Turnitin: Stopping Plagiarism and Improving Education

Dr. John Barrie — Turnitin, Creator

Agenda

• My Background• The Problem• What is Turnitin• Technology Review• Roles of Turnitin

My Background

• Undergraduate: U.C. Berkeley, Rhetoric and Neurobiology

• Doctorate: U.C. Berkeley — Biophysics Multidisciplinary Graduate Group, Neurobiology

• Dissertation: Theoretical and computational electro-neurophysiology - Spatiotemporal dynamics of the neocortical EEG (aka, the physiology of perception)

History

• 1994 — Created technology to aid collaborative learning among hundreds of U.C. Berkeley students

• Exposed undergraduates to the peer review process• Allowed students to share information in ways not

possible without the Internet• Published the results in Science magazine• Observations from the study:

• Facilitated acquisition of core course ideas• Faculty interacted with technology <2hr/term• Plagiarism and cheating were rampant at Berkeley

• Prediction: IP theft would become an enormous problem for academia… and EVERYONE ELSE.

Problem

• Internet has allowed the public to access massive amounts of information — that access has been accompanied by a manifold increase in the theft and misappropriation of digital intellectual property

• This problem has become especially pronounced in academia where it takes the form of plagiarism.

• Students are using the Internet like a 10-billion page searchable, cut-and-paste(able) encyclopedia

• The problem jeopardizes the integrity of the entire system and the addressable academic market is in the billions

Problem

• According to one of the largest studies of plagiarism in the world, Donald McCabe found that almost 40% of students surveyed admitted to plagiarizing information from the Internet - and that percentage may be low because many students did not consider ‘borrowing’ from the Internet without attribution plagiarism

• Increas ingly IT literate student population– Wikiped ia is replacin g th e library

• Emergence and proliferation of cheat sites• End jus tifies the means philosophy towards education (parents )• Lack of enforcement by institution• Competitive pres sure• Bad examples in society (cheaters win)• Things on the internet are not like their material counterparts

Components of the Problem

Technology is the Key

• “Warning students [or journalists or authors or researchers or anyone else] not to plagiarize, even in the strongest terms, appears not to have had any effect whatsoever. Revealing the use of plagiarism-detection software [Turnitin] to the students prior to completion of an assignment, on the other hand, proved to be a remarkably strong deterrent.”

from: Actions Do Speak Louder than Words: Deterring Plagiarism with the Use of Plagiarism-Detection Software, by Bear F. Braumoeller, Harvard University and Brian J. Gaines, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

This is a digital problem, and it must be addressed with a digital solution - the status quo is not working… big time.

What is Turnitin?

• Turnitin is part of a comprehensive solution, called WriteCycle, that allows educators and students to assess and grade student work via the internet.

• WriteCycle is a suite of tools:• Turnitin plagiarism detection – originality reports

• Peer review – students reviewing each others’ work

• GradeBook – recording of results

• GradeMark – online grading of student work and the ability to data-mine that information

What is Turnitin Plagiarism Detection?

• An internet based service (no software)• Accepts student papers• Produces originality reports• Identifies content copied from:

– The internet– Previously submitted student works– Subscription services & e-Books

Core Technology

Key Turnitin Metrics

• Over 100 million student papers student papers submitted to Turnitin — projected to grow to nearly 200 million by the end of 2009

• 130,000-250,000 new student papers daily

• Nearly 20,000,000 users worldwide

• 6 major CMS integrations

• 106 countries

• Full support for 30+ languages

New Content — CrossRef

• 20 million journal articles already!

ACM, American Society of Neuroradiology, BMJ Publishing Group, Elsevier, IEEE, International Union of Crystallography, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford University Press, Sage, Informa UK (Taylor & Francis), Wiley Blackwell.

• Publisher participation is growing quickly.

Turnitin Now and Then — Users

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Year

Number of Users — in thousands

# Users — in thousands

Poly. (# Users — in thousands)

Turnitin is the Largest Online Academic Community in the World

• 8,400 institutions across over 106 countries• In the UK

– Adopted and paid for by the JISC in 2001 for the entire UK– Now over 99% of UK Universities pay for it (no more

government subsidy)– Every high stakes awarding body– Rapidly being adopted at FE and K-12 institutions– 2007 NCC Group Report ranked Turnitin #1 in the world

• We process 250,000 student scripts a day at peaks

The power of Turnitin is in the network effect

Copy of Internet

Books, Journals, Newspapers

(LexisNexis, Gale, Proquest, Factiva)

Student Papers or Client Node

Extract matching documents

Manuscript or article submitted to

iParadigms

Computer transforms manuscript into a digital fingerprint

(next slide)

Finding a Needle in the Haystack: Searching the Entire Document

Finding A Needle in a Haystack

We re-map the digital fingerprint of the manuscript or article into a high dimensional space and test for clustering

Matching passages from 12+ billion Internet web pages: updated at a rate of million pages/day

Matching passages from millions of Student Papers or Client Node

Compare matching passages to original manuscript or article

Matching passages from millions of Books, Journals, Newspapers

Create Originality Report Entire process < 10 seconds

Originality Report

Detection of Word Substitution or Alteration

MACBETH MANUSCRIPT FROM THE INTERNET (INTRO PARAGRAPH)

Macbeth is presented as a mature man of definitely established character, successful in certain fields of activity and enjoying an enviable reputation. We must not conclude, there, that all his volitions and actions are predictable; Macbeth's character, like any other man's at a given moment, is what is being made out of potentialities plus environment, and no one, not even Macbeth himself, can know all his inordinate self-love whose actions are discovered to be-and no doubt have been for a long time-determined mainly by an inordinate desire for some temporal or mutable good.

SAME MANUSCRIPT WITH MODIFIED WORDS

Macbeth is shown as an empowered man of well-established character, prosperous in several fields of life and enjoying an esteemed reputation. We mustn't conclude, therefore, that all of his volitions and actions will be foreseeable ; Macbeth's essence , like most other men at any given time, is what's being created out of potentialities and his environment, and no one, not even Macbeth himself, can discern all his immoderate self-love whose behaviors are found to be-and without doubt have been for some time-determined primarily by an extreme desire for a temporal or changeable good.

Detection of Sentence or Paragraph Addition

PAPER A MACBETH INTERNET DERIVED PAPER (INTRO PARAGRAPH)

Macbeth is presented as a mature man of definitely established character, successful in certain fields of activity and enjoying an enviable reputation. We must not conclude, there, that all his volitions and actions are predictable; Macbeth's character, like any other man's at a given moment, is what is being made out of potentialities plus environment, and no one, not even Macbeth himself, can know all his inordinate self-love whose actions are discovered to be-and no doubt have been for a long time-determined mainly by an inordinate desire for some temporal or mutable good.

PAPER A + B

MACBETH MODIFIED TEST PAPER WITH COMBINED ADDED CONTENT

Shakespeare's famous play, Macbeth, is one of his great tragedies based around the classic theme of the hero's fatal flaw. Macbeth is presented as a mature man of definitely established character, successful in certain fields of activity and enjoying an enviable reputation. Yet, like any man, he is human, and thus in possession of flaw and foibles, hidden that they may be from public eye, and hinted at by foreshadow only by the author. We must not conclude, there, that all his volitions and actions are predictable; Macbeth's character, like any other man's at a given moment, is what is being made out of potentialities plus environment, and no one, not even Macbeth himself, can know all his inordinate self-love whose actions are discovered to be-and no doubt have been for a long time- determined mainly by an inordinate desire for some temporal or mutable good. This desire being so strong under certain circumstances as to override all others, even, as is usually the case in tragedy, the ultimate desire of self-preservation.

Under one minute23%

Under two minutes27%

Under 10 minutes13%

Under three minutes15%

Under five minutes16%

More than half an hour1%

Under half an hour2%Under 15 minutes

3%

Turnitin Performance Metrics — May 2008

CMS Interface

CMS Interface

New GradeMark

New GradeMark

Only Turnitin Is Proven To Stop Plagiarism

82% reduction in unoriginal (as documented in originality

reports) student work in institutions with more than 5 years

of use.

WriteCycle: Beyond Just Checking OriginalityFuture of Education is Increased Feedback and Efficiency in the Classroom

41

The Future:

Digital Grading, Peer Review &

Assessment Over Time

The role of Turnitin/WriteCycle in the classroom

Roles of Turnitin

Thank You