UCO Acquires Tool to Detect Plagiarism

By Dawn Marks, The Daily Oklahoman, The Daily Oklahoman

Dec. 14–EDMOND — University of Central Oklahoma professors will have a new tool to detect plagiarism as they are grading final papers this week.

The university purchased a one-year license for www.turnitin.com for about $20,000 and professors across the campus have put it to use this semester.

The site is designed to detect instances of possible plagiarism. It ranks papers according to a percentage of similarity to other papers or articles within the site’s database.

So far, some professors report that the site has helped cut down on instances of plagiarism within their classrooms.

Jenna Hellack, professor of biology, said she has used the program in her genetics class this semester.

In one instance, Hellack and another professor discovered that a student turned in parts of the same paper to both professors.

“We caught a person double dipping so to speak,” she said.

In another instance, a student turned in the same paper twice. During the semester, Hellack requires five reports and this student turned in the same report for report No. 2 and No. 5, she said.

The first time students turned in papers, 10 students out of 48 had a similarity index of above 40 percent, Hellack said.

Students lost a few points on those first papers but since then Hellack said she has seen fewer problems.

Statistics show that 151 professors are using the program, as are 2,944 students. Students can use the program to check their papers and to turn them in electronically to professors.

So far, the program has detected 74 papers that were 75 percent to 100 percent similar to other papers or articles, said Bonnie McNeely, chairman of the plagiarism program’s implementation committee.

In addition, 86 were 50 percent to 74 percent similar, 422 were 25 percent to 49 percent and 2,857 were 0 to 24 percent.

Sometimes plagiarism is unintentional because students don’t properly cite resources, English professor Kurt Hochenauer said.

Penalties are mostly up to professors and they are not required to report instances of plagiarism, he said.

Hochenauer has used the program for about five years and said he encountered more instances of plagiarism during the first two years of using the program than he’s seen in his 14 years of teaching.

“Now students are fully aware of turnitin.com. They are very careful,” he said. “My cases are down to one or two cases a year. In the beginning it was mind boggling. Some students were just cutting and pasting from the Internet.”

Hochenauer found six cases in one semester when he first started using the program, he said.

McNeely said several professors requested the program, which also speeds up the grading process, enabling professors to make comments electronically without having to write them out.

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