PETAL

Thoughts on Turnitin and the New Policy

Last spring, the University implemented a policy governing the use of Turnitin. The policy's intention is to protect students in regard to privacy issues and FERPA, but some of its unintended ramifications seem to have discouraged many faculty from using the Turnitin system.

The policy requires faculty who use Turnitin to create a code for each student, known only to the faculty member and student, and that no other identifiable information be entered anywhere in the system. This sounds good in theory, but it creates difficulty and extra work for faculty, especially those who have been having their students submit their own work to the system.

The biggest ramification of the new policy is that it effectively prevents students from submitting their own work. This is because Turnitin uses email addresses as user IDs, so if students have their own Turnitin accounts, identifiable information is automatically tied to their submissions through their email address. And if students are no longer submitting their papers, faculty have to do something they didn't have to do before.

I've been struggling with how best to adhere to the policy and still benefit from the use of Turnitin for a few months now, and I think I've finally found a workable solution (which is also made easier through their newly upgraded system). Unfortunately, it hinders some of the advantages of Turnitin as a teaching tool, but it does allow originality reports to be generated with minimal effort on the part of instructors.

Therefore, my recommendation is that faculty collect the papers electronically, either as Word, Rich-Text, or PDF files, and then "zip" them into one file. If you have Windows, you can save all of the files into one folder (preferably titled to fit the assignment), and then right-click on that folder in Windows Explorer or My Computer. Choose "Send to" from the pop-up menu and then "Compressed Folders." This creates a .zip file that contains all of the students' papers. The system will accept zip files with up to 1000 documents.

To submit the papers into Turnitin, click on the "Submit Paper" button, choose the "zip file" option, and then browse for the file. Turnitin gives you the option to enter student information, but the best part is you don't have to enter anything. If you leave everything blank, the papers are all listed as anonymous, which is perfect for the new policy!

As long as the student's code is included in the file name, then following the new policy is really no problem at all. However, you should stress to your students not to have any identifiable information in the body of their papers.

My next task is to find the best way to show students their originality reports so that Turnitin can be used as a teaching tool and not just as a police mechanism.