Turnitin V Rolfe July09

Use of Turnitin for formative
assessment in first year at university
Presentation to:
eLearning in Health, University of Warwick
17th July 2009

By:
Dr Viv Rolfe BSc PhD
vrolfe@dmu.ac.uk Faculty of Health and Life Sciences

Faculty of Health & Life Science
• Health sciences
– Biomedical Science
– Medical Science
– Forensics Science
– Pharmacy

• Health professions
– Audiology
– Nursing & Midwifery
– Speech and Language Therapy
– Clinical Physiology and Clinical
Technology

• Health studies
– Psychology
– Social work
– Criminology


Background
• Plagiarism is problematic in higher education
and increasing (Bull et al, 2001).

• Universities have raised plagiarism detection
as a priory over prevention, and have put “the
cart before the horse” (McGowan 2005).

• In 2006 DMU made it compulsory to use
Turnitin for all LEVEL ONE assignments.


www.turnitin.com – how similar?


Aims of our Project
• Use Turnitin “formatively” to address the
underlying problems that may cause a
student to plagiarise:
– Weak literacy and writing
– Poor understanding of referencing and citation

• Evaluate student / staff perceptions of using
Turnitin in this way.


Study Population
• Speech and Language Therapy (SALT) –
Turnitin introduced in a lecture.

• Biomedical Science (BMS) students – Turnitin
introduced and used in computer sessions.

• Students submitted a single draft essay to
Turnitin and viewed / interpreted their own
originality reports.


Analysis
• SALT (n=11, 26% cohort) and BMS
(n=52, 68% cohort) students completed
a paper questionnaire (open-ended,
Likert scale responses).

• Some students and staff invited to
interview (transcribed, clustered).


Results
• BMS n = 76 students, 64 submitted a
draft 76 submitted final essay.

• SALT n = 44 students, 44 submitted a
draft and final essay.


Results
STUDENT OPINION OF TURNITIN

BMS (n=52) SALT (n=11)

Positive Negative Positive Negative
Question
Response Response Response Response
How was your experience of using Turnitin? 52 0 5 6
Was there enough training? 43 9 5 6
Did you look at the originality report? 50 2 3 8
Did it help you improve your work? 39 13 0 11
Did you change your work after seeing the 32 20 0 11
report?
Should all written work be submitted to 15 37 4 7
provide formative feedback?


Did it help you improve your work?

“Illustrates your capability to produce a new piece of
work”

“Allowed me to edit my work effectively”

“To see whether you have cited work appropriately”.

“Not useful enough – doesn’t tell you how to improve
your work”


Should all written work be submitted to provide formative
feedback?

“Essays should but practical reports shouldn’t
because these are written from personal
observation so cannot be copied”.

“If it is a reflective and personal piece of work
there should be no reason to submit it”.


Staff Perceptions
“They were rewriting”.

“Comparing it to last year’s essay which is
what I could compare it with; there was a
lot less obvious cut and pasting”.


General Perceptions
STAFF
“I think people maybe don’t view cut and paste as plagiarism”.

“My 12 year old was doing homework over the weekend and he
thinks it’s perfectly acceptable to cut and paste”.

STUDENT
“….when we did psychology a lot of people were just copying and
pasting about Freud from the Internet and it was acceptable so
it was quite a big shock for me coming to this sort of
environment where it’s not acceptable to do that”.

“I think people used to do that for A-levels as well for the
coursework and buy the coursework and submit it as their own”.


Summary
• With adequate training and guidance, students find using
Turnitin a useful feedback experience to improve their literacy
and citation/referencing. Some staff agreement.
(Recent abstract supports this Whittle & Murdoch-Eaton 2008).

• For some students, clearer guidance on how to interpret the
reports and make improvements to work would be beneficial.

• Students enjoyed the experience and claimed it helped them re-
write, but what were their motivations? It helped them check
their citations, but how? (See Turnitin publicity claim!)

• Strong perception that “copy and paste” is the cultural norm in
schools and this isn’t viewed as plagiarism.


Conclusions
• Turnitin can be used formatively to help
build student literacy, referencing and
citation.

• This is probably a combination of
Turnitin having a direct impact and also
raising awareness.


Further Research
• What were the actual changes in writing
behaviour?

• Understand working culture at school
and work with schools to build good
practice.


References
• Bull J, Collins C, CoughlinE & Sharp D. (2001) Technical review
of plagiarism detection software report. JISC Report. Available
at: http://www.jiscpas.ac.uk/documents/resources/Luton_TechnicalReviewofPDS.pdf
[Accessed 15th July 2009]

• McGowan, U. (2005) Plagiarism detection and prevention: Are
we putting the cart before the horse?, in Higher education in a
changing world, Proceedings of the 28th HERDSA Annual
Conference, Sydney, 3-6 July 2005: pp 287.

• Whittle SR & Murdoch-Eaton DG. (2008) Learning about
plagiarism using Turnitin detection software. Medical Education,
42: pp513-543.


Turnitin V Rolfe July09

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Turnitin V Rolfe July09