Now that I have a child who is a freshman in high school, the whole debate about “what future college students will expect from libraries” has become a lot more real to me. For instance, Keegan loves video games; always has. (Unfortunately for him, I hate video games; always have and probably always will. I’ve made a few half-hearted attempts to meet him on his ground when it comes to this passion and have failed miserably.) Fortunately, he has also developed a strong love of reading and books, although he has a built-in antipathy for libraries, preferring instead to browse around at a nearby Borders. Go figure, with a father who is a librarian.
More recently it came to my attention that his school actively uses Turnitin, one of the more popular anti-plagiarism commercial services out there. Keegan is required to submit his papers to this service as part of his class work. I reacted pretty negatively to this news, quite frankly. He couldn’t understand why. He thought of it as no big deal, and generally a “good thing.” I tried to explain my reasons for not liking such a service but I don’t think it really sunk in that much with him.
One more sign of the times as far as Keegan is concerned is that he is allowed, by some teachers at least, to turn in papers from home via the Internet. This allowance in turn means that he is given more time to work on his papers if, e.g., the teacher says it has to be turned in by midnight of a certain day. Michele and I both feel somewhat negatively about this but then I realized, hey, this is exactly what I expect and allow students in my course to do — the only difference is that they are graduate students and are supposed to be more responsible and independent than the typical high school freshman.
I’m not sure what all of this means in terms of libraries and how they should plan to serve the needs of students, but I find it interesting that I get to experience some of these things first-hand.
I’ve never heard of Turnitin before… I’m just curious why you have a negative reaction towards it?
Hi Ashley!
Reasons for not liking Turnitin include the perspective that this is somewhat of a “band-aid” solution to a much bigger moral or ethical problem. By that I mean, it seems to me that it would be much better to educate students on the ethical issues surrounding plagiarism, copyright, etc. than to rely upon a commercial service that has its faults and is not necessarily accurate in its evaluation of potential plagiarism. There have been some studies or research that shows that students who attend a school that emphasizes this broader approach are much less likely to plagiarize. (There was an interesting debate about this whole thing at Taylor when I was till there. I wasn’t directly involved in it but a faculty committee evaluated Turnitin and like services and rejected implementation of this solution in favor of the broader educational and ethical approach. I don’t know if that decision has been modified or changed since I left.)
Another reason for disliking the use of Turnitin is that it seems to me that it assumes a “guilty until proven innocent” kind of attitude on the part of schools who use it.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, I do not like the fact that use of such services is in most cases mandatory or forced upon students. What this means is that they are required to give up rights to their own works by submitting them to an online service such as Turnitin. This has caused some well-publicized student “revolts” in a few schools here and there.
I know on the other hand that there are many perhaps equally convincing arguments in favor of using this kind of service. One reason, e.g., is that it can help reduce the burden on professors who are overwhelmed with student input in the form of papers and with the fact that it is easier than ever before to plagiarize, given the technology and generally easy access to information on the Internet that is so prevalent today.