AS SELF-TEACHING TOOL FOR PLAGIARISM AVOIDANCE IN BIOSCIENCE UNDERGRADUATES

Following the initial enhancement of plagiarism detection by Turnitinâ, academics started to use it successfully. However, many academics are using it as detection software, without using this as a tool to enhance the students’ learning. This study was designed to evaluate the potentials of Turnitinâ software for educating students to avoid plagiarism. This study was carried out with two cohorts of level 1 undergraduates from 2008 to 2009. After the initial induction about good academic practice, students were set an academic essay. They were allowed to use the Turnitin® software only once to improve their essays, before final submission. After their re-submission, the articles were again checked for plagiarism using the software and by proof reading in comparison with original articles. The results from their first attempt have shown that 37 out of 70 students (approximately 53%) were able to write a scientific essay with proper attributions and referencing. Of the remainder, around 11% (8 out of 70) of the student submissions had worrying amounts of plagiarism and the rest had incidences of inappropriate paraphrasing (5 students 7%), copy-pasting without proper referencing (5 students 7%) and “patch-working” (15 students 22%). Interestingly, the data from the second submissions showed that at least 59% of students (22 out of 37) were able to re-write their essays without plagiarising. The rest were shown improvements in their academic writing. The data from this study suggests that it is possible to use Turnitin® as a learning tool to improve the students’ academic writing. Background—Historical prospective: Many “text-matching” tools have been developed to detect inappropriate use of information and plagiarism. However the introduction of Turnitin® software has revolutionised the detection process. Since its introduction, several academics have reported that compared to other tools, this software is superior as it is simple to use, accurate in matching the broadest range of sources, embedded with grade marking facilities and above all has the potential to be used as an educational tool (Sivasubramaniam, 2002; Satterwhite and Gerein 2003; Gauder, 2004; Jocoy and DiBiase, 2006). It is an accepted fact that Turnitin® has tremendously reduced the time spent by the academics when checking work for plagiarism. Jocoy and DiBiase (2006) reported that it detected five times more instances of plagiarism than manual methods. Moreover, by highlighting where malpractice has occurred it provides definitive proof for academic misconduct inquires. However as Wright and Nigel (2008) correctly pointed, the software “should be regarded only as a tool to assist in the detection of plagiarism”. The actual decision making (whether it is plagiarism or not) actually relies on academic wisdom. Others, like Jones (2008) further emphasized that Turnitin® is not a plagiarism detection service but simply a text-matching system a fact accepted by many experienced Shiva D. Sivasubramaniam PAPERS—SECTION II academics who use this matching to decide academic integrity. Thus like any other elearning devices, Turnitin® only assists, rather than replaces, human decision making. More importantly it is clear that increased use of this software has in itself resulted in plagiarism deterrence (Sivasubramaniam, 2004, 2006) After its initial usage for “plagiarism detection”, Turnitin® was transformed into a grade marking tool. This has opened up the opportunity of using this software for teaching and/or formative feedback. Even during its introductory phase, reports claimed that students would like to use this tool to check their work before final submission, since they would be able to learn from their mistakes and improve writing skills (Sheridan and Brake, 2001; Dahl, 2007). In fact Turnitin® reports themselves can be used as feedback. Therefore it is clear that using Turnitin® feedback together with redesigning of the assessment can encourage students to be interactive with academics (Nicol and Draper 2008). Other authors went further and proposed using it as a teaching tool to increase (a) the understanding of plagiarism (b) its avoidance and (c) competencies amongst students (O’Hara et al 2007; Cheah and Bretag, 2008). Thus in 2009, Davis and Carroll concluded that Turnitin® can be used as a formative assessment tool to help students avoid plagiarism and improve citation practices.