Spring Break
The Daily OrangeProfessors introduce Turnitin.com
By Brian Hayden
Posted: 9/19/07, 12:17 AM EST Section: News
It was a mistake senior Nicole Pagano won't soon forget.
The Syracuse University broadcast journalism major was burning the midnight oil in the spring to finish her final paper for an S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications class called Critical Perspectives on News. Before submitting it to her professor, she checked its academic integrity on Turnitin.com, a resource then being tested in select SU classes.
The Web site told her that a section of the paper had been plagiarized. She had only cited the part, rather than quoting the passage verbatim. Having realized her mistake, she submitted a plagiarism-free paper to her professor.
"The Web site helps professors to hone in on kids who plagiarize," Pagano said. "It is kind of stupid for students to plagiarize these days because they will definitely get caught."
Pagano was part of the first group of SU classes to use the Web site, which checks for academic integrity. Her class was part of a pilot study at SU to determine whether Turnitin.com was an effective faculty resource.
The Office of Academic Integrity recently announced that with the pilot's success, the site would be available to all professors this year. Since its origins in the mid 1990s, Turnitin.com now compares sites to thousands of news articles, journals and periodicals, as well as other students' papers.
Even though the site's plagiarism search seems rather thorough, not every professor is thrilled.
Professor Rebecca Moore Howard in the writing program agreed with the motivation of the SU's effort to curb academic dishonesty and plagiarism, but she doesn't think Turnitin.com is an adequate solution.
The Web site only checks for the copying of words, she said, and not the paraphrasing of sentences and summarizing of ideas, which is another violation of academic integrity. She believes that those professors who will submit every student's paper are adopting a "guilty-until-proven innocent" attitude.
The Syracuse University broadcast journalism major was burning the midnight oil in the spring to finish her final paper for an S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications class called Critical Perspectives on News. Before submitting it to her professor, she checked its academic integrity on Turnitin.com, a resource then being tested in select SU classes.
The Web site told her that a section of the paper had been plagiarized. She had only cited the part, rather than quoting the passage verbatim. Having realized her mistake, she submitted a plagiarism-free paper to her professor.
"The Web site helps professors to hone in on kids who plagiarize," Pagano said. "It is kind of stupid for students to plagiarize these days because they will definitely get caught."
Pagano was part of the first group of SU classes to use the Web site, which checks for academic integrity. Her class was part of a pilot study at SU to determine whether Turnitin.com was an effective faculty resource.
The Office of Academic Integrity recently announced that with the pilot's success, the site would be available to all professors this year. Since its origins in the mid 1990s, Turnitin.com now compares sites to thousands of news articles, journals and periodicals, as well as other students' papers.
Even though the site's plagiarism search seems rather thorough, not every professor is thrilled.
Professor Rebecca Moore Howard in the writing program agreed with the motivation of the SU's effort to curb academic dishonesty and plagiarism, but she doesn't think Turnitin.com is an adequate solution.
The Web site only checks for the copying of words, she said, and not the paraphrasing of sentences and summarizing of ideas, which is another violation of academic integrity. She believes that those professors who will submit every student's paper are adopting a "guilty-until-proven innocent" attitude.
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