Why should you care ?
Have you ever poured your heart and soul into an assignment, only to see it flagged for similarities that make no sense at all ?! Turnitin’s algorithm is merely just a glorified citation checker. Imagine writing an essay about climate change: “The impact of climate change on global ecosystems cannot be overstated”. Do you really expect yourself to cite a source for this ? Isn’t this common knowledge already by now ? Well chances are if you don’t bother to cite this, and continue to do so for the rest of your assignment, you are going to rack up similarity points like no tomorrow ! Well it might seem like a simple fix to just cite every single sentence that is not your “original” insights.
But but, we need to fight against plagiarism ?? or so they say (Universities around the world, not just NTU)
Well yeah, “originality checkers” like Turnitin can easily pick out blatant copying of texts, but what makes it so much more effective than a peer review or individual viva ? Pretty much nothing. Any decent faculty member or student would be able to tell whether a student plagiarized their work simply by having a frank and honest discussion with them about their works.
The only reason why university administrations like NTU bother with Turnitin is simply a matter of corporate governance and compliance requirements in order for the university to “protect” its reputation. By implementing such measures, the administration feels like something “proactive” is done to fight against plagiarism and that the university is able to “enforce” its academic integrity policies effectively.
However this approach fails to address the root causes of plagiarism itself. Implementing such measures also risks stiffling creativity and innovation amongsts our students.
The root causes of plagiarism in my opinion is more often than not the perception that assignments lack relevance to student’s interests or career goals, and these assignments especially with the recent rise of common curriculum modules in Singapore universities and around the world, many often do not find purpose and reason to do those assignments.
Other causes may also include lack of faculty and student engagement during lessons, while I would like to take a moment to commend my CC0003 Ethics and Civics in a Multicultural World, and CC0005 Healthy Living and Wellbeing tutors for making their lessons as engaging as possible for everybody involved in their lessons, they are still severely limited by time and resources to be able to go around and individually check in on everybody’s progress on their assignments and presentations.
I have no doubt that if any of their students were to approach them for advice, they would be more than happy to offer them their assistance, but unfortunately not every student is going to do that which would end up resulting in many disengaged students, especially with Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Curriculum(ICC) modules having a notorious reputation for being labelled as “useless” and “time consuming” by many students.
I believe that more can be done to engage these “disengaged” students and to motivate them to find purpose in their assignments, this is way more effective than just deploying a catching system through Turnitin itself. Of course at the end of the day there are still going to be students who are insistent on their ways and end up plagiarizing anyways, while I believe it’s highly unethical to do so without proper citation and attribution, there is really no way to enforce this effectively and it is better to adopt the approach of individual vivas for those suspected of plagiarizing rather than casting an entire net on the student population and assume that each student is a potential cheater (to which the university administration has denied) but at least from my point of view it can certain rub students like myself the wrong way even if that wasn’t the original intention.
I would also like to add that, even if Turnitin develops more advanced detection feature, “Anti detection” measures are also going to get better, this eventually results in an “arms race” between Turnitin and would be cheaters. I would rather allow cheaters to deal with the consequences of academic misconduct beyond academia.
Understanding your Intellectual Rights and why they matter
While it is my personal belief that any work of art, knowledge, software, and invention should be public domain knowledge, many do not share that view and its still entirely within your rights to keep your inventions or works proprietary or to share it with the public if you so choose. By using Turnitin, and I quote from their End User License Agreement(EULA) under section 6. License by You “Paper Submissions. If You submit a paper or other content in connection with the Services, You hereby grant to Turnitin (and, if necessary for providing the Services its affiliates, vendors, service providers, and licensors) a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable license to use such papers, as well as feedback and results, for the limited purposes of a) providing the Services, and b) for improving the quality of the Services generally. You also grant the license to Communications as disclosed below. The licenses shall survive the termination of the User Agreement. Any cessation of the use of the Site or Services shall not result in the termination or expiration of this license. Nothing shall prevent Turnitin and its affiliates, vendors, service providers and licensors from using information independently created by them. Submitted papers are held at the discretion of Customers in accordance with the terms of the Registration Agreement between Turnitin and Customer. You may at any time request that Turnitin and its service providers delete each paper that you individually identify to us through the system administrator at your institution.”
Looking at the terms “royalty-free”, “perpetual, worldwide, irrevocable license” does this sound like you are the licensor ? Or is it more of renouncing your own rights ?
In general these EULAs that we click on everyday and accept, do not even give us a chance to renegotiate the terms and the only option is to decline and not use the service entirely, being the only way to fully protect your rights. This option is not even available despite protesting to my university’s administration, I was still forced to submit my assignments through Turnitin anyways and I had to go out of my way to exercise the last clause by “informing the administrator at your institution”. Funnily enough, I’ve decided to make an assignment out of this anyways by using this as writing practice for CC0001 Inquiry and Communication in an Interdisciplinary World. I am definitely going to submit portions of this article into Turnitin’s Originality checker.
Conclusion
Resisting the use of Turnitin is not a battle to be won on my own, I encourage all NTU student’s and university students in Singapore and around the world to write in to their university administrations to demand that all their assignments submitted through Turnitin to be deleted! If every one of us, stand together against Turnitin, Turnitin will no longer be able to profiteer from your hard work!