Turnitin, a plagiarism detection program used by administrators and college professors throughout the country, has developed a student counterpart called WriteCheck.

When students turn in papers through Turnitin electronically, the work is then run through a database of sources that checks for plagiarism. The program identifies work that has been copied using an ‘originality index’ to determine how much of the paper appears to be plagiarized. If identified work is under a certain percentage, the paper is not considered plagiarized.

WriteCheck, like Turnitin, identifies areas of unoriginality in a paper and alerts students to plagiarism, according to an Inside Higher Ed article published Sept. 9. WriteCheck was developed by the company that owns Turnitin — iParadigms LCC — two years ago and is available only to students.

Turnitin is used at Syracuse University and is available exclusively to administrators, which gives them the sole ability to determine a paper’s originality.

‘Turnitin is used mainly for teachers to check on students’ plagiarism, so they can either do it proactively or if they’re suspicious, they can look at a particular paper,’ said Teddi Fishman, a member of the Turnitin UK advisory board and director of Clemson University’s International Center for Academic Integrity.

WriteCheck was created in response to requests from instructors to help students properly attribute sources in essays, said Chris Harrick, vice president of marketing for iParadigms, in an email.

‘Many instructors, aside from those teaching English, do not want to spend valuable class and grading time covering basic mechanics of grammar and proper citation,’ he said.

Students can run a paper of approximately 5,000 words through WriteCheck for $6.95 and have the paper edited for spelling and grammar and checked for instances of plagiarism, according to the article.

Turnitin has a database containing millions of sources, but it is only able to detect direct quotation of information, not paraphrasing. With WriteCheck, students are able to see what would be detected as plagiarism, revise the paper and then run it against the program up to three times to see if their unoriginal work will be recognized, according to the article.

Some wonder if WriteCheck will negate the efforts of Turnitin, as the two programs provide the same service to two different demographics. Some also argue that because WriteCheck alerts students to areas in their paper that would be identified as plagiarism by Turnitin, it simply allows them to reword the information in such a way that Turnitin would no longer be able to detect it.

But WriteCheck officials said they don’t believe students will use the program to cheat.

‘WriteCheck was designed with safeguards in place that makes it more onerous for a student to try to game the system than to actually write an original paper,’ Harrick said.

Fishman, the member of Turnitin UK, said some students think paraphrasing has relieved them of the responsibility to cite, and that is the wrong idea, she said. Fishman said the source still needs to be acknowledged, even if the program would catch it.

Although programs such as WriteCheck can be used to teach students about the writing process, they should not replace teachers, Fishman said.

‘When we threaten students and they aren’t sure where the boundaries are with plagiarism, that’s when we’ve failed,’ she said. ‘Looking for more efficiency, relying on technology is not the best way to do it in this case. An algorithm, no matter how good it is, can’t fulfill the role of a teacher.’

Adam Haas, a sophomore marketing major, said WriteCheck can potentially prevent students from accidentally plagiarizing, as many do.

WriteCheck officials feel concerns that the program will help students cheat are unwarranted, Harrick said. The company’s mission is simply to help students become better writers, and they can do that through the prevention of plagiarism, he said.

‘We believe that originality checking is an indispensable tool as research and writing moves from paper to the web,’ Harrick said. ‘The more people who have access to originality checking, the better off our society will be in teaching students how to write correctly.’

cffabris@syr.edu

Published on September 19, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Casey: cffabris@syr.edu | @caseyfabris