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Turnitin Paper View Request - Not Very Useful?

When I request to view a paper against which one of my students has evidently either copied or reused material, the system returns an anonymous copy. Therefore, I see the entire text, but I still have no idea where it comes from.

The only usefulness to me in requesting to see such a copy is learning whether it is the same student who wrote that other work, or someone else. If it is the same student, then my penalty is different, as I treat plagiarism more harshly than the recycling of prior work. Both types of error receive penalties, but of a different order.

Without knowing who wrote the original paper, the request-to-view function is effectively useless. Given privacy concerns, which I understand to be the rationale behind Turnitin's policy, is this a limitation that we just have to live with?

5 replies

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    • Customer Engagement Specialist, Turnitin
    • Gill_Rowell
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Richard Voss I'm sorry to hear that you don't find this process very useful but the reasons for it are, as you rightly say, for ensuring privacy. If the view responses are coming back instantly this suggests that the match may be with another student in your institution. If you email our support team via tiisupport@turnitin.com they may possibly be able to identify the instructor of the original course within your institution who may then in turn be able to identify the student's work.

    • John_Lovett
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Hi Gill.

    Following up on Richard Voss' question, can one find out if the original Turnitin paper, the one from which the student's later paper plagiarized, was written by the same student, but submitted to a different class.  Note that this could be an example of self-plagiarism or simply sending the paper to the wrong class.  I've seen examples of both.

    To make a short story long, a student said he submitted a paper to my class ... but the paper is not in my Turnitin class.  This caused him to fail the course.  A long time later (long story) he e-mailed me the paper he says he previously submitted.  I plug it in to Turnitin and comes back as roughly 100% identical with "another TCU student paper" (TCU is my university).  If the student did submit the paper for my class, but just to the wrong class, that'd be a good thing for me to know.  The student would not have the F.  If it is plagiarism (hmmm ... would students ever do that?), that would be a good thing for me, as the instructor to know.

    In short, is there a way to find out the following information in this case:

    * Whether the "another TCU student paper" is by the same author>

     ... and, if that's the case, to learn the course & other instructor whether or not it was turned in by mistake or for a grade?

    Thanks.

    John Lovett

    Dept of Economics

    TCU

      • Customer Engagement Specialist, Turnitin
      • Gill_Rowell
      • 4 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      John Lovett This sounds like a real detective case now! However I think our support team should be able to unravel it for you, privacy restrictions allowing. Would you be able to drop the support team a line by emailing tiisupport@turnitin.com with the paper ID of the paper you submitted and they should be able to look at the match to see if it is in fact the same student.

      • John_Lovett
      • 4 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Gill Rowell Will do.  Thanks.

    • Emma_DukeWilliams
    • 4 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    I thought it was up to the institution to decide whether or not local similar papers were automatically available - granted, that might not show it's the same student if they've had to submit anonymously & have remembered to not put their names / student ID *anywhere* in the work, but it would make discussing it with the other assessor. 

Content aside

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