About 30 classes will be trying Turnitin, an anti-plagiarism program that compares student work with millions of other student papers, journal articles and Internet sites.
Students in classes participating in the semester-long trial submit their assignments to Turnitin.com, which then highlights text that matches content from other sources and quantifies the matches with a percentage, according to the website. Professors can then look over the paper to judge its originality.
The initiative to use software to detect plagiarism began in earnest when Thomas Doeppner, associate professor of computer science, co-chaired the Standing Committee on the Academic Code. In his 2009-10 end of year Academic Code Committee Report, Doeppner suggested that a service such as Turnitin might reveal a level of cheating in other departments similar to that in computer science, which — due to its use of Measure of Software Similarity, a program that regularly checks for cheating — consistently turns over a disproportionately high number of students to the Academic Code Committee.
Using Turnitin is a response to "wanting to know the answer" to the question of the pervasiveness of cheating at Brown, said Keith Brown, associate professor of international relations and co-chair of last year's academic code committee.
According to a 2009 Herald poll, 17 percent of students admitted to cheating, mostly by copying another student's homework responses.
Turnitin's services would cost the University $13,000 per year for use in unlimited courses, said Deputy Dean of the College Stephen Lassonde. He said the University has a free trial period for this semester with the company, which offered its services to any interested professor. According to Lassonde, about 20 to 30 professors opted in, with some using it in multiple classes. Most of the participating courses are large lectures.
David Sobel, associate professor of cognitive, linguistic and psychological sciences, is teaching two courses but only using Turnitin for CLPS 0200: "Human Cognition," the larger of the two. He said he has caught several students plagiarizing in the past — about one student every semester he has taught the course, though he once discovered four in a single semester.
Conor Kane '14, a student in ENGL 0210: "Beowulf to Alpha Behn: The Earliest British Literatures," a class participating in the trial, said using Turnitin "makes sense." He said his high school teachers used the software, and he said it is a "reliable system" as long as professors understand that the existence of similar sentences does not automatically indicate plagiarism. Turnitin also highlights direct quotations, so professors must verify themselves whether the student cited a quote correctly.
Kane said those who had used the program before "kind of chuckled" when they heard about its use at Brown because it "might feel a bit like overkill." He said he doubted the program would affect him.
Students in "Human Cognition" have already submitted one paper to Turnitin. Naomi Heilweil '12, a teaching assistant for the course, was responsible for putting the one-page papers through the program, she said. So far, she said she has not found any plagiarism, though it is "early in the game." She said she thinks the program works well for its purpose and added that it eliminates paper copies, which she appreciates.
In the age of Wikipedia and Girl Talk, concepts such as originality, common knowledge and intellectual property are increasingly ill-defined and misunderstood. But "ignorance isn't an excuse" for plagiarism, Lassonde said.
Some students cheat knowingly, justifying their behavior by saying that everyone is doing it, he said. But honest students maintain their upright practices, thinking everyone is playing by the rules, he said. Lassonde said if one student cheats, others might be compelled to do the same in order to gain the same advantage — unless there is a deterrent like Turnitin.
Consequences for plagiarism range from receiving a warning to receiving no credit for the class and a note on the student's transcript, Lassonde said.
Professors using the software stressed that they do not believe cheating at Brown to be the norm, but "the small percentage who do (cheat) greatly impact the vast majority of students who do not," Sobel said. He added, anything that can be done to "weed out that small subset … is a worthwhile endeavor."
The University will solicit faculty feedback at the end of the semester, Lassonde said.
