should help with that.
 I truly have only one class that I would potentially use this for. So, I am not sure how
much you want to weigh my survey. / I am also not sure whether there would be
any of my type of discipline within the database that Turnitin would offer. So, I
doubt I would utilize.
 I like having digital assignments from students because then I have a permanent
record of their work, which I use regularly when preparing letters of
recommendation, and so forth. So being able to grade right within D2L with more
ease would be great. I would then also have a copy of my comments immediately
available. D2L is now hard to use to grade papers because of the absence of an easy
way to add comments. / / I would also like to be able to check for originality,
especially with short technical questions where they are likely to just copy and
paste a paragraph.
 I don't view Turnitin as a time-saving tool as much as a deterrent to plagiarisim and
as a way to engage students in editing each others work.
 I hate patroling papers for plagiarism. I think this tool would really help.
 I really am hopefully we get this and would use it a lot based on what I know about
it! / /
 its expensive. 17K/year? It basically replaces good teaching and google when
plagiarism is suspected. I think there are more robust writing software which can
help grade and teach writing rather than merely trying to catch copying. / / This
was discussed by the chairs back in Oct 2006. Keith solicited our opinions. Briefly I
think our money would be far better spent on a more robust technology like write
experience http://news.cengage.com/higher-education/cengage-learning-unveilsdetails-of-write-experience-an-innovative-approach-to-drafting-and-assessingwritten-assignments-using-artificial-intelligence/– which has aspects of turnitin,
but also is really a writing improvement tool, not just a plagiarism monitoring tool. I
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realize turnitin has expanded, but the nature is still a gotcha tool, not a “lets help
you write better toolâ€ My comments back in 2006: / / Its kind of a waste of
money in my opinion. We can tell plagiarism by reading the students work, and
when in doubt, just google part of the paper. Ask lisa, (Lisa googled a paragraph of a
student’s paper and the whole thing popped up) this works well… / / Besides,
we’d need to learn to use the software (not hard but might be for some),
students would need to learn to use it. In my experience there are always students
who have difficulty with these things, so you can expect to get an email asking you to
upload it to the site. We then need to grade it electronically or print it or ask the
students for a printed copy, unless you are comfortable grading electronically.
I’ve done some of that in the past…it is an enormous time commitment,
admittedly there are ways to reduce it, but I didn’t see the time coming down to
a level that approximates paper grading. / / It does have a few nice features. It
has some peer review process, where students can comment on each others work.
And it has the ability to compare to previous semester’s papers if they also used
tunritin.com to submit it. They claim that using their service is much better than
google, but the reality is that google works quite well, and indexes and searches
more than they do (save the student work turned in exclusively to turnitin.com). /
/ How much does it cost (too much)? Has plagiarism been a major problem? My
sense is that students are doing lot of improper citing of work, but that is a teaching
issue, more than anything. Not sure some summary “originalityâ€ number
from turnitin can exactly teach appropriate and inappropriate citation. Given there
is a free service which takes us most of the way there…I think the marginal
benefits of this system are probably not enough to justify its costs…unless you
come back and tell me it is 200 bucks a year (which I highly doubt). / / TJ / /
Update: I will point you here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnitin look under
writecheck. / / Turnitin works both sides of the fence. As Alex Tabarrok has noted
the writecheck allows students to figure out how to fly under the radar.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2011-09-09/college-cheatingplagiarism/50338736/1 /
Given that research shows that cheating (especially in the form of plagiarism) is
rampant across college campuses, I think this is a very valuable and important tool
for professors to have. It can also be used as an important learning tool for students.
I think it's a great idea. It would help me feel much more confident that student
work was original. I don't take the time to Google search everything, so it doesn't
seem like it would save time, but it would make it possible to detect plagiarism I
may currently miss.
I really want to use it! It has been piloted in our department and already several
instances of plagiarism have been detected.
Not all of my courses can or will incorporate d2l, due to a need to keep the resources
available to students beyond the immediate semester in which the work is
completed. If Turnitin is purchased, from my perspective it would be essential for it
to function both in and out of d2l.
From what I can understand - this is checking for plagiarism - correct? If so, I would
use it for any of the papers that students turn in.
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I've found Turnitin very useful and informative. I think it it essential that we go
ahead and adopt it campus-wide.
I use track changes in ms word and have always wanted something simpler. In a
typical year I supervise 8 masters students in their capstone projects including
theses and journal manuscripts. And this is on top of lots of course papers. This
looks like it would save a ton of time!
I am currently part of the pilot program on campus for Turnitin. I was able to have a
few student assignments submitted at the start of the pilot, and it worked well. If it
consistently worked, it would definitely be a program I would use. Unfortunately,
the experience with the integration of D2L and the failure of hundreds of
submissions means it was a whole lot of wasted time without much in the way of
meaningful feedback. I'm hopeful these issues will be resolved so that I could get a
better sense of how useful Turnitin might be for these classes. / / Potentially I
would like to use Turnitin in a large general education course with assignment
submissions to discourage re-submission of past assignments. I also used it with
one of the gen ed assessments for another course, and it initially worked well, and I
had positive feedback from the few students whose papers were run through
Turnitin.
In a typical semester, how many of your classes include assignments in which the
use of Turnitin could be helpful? / / My answer should be zero, but that wasn't an
option.
I have used Turnitin.com in the last..and love it. Very helpful in so many different
ways!
It's unsuited to scientific writing.
I have only tried Turnitin during the pilot study conducted on campus, and the tools
did not work due to technical difficulties, so I haven't really had a chance to try the
tool. Although I did not have a particularly positive experience with Turnitin during
the pilot study I am very supportive of the idea of bringing Turnitin to campus. / / I
read MANY more than 60 student writing submissions each semester. This semester
I will read and grade over 300 student papers. I use an efficient rubric grading
system to do this and so I don't think that Turnitin could save me time, but would
allow me to provide more specific, high-quality feedback to students. I also believe
that originality reports is an important tool that would help me continue to develop
and use good paper assignments without worrying that students will resubmit
papers that their friends wrote the previous semester.
Some assignments I have to struggle to get them to do a synthesis of ideas in their
own words, rather than a cut and paste synthesis from different sites on the web.
Only catch very obvious ones as I don't have time to check all their sources myself.
I would use it if it was well-integrated into D2L, or if I had online access to it. If I
could use it to grade student websites.
I have used Turnitin and SafeAssign at previous institutions. My former institution
switched to SafeAssign and I thought it was a far superior product.
I have indirect experience, but no direct experience. My daughter's high school used
it and I think it's a great idea for UW-L because I know I don't catch all the cheating
that is going on.
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I think it would be an invaluable tool for departments like ours where students do
lots of writing.
My colleagues use it and have found it very valuable. We have caught several
instances of creating in our department using this tool. UW-La Crosse should
purchase this for all faculty.
Gives me an incentive to learn how to use the Dropbox feature in D2L -- as opposed
to simply collecting paper and e-mail copies of papers. / / In the past, I've used
Google searches for specific oddly-worded phrases, but that is very "hit or miss." I
used Turnitin years ago when you could try it out for free for up to five papers a
year. Satisfactory results. My high schoolers have to check their own papers using
Turnitin prior to submission of assignments, and include the turnitin report.
Therefore, they get the Grademark % down to nearly zerio prior to submitting the
paper!
I'm part of the Turnitin pilot program this semester. I find the Originality tool to be
somewhat useful, but I am concerned that it can't distinguish between cited material
and plagiarized material. If students properly cite materials, they get a message that
their papers are largely not "original". Regarding the Gradmark took, I find it
cumbersome. If it were made more user-friendly, it would be great, because it saves
the step of downloading and reuploading papers. But right now the user interface is
awkward.
Turnit in requires careful interpretation. Staff will need trained on how to assess
origniality etc., but it is a useful tool. As an editor of a journal I also use it for
evaluation of original manuscripts.
I would like our students to have the chance to pre-check their papers and take
some ownership over originality. I also think it will help graduate students and
graduate faculty.
I participated in the Turnitin pilot this semester and found the program to be
incredibly helpful. All of my courses are writing-intensive and I used Turnitin in a
number of different ways. 1) The originality check made detecting (and deterring)
plagiarism much easier than traditional methods (e.g., googling suspicious phrases).
2) I used the originality reports as a teaching tool to help students understand the
nuances of plagiarism and proper paraphrasing. Students enjoyed looking at their
reports and appreciated the immediate feedback and opportunity to rewrite
sections of their papers that were too close to the original. 3) I used the Grademark
function to grade all papers. The ability to insert comments without downloading
the paper and to set up template comments and re-use them across multiple papers
cut my grading time in half and I was able to give much more detailed feedback.
Students appreciated the Grademark function as well and writing quality increased
markedly over the course of the semester. Overall, I cannot emphasize enough how
helpful the Turnitin program is to my teaching and grading and to student learning
and hope that we are able to continue to use the program in the future.
I have used the drop box a little, but I find marking papers online to be cumbersome.
I also get very irritated when the computer slows down and increases my grading
time. I'd be interested in trying Turnitin, especially for the originality check.
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I have attempted to go "paperless" in my classes, and the current tools make it
cumbersome to give detailed feedback to students on long-form written
assignments. (I.e. downloading the file, open in MS word, track changes, add
comments, save, re-upload to D2L). If the GradeMark tool can make this process
easier, so that the entire thing happens in the web browser (and can be done on an
iPad!!), I believe many more professors would be inclined to go paperless and we'd
be saving a lot of time and paper, not to mention fewer back strain injuries from
carrying around those papers. I hope these benefits are considered when deciding
whether to proceed with this plan.
Turnitin is an essential tool for instructors especially those in writing intensive
courses. Without this tool, I simply do not have the time to check for plagarism to
the degree that is effective. This is not only an essential tool for instructors but also
a "teaching" tool for students. You can show them through the originality reports
where they may have used others' work without appropriate credit given. / / In
fact, this is the first university I have worked at that does not have some type of antiplagarism tool. /
I only have one course, in the Spring, where a program like this might be useful. That
option was not available in the questions. / / I'd like to know more about the
program to provide answers as to whether I would use it. I need to evaluate thesis
type papers, would this program be useful for that? How does the program work? Is
it equally good for papers in Creative Writing as for papers in Sociology as for
papers in Physics? If so, how is that possible? Do we have reason to believe that
plagarism (hard to detect plagarism) is such a big problem on our campus that
something like this is needed? Can a student be dismissed for academic dishonesty
based merely upon the analysis of this program? Could they receive a poor or failing
grade? / / I have too many questions about this program for me to give you any
valuable opinion.
I primarily teach science classes which include little to no writing assignments, so I
likely would not utilize Turnitin.
I do not use D2L and therefore would not use Turnitin if it were only available
through that platform.
Please please purchase the license. I would incorporate many more written
assignments in my classes if I didn't have to waste hours of time Googling
everything for plagiarism. Most students need much more practice to improve their
writing. Also, it is invaluable for students to learn how to cite properly which
Turnitin can help them with - it is not just a tool to "bust" them for plagiarism. I
cannot emphasize how strongly I am in support of UW-L acquiring access to
Turnitin on a permanent basis.
I support UW-L licensing Turnitin and making it easily available for faculty/IAS to
use. It just isn't relevant for me.
I doubt that this software would save me time as an instructor - but it would help
me to ensure that students are doing their assignments properly. This improves my
quality of instruction and will likely improve the product quality of my students.
There are many uses for Turnitin that would be helpful in my teaching, but its
funciton as a preventive measure against plagiarism is one of the most important for
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me. / / For faculty who use similar writing assignments over different semesters,
Turnitin is a crucial means to discourage current students from finding former
students' work and re-submitting it as their own. I am part of the current pilot of
the program and uploaded 4 semesters' worth of student writing into Turnitin and
found 3 sets of just this kind of academic dishonesty. I doubt they would have tried
this if we'd had Turnitin.
Please make this available on campus. We have had several cases of plagiarism and
any useful tool that we can access to facilitate catching incidents of academic
dishonesty would be beneficial and worth the cost.
I've heard fairly good things about turnitin from faculty at other campuses who use
the program. On the whole they are pleased with it and it helps them build a
database of former student papers as well as notice irregularities in current student
work.