NIU compliance with the RIAA. In 2007, the RIAA sent pre-litigation letters to more than 25 students who were sharing (not just downloading, but also uploading) copyrighted music files. Here is the standard procedure if a student is caught violating copyright laws (taken from the Copyright and File Sharing Facts page on the ITS website:
- "Per the DMCA requirements, the network connection for the device identified is disabled immediately.
- An e-mail notifies you of the alleged violation or notice.
- You must visit the Restech Helpdesk to disable the alleged violating software.
- You must meet with the NIU Abuse Investigator and sign documentation acknowledging your understanding of NIU's Acceptable Use Policy and the Student Code of Conduct."
NIU adoption of SafeAssign as a plagiarism detection tool. It is a searchable database, much like Turnitin.com, that is built into the Blackboard system. Of note is the "Originality Report" produced for instructors, offering an analysis of a student's paper: see Sample Originality Report. Do you use this tool in your classes? I'm wondering how this tool has been presented to instructors, especially to those teaching first-year composition.
3 comments:
i was discussing the niu handling of students downloading music with my professor that i g.a. for. i showed her our blog and she was unaware that there was a feature in blackboard to analyze papers for originality or integrity issues. she gave me a link that she gives to students (graduate students) to take a tutorial on academic integrity http://www.niu.edu/ai/students/ also, that site includes a tutorial for faculty as well. the tutorial gives examples of what plagiarism looks like.
Just this Monday we were discussing plagiarism and Turnitin.com during my English 500 class (a class for graduate students teaching composition for the first time). (Until now, I wasn't aware that NIU had access to SafeAssign). The class seemed a little split on exactly what plagiarism is. By the end of our discussion, we had come to the conclusion that deliberate plagiarism and inadvertent plagiarism are really two separate offenses, which something like Turnitin.com or SafeAssign would likely not distinguish between.
As a composition teacher, I have encounter plagiarism of both kinds, and have seen several cases of probable plagiarism that I couldn't prove. A program could help in this, but there is something there that I really distrust. By forcing students to turn in there papers to these programs, we might as well tell them that we don't trust them and that we know most of them will plagiarize. Writing is a very personal subject, often putting students in emotionally vulnerable positions. Often the only thread that keeps them going is knowing that their work is respected even in its early stages. If we force them to submit their writing to an outside party, that link, or relationship, between teacher and student could very easily be broken, especailly for the most anxious students. Is this worth it? The more I consider it, I don't think so.
Also, I have seen one case where a student very strongly argued that he didn't plagiarize his paper. I don't know if he did or not, though I am inclined to believe him. After submitting his paper to Turnitin.com, a report came back to him saying it was "40% plagiarized." Apparently these programs match student essays against each other, and if several phrasings line up, it counts as a hit. This student's essay was on Hurricane Katrina where buzz words were all the rage: "refugee," "devastation," "levee." It was likely that he might have used even a whole sentence that someone else also wrote. As a teacher, how could we ever count coincidence as plagiarism?
Maybe I'm too soft with my students, but I would rather assume that they are not plagiarizing and then find out that they are on my own terms than the other way around. No one likes to be accused of a wrong that they didn't commit; just asking them to submit their work to one of these sites is an accusation. I'm actually disappointed that NIU offers access to SafeAssign.
In my experience, SafeAssign is really not necessary. You grow to know a student's voice through a semester of writing, and by the time the final research paper is turned in (of which the student has already turned in several drafts so you see his/her progress and development of ideas) you can "hear" a discrepant sentence or paragraph.
I might feel your leniency toward plagiarists if I didn't clearly inform them throughout the semester of the exact parameters, requirements, and penalties of/for plagiarism. A student who plagiarizes in my class simply has not been paying attention, and I don't see an excuse for that. These may be artificial standards, but we impose plenty of those anyway for form and structure in this field, so I don't see any essential problem really.
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