Tari wrote in part:

>On Sun, 24 Nov 2002, Steve Krause wrote:
>
>> Second, I'm not sure that the other student who got his or her stuff
>> from 9 different web sites was plagiarizing exactly. Technically,
>> yes, but was it a case of "theft" or a case of not knowing how to
>> cite sources? I'm constantly amazed how so many of my students,
>> freshman to master's students, don't realize that you have to follow
>> the rules of citing sources and giving credit where credit is due. I
>> get this kind of "plagiarism" all the time, but these are instances
>> where I tell the student they've got to rewrite.
>
>
>Actually, in a sentence that you cut, Judy says that both students
>admitted that they plagiarized, one because of not having the time and the
>other because of not taking the time. So leaving aside the facts that we
>haven't seen the paper and that Judy can probably tell plagiarism from a
>mistake, I think if a student says, "I ran out of time so I copied my
>sources," we can pretty much call that plagiarism, and not just
>"technically."

Oops-- my bad, you're right.

>
>But anyhow, let me see if I can explain what I think is really interesting
>(in kind of a scary way) about this thread:
>
>Ed asks for turnitin users to talk about turnitin.com. Instead of
>information about turnitin.com, he gets a bunch of advice from people who
>don't use turnitin about how he should be teaching, how his assignments
>should be constructed--even though we haven't seen his assignments or been
>in his class, and that's not what he asked about.
>
>Finally, Judy comes along and addresses Ed's actual question, explaining
>how and why she uses turnitin.
>
>So now Judy gets advice about *her* teaching!

Well, three quick thoughts:

* I didn't jump into this thread until this morning, so I'm not
one of those folks you're talking about. But...

* I *have* used turnitin before, albeit a few years ago (I'm
sure the service has improved), and I was not impressed. I tried it
out on a "demo" basis of some sort, tried running through some of my
documents, things like my dissertation I believe, and it had said I
had plagiarized. Or something like that.

If EMU bought the institutional contract so I could use it whenever I
wanted to, well sure, I'd probably use it once in a while. But if
someone asked me (highly unlikely!) if EMU should buy it, what I
would probably say are things like what people have said: it
probably isn't worth the money, given other search engines out there,
and it would be better to concentrate on assignments that discourage
plagiarism.

* I don't mean to sound like the wise teaching adviser to Judy
or anyone else. Sorry if it came off that way. I was just thinking
about this out loud in relation to my own teaching. Which will lead
to something else I'll write here in a second in response to
something Judy wrote...

--Steve
--
Steven D. Krause
Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature
Eastern Michigan University * 614G Pray-Harrold Hall
Ypsilanti, MI 48197 * 734-487-1363 * http://krause.emich.edu