Category: Algorithmic Culture and Turnitin

Lifestream of my research for my assessment on Algorithmic Culture and Turnitin

From Blogs: A post on Algorithms

I’m reading around algorithms for my digital essay, though the topic will include Plagiarism Detection or similar. I’m also reading over MSCEDC blogs. It’s a great experience. I found this post on Eli’s blog post about Algorithms to be very thought provoking. I wonder if students realise that their work submitted to turnitin is available almost in perpetuity, long after they, and probably their lecturer’s, have left academia…..

Pinned to #MSCDE on Pinterest

Digital Essay Component via Twitter

 

from http://twitter.com/c4miller

From twitter – Turnitin as a plagiarism “detection” system?

Knox (2015) writes:

“It is notable that algorithms, assumed to provide objectivity and exactitude, are frequently used in areas of high risk and security, and this is precisely where the most prominent example can be found in education: the use of the Turnitin plagiarism detection service at the point of assessment. ”

This is at odds with my own experience of using Turnitin. It is not a “plagiarism detection service”. It is at best able to suggest where plagiarism may have occurred, through its similarity indexing algorithm, but the ultimate call as to whether or not plagiarism has occurred is (still) made by humans. The similarity score of Turnitin is used as part of the evidence gathered in suspected academic misconduct cases. I have never heard of a student being penalised automatically. Perhaps it happens elsewhere.

Moreover, there should be push to flip the  focus of Turnitin’s reporting to  enable students to improve their scholarship.

ref: Knox, J. 2015. Algorithmic Cultures. Excerpt from Critical Education and Digital Cultures. In Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. M. A. Peters (ed.). DOI 10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_124-1

 

From Twitter

A very interesting exchange with James via Twitter off the back of my comment regarding Turnitin as a “plagiarism detection tool”. I argue that it’s not such a thing, but there are those who take the opposing view point. I could see this discussion taking shape in to a larger piece of work.