Re: [Air-l] turnitin issue [and privacy+security of students]
--- air-l-request@listserv.aoir.org wrote: even if we keep aside the ethical and moral implications, there are other serious issues to consider. namely privacy of the students' and surveillance of their works. as turnitin.com is a US company, the FBI and other federal agencies can access the database under the Patriot act. if that ever happens, how can you assure your students that their rights aren't being trampled by an orwellian big brother agency. shouldn't the students' security be of the utmost importance to any faculty member and the university? I am a grad student myself and I fully agree with rosanna. fortunately in our university i haven't faced to submit anything to turitin, otherwise i might have considered suing myself! anyway, there's an insightful article in the recent issue of University Affairs magazine that looks into similar issue: http://www.universityaffairs.ca/issues/2007/january/academic_libraries_01.ht... miraj khaled ============ Graduate Student Simon Fraser University
Message: 6 Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2007 00:57:30 +0100 From: "Rosanna Tarsiero" <rosanna@gionnethics.com> Subject: Re: [Air-l] turnitin issue To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org>
As a student myself (and online instructor), I never plagiarized a paper, and I do know that there are persons that do.
However, the assumption that students need to prove innocent (rather than innocence unless otherwise proven) bothers me a great deal.
I would refuse both submitting a paper to turnitin AND doing supplemental work. In all honesty, I do hope that some student sooner or later ends up suing colleges. Assuming people to be guilty unless otherwise proven violates quite a number of human rights.
Rosanna Tarsiero
"Circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him."
--James Allen
-----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Mark Warschauer Sent: venerd? 9 marzo 2007 0.50 To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] turnitin issue
I know of no precedent or case law, but this is an issue that is taken seriously here at UC Irvine. Students are usually given the permission to opt out of submitting their papers through Turnitin.com, but professors then require any students who opt out to complete one or more alternate assignments to demonstrate their papers were not plagiarized (and those alternatives can be quite onerous). See examples at
http://eee.uci.edu/faculty/ccopenha/39b-student/turnitin.students.htm
Mark Warschauer
Dear AOIRers,
A colleague teaching another course has come across an issue with an undergrad who refuses to hand in her term paper because the faculty member's course requires that all papers also be submitted to Turnitin.com.
The student claims that this violates her own intellectual property because Turnitin reportedly keeps copies for future plagiarism searches.
As a supposed ICT & society "expert," my colleague came to me for advice. My first thought was horsefeathers.
However, I am wondering if there is any precedent or case law on this in Canada or the US. (EU would be too different, I think.)
I am not interested in the ethics or the morality of Turnitin, but in how other situations have been resolved.
Thanks, Barry Wellman
_____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________ Get your own web address. Have a HUGE year through Yahoo! Small Business. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/?p=BESTDEAL
I am as concerned about electronic privacy as anyone -- and far more concerned than most -- but I am having a difficult time seeing why the government would want to access a hash of a student paper, or what might be the privacy interests that would be violated if they did. There is plenty of other stored student data (health records, library usage, brower logs) to spend time worrying about. DLB On Mar 9 2007, Miraj Khaled wrote:
--- air-l-request@listserv.aoir.org wrote:
even if we keep aside the ethical and moral implications, there are other serious issues to consider. namely privacy of the students' and surveillance of their works. as turnitin.com is a US company, the FBI and other federal agencies can access the database under the Patriot act. if that ever happens, how can you assure your students that their rights aren't being trampled by an orwellian big brother agency. shouldn't the students' security be of the utmost importance to any faculty member and the university?
I am a grad student myself and I fully agree with rosanna. fortunately in our university i haven't faced to submit anything to turitin, otherwise i might have considered suing myself! anyway, there's an insightful article in the recent issue of University Affairs magazine that looks into similar issue:
http://www.universityaffairs.ca/issues/2007/january/academic_libraries_01.ht...
miraj khaled ============ Graduate Student Simon Fraser University
Message: 6 Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2007 00:57:30 +0100 From: "Rosanna Tarsiero" <rosanna@gionnethics.com> Subject: Re: [Air-l] turnitin issue To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org>
As a student myself (and online instructor), I never plagiarized a paper, and I do know that there are persons that do.
However, the assumption that students need to prove innocent (rather than innocence unless otherwise proven) bothers me a great deal.
I would refuse both submitting a paper to turnitin AND doing supplemental work. In all honesty, I do hope that some student sooner or later ends up suing colleges. Assuming people to be guilty unless otherwise proven violates quite a number of human rights.
Rosanna Tarsiero
"Circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him."
--James Allen
-----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Mark Warschauer Sent: venerd? 9 marzo 2007 0.50 To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] turnitin issue
I know of no precedent or case law, but this is an issue that is taken seriously here at UC Irvine. Students are usually given the permission to opt out of submitting their papers through Turnitin.com, but professors then require any students who opt out to complete one or more alternate assignments to demonstrate their papers were not plagiarized (and those alternatives can be quite onerous). See examples at
http://eee.uci.edu/faculty/ccopenha/39b-student/turnitin.students.htm
Mark Warschauer
Dear AOIRers,
A colleague teaching another course has come across an issue with an undergrad who refuses to hand in her term paper because the faculty member's course requires that all papers also be submitted to Turnitin.com.
The student claims that this violates her own intellectual property because Turnitin reportedly keeps copies for future plagiarism searches.
As a supposed ICT & society "expert," my colleague came to me for advice. My first thought was horsefeathers.
However, I am wondering if there is any precedent or case law on this in Canada or the US. (EU would be too different, I think.)
I am not interested in the ethics or the morality of Turnitin, but in how other situations have been resolved.
Thanks, Barry Wellman
_____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________ Get your own web address. Have a HUGE year through Yahoo! Small Business. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/?p=BESTDEAL _______________________________________________ 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/
-- 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
Why would the gov't be interested in electronic forms of student papers? Well, considering that Homeland Security has in the past stated a focus on incoming exchange student programs (thereby granting student visas) as a high-level security threat for allowing potential terrorists to enter the country, I'd say this desired access is not beyond the realm of interest to our government. The relative ease of student visas granted to young men and women from abroad has been one fo the chief arguments for increasing the surveillance of library use, allowing government access to school records, etc. What a student writes in a university classroom should (in my humble opinion) be seen as a product of an experimental period in one's life. Probably never before are afterwards will a student be exposed to the opportunity for intellectual exchange and informational resources. And I'd hate to think that one of my middle east students would be impugned by our government because a paper on nontraditional approaches to the problem of terrorism (for example) violated the contemporary political sensitivities of whomever happened to in power. Not taking up this branch of the argument, just acknowledging that it does exist. -Rick
I am as concerned about electronic privacy as anyone -- and far more concerned than most -- but I am having a difficult time seeing why the government would want to access a hash of a student paper, or what might be the privacy interests that would be violated if they did.
There is plenty of other stored student data (health records, library usage, brower logs) to spend time worrying about.
DLB
On Mar 9 2007, Miraj Khaled wrote:
--- air-l-request@listserv.aoir.org wrote:
even if we keep aside the ethical and moral implications, there are other serious issues to consider. namely privacy of the students' and surveillance of their works. as turnitin.com is a US company, the FBI and other federal agencies can access the database under the Patriot act. if that ever happens, how can you assure your students that their rights aren't being trampled by an orwellian big brother agency. shouldn't the students' security be of the utmost importance to any faculty member and the university?
I am a grad student myself and I fully agree with rosanna. fortunately in our university i haven't faced to submit anything to turitin, otherwise i might have considered suing myself! anyway, there's an insightful article in the recent issue of University Affairs magazine that looks into similar issue:
http://www.universityaffairs.ca/issues/2007/january/academic_libraries_01.ht...
miraj khaled ============ Graduate Student Simon Fraser University
Message: 6 Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2007 00:57:30 +0100 From: "Rosanna Tarsiero" <rosanna@gionnethics.com> Subject: Re: [Air-l] turnitin issue To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org>
As a student myself (and online instructor), I never plagiarized a paper, and I do know that there are persons that do.
However, the assumption that students need to prove innocent (rather than innocence unless otherwise proven) bothers me a great deal.
I would refuse both submitting a paper to turnitin AND doing supplemental work. In all honesty, I do hope that some student sooner or later ends up suing colleges. Assuming people to be guilty unless otherwise proven violates quite a number of human rights.
Rosanna Tarsiero
"Circumstances do not make a man, they reveal him."
--James Allen
-----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Mark Warschauer Sent: venerd? 9 marzo 2007 0.50 To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] turnitin issue
I know of no precedent or case law, but this is an issue that is taken seriously here at UC Irvine. Students are usually given the permission to opt out of submitting their papers through Turnitin.com, but professors then require any students who opt out to complete one or more alternate assignments to demonstrate their papers were not plagiarized (and those alternatives can be quite onerous). See examples at
http://eee.uci.edu/faculty/ccopenha/39b-student/turnitin.students.htm
Mark Warschauer
Dear AOIRers,
A colleague teaching another course has come across an issue with an undergrad who refuses to hand in her term paper because the faculty member's course requires that all papers also be submitted to Turnitin.com.
The student claims that this violates her own intellectual property because Turnitin reportedly keeps copies for future plagiarism searches.
As a supposed ICT & society "expert," my colleague came to me for advice. My first thought was horsefeathers.
However, I am wondering if there is any precedent or case law on this in Canada or the US. (EU would be too different, I think.)
I am not interested in the ethics or the morality of Turnitin, but in how other situations have been resolved.
Thanks, Barry Wellman
_____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________ Get your own web address. Have a HUGE year through Yahoo! Small Business. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/?p=BESTDEAL _______________________________________________ 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/
-- 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/
-- ----------------------------- J. Richard Stevens, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Journalism Southern Methodist University P.O. Box 750113 Dallas, TX 75275 stevensr@smu.edu http://jrichardstevens.com "A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimension." --Oliver Wendell Holmes "Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy." -Louis Brandeis, Olmstead v. United States 277 U.S. 438, 485 (1928). "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." --Aristotle "The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in one's own home." - Theodor Adorno
On Mar 9 2007, Richard Stevens wrote:
Why would the gov't be interested in electronic forms of student papers? Well, considering that Homeland Security has in the past stated a focus on incoming exchange student programs (thereby granting student visas) as a high-level security threat for allowing potential terrorists to enter the country, I'd say this desired access is not beyond the realm of interest to our government.
Although I think this is a good point, everything we know about Turnitin indicates that they are storing a hash of the paper, rather than the full paper itself. I can see that the feds might well be interested in the topics of certain student papers, but I am not at all certain that the content can be reconstructed from what could be subpeoned or NSL'd. 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
It's interesting to contrast the trend towards using turnitin with the trend at some schools of having a strong honor code and unproctored exams. I believe that people generally rise (or fall) to your expectations. That said, I'd be curious to see data on how well the honor code approach actually works in practice. -- Amy
participants (4)
-
Amy S. Bruckman -
burkx006＠umn.edu -
Miraj Khaled -
Richard Stevens