Would you not agree that the argument could be made and it would not be legally trivial? James burkx006@umn.edu wrote: On Mar 9 2007, James Whyte wrote:
It occurs to me that requiring a student to agree to Turnitin as a requirement for a course may be a "contract" made under duress and therefore subject to challenge.
Legally, no, this is not duress. Simply witholding a desired benefit in a competitive marketplace will typically not be duress. The student can take a different class, or go to a different school, or choose a different career. There are enough alternatives, and no threat to necessities of life, that duress is not a credible claim. That does not resolve the ethical question of coercion, as several people have pointed out. I am not certain that the analogy to requiring spellchecking works, since that sort of requriment seems to be part of pedagogy to teach students a skill, and Turnitin matching seems to be more of a policing function. In that vein, I am not sure that I understand Marjorie's claim that Turnitin is useful for teaching referencing, since no one outside the company knows the matching algorithm -- the criteria for text comparison are unknown, so it is hard for me to see what the students would learn. Perhaps she could say more about that. DLB -- Dan L. Burk Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly Professor University of Minnesota Law School 229 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455 ********************************** voice: 612-626-8726 fax: 612-625-2011 bits: burkx006@umn.edu _______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ --------------------------------- Finding fabulous fares is fun. Let Yahoo! FareChase search your favorite travel sites to find flight and hotel bargains.