Perceptions of Anti Plagiarism Program
Student Perceptions of Anti Plagiarism Programs
Eloy L. Nuñez, PhD
April 23, 2011
Abstract
This article examines student perceptions of the institutional use of anti plagiarism software by
universities. A thematic analysis of 27 student essays is conducted in an effort to gain insight into
student perceptions of the Turnitin.com approach to prevent plagiarism. The article concludes that the
respondents accept the use of such software as a necessary aspect of scholastic research, but they also
point out some misgivings about the process.
Introduction
While preparing for this article, I dutifully conducted an initial search on ProQuest and
highlighted the articles that I thought would pertain to my topic. I briefly reviewed the abstracts and I
kept the ones that I thought provided relevant information and discarded those that did not. I then read
each of them in detail and highlighted certain areas of the text that I thought provided useful
information. I then copied and pasted several passages onto a separate Word document so that I could
refer to them later if I thought I would need to.
What I just described is probably repeated thousands of times a day by students conducting
secondary research for courses in both traditional and online scholastic institutions. Obviously, I do not
consider myself a plagiarist and the approach that I just described is a perfectly legitimate method for
organizing notes on a literature review for a research project. As I did this, I could not help but think
how easy it is for students to take these same copy-and-pasted passages and use them as part of their
research papers. The temptation to cross the line into plagiarism has to be great… especially for those
who are not very good writers, or those who have good writing skills but are up against a hard deadline.
In my years as an instructor, both online and in the traditional classroom setting, I have run into
many cases of student plagiarism. I have noted a variety of possible reasons for students copying other
peoples’ works and claiming them as their own. The reasons range from benign ignorance to purposeful
and egregious appropriations plagiarism wherein the offender knowingly and habitually takes someone
else’s work and claims it as their own (Lewis, 2008).
What exactly constitutes plagiarism? Saint Leo University defines academic dishonesty as
“representing another’s work as one’s own, active complicity in such falsification, or violating test
conditions. Plagiarism is stealing and passing off the ideas and words of another as one’s own or using
the work of another without crediting the source” (SLU, 2010).
Computer Based Technologies as Enablers and Countermeasures of Plagiarism
Plagiarism has long been a major concern for scholastic institutions. With the proliferation of
online courses and instantaneous access to publications, the opportunity and temptation to plagiarize
other peoples’ works has greatly increased. But it is not just the easy access to information provided by
modern day online search engines that contributes to plagiarism. I have to believe that the number one
technical enabler of plagiarism is the copy-and-paste feature that I had mentioned in the introduction of
this article. As one of my students noted in his essay, “In a world of cutting and pasting paragraphs and
sentences, it seems that it would be quite easy to plagiarize reports, websites and books.”
I cannot say for sure, but I suspect there are several reasons that plagiarism occurs. Lewis
(2008) identifies three primary antecedents of plagiarism: rationalizing dishonesty, problematic
techniques, and definitional ambiguity. It has been my experience that most of the cases that I have
observed can be attributed to problematic techniques and definitional ambiguity. In these cases,
students failed to properly quote or cite a source. This is usually attributed to sloppiness or laziness, but
there was no obvious intent to plagiarize.
However, every once in a while there comes a case of obvious intentional plagiarism where the
student takes steps to conceal their deeds. One common technique used by students is to copy large
segments of text and then change a few words here and there to make it look like they were
paraphrasing the cited source. And yes, even the citations can be plagiarized, and often are. I like to
point out to students and new professors that just because a source is properly cited does not absolve
the student from plagiarism. Some students think that the mere act of placing an author’s name and
date in parentheses after a plagiarized passage, absolves them of guilt. It does not.
Anti Plagiarism Software Programs
Just like the Internet provides a fertile ground for plagiarists, it also provides the tools for
instructors to cross-check the students’ work to ensure that it is not plagiarized. I am familiar with two
anti-plagiarism software programs. Saint Leo University uses Turnitin.com and requires students to
submit all major assignments via its web site prior to grading. Other universities that I am familiar with
use a similar program called SafeAssign. Both rely on expansive data bases and lightning quick word
matching logarithms. Interestingly, on several occasions I have submitted the same document to both
programs and have obtained different results.
Another notable difference between Saint Leo University policy and the other university is that
Saint Leo relies on the findings of a Graduate Academic Standards Committee to determine whether a
student is guilty of plagiarism. In the other university, the individual professor makes the final
determination. There are advantages to both systems, but I prefer the Saint Leo policy for several
reasons. While I am not shy about sanctioning students (I have done it over 45 times for the other
university), I like the fact that a committee makes the final determination, because that way, there is
greater uniformity in the level of administered discipline. Also, the committee acts as a central
depository for all documented cases of plagiarism at the institution. In the other system, a professor will
likely be unaware of a student’s previous plagiarism in another professor’s class. In my opinion, the
Saint Leo policy is superior for those reasons.
Student Perceptions About the Turnitin Process
It is clear that Saint Leo University takes the issue of academic dishonesty very seriously. I
would say more so than other institutions that I am familiar with. In 2010, my boss Dr. Robert Diemer,
Professor & Director Graduate Criminal Justice at Saint Leo University directed me to incorporate a
student familiarization assignment for the plagiarism web site tool Turnitin.com as part of the redesign
of the CRJ-565 Leadership in Criminal Justice course. The intent of this new assignment was to
familiarize new graduate students of the Turnitin process, and hopefully to serve as a deterrent for
future plagiarism. The thinking was, if the students become familiar with the Turnitin process early on in
their studies, they will be less likely to submit a plagiarized assignment.
I took Dr. Diemer’s suggestion and came up with an a two-part assignment in which the students
are directed to explore several online search engines and find articles related to ethics. The students are
instructed to copy and paste portions of the articles onto a template that is provided to them. They are
then instructed to submit the purposefully plagiarized assignment onto the Turnitin.com web site. To
make certain that the students understand that copying and pasting text from other sources is not
acceptable, the instructions for the assignment state the following proviso:
“This is the only time in your scholastic careers that you will be allowed to copy and paste
someone else’s work for an assignment. We are doing this so that you can become familiar with the anti
plagiarism service provided by Turnitin.com.”
In the second part of the assignment, the students are instructed to write a brief essay on the
entire process. They are asked to respond to the following questions:
Discuss and briefly analyze the Turnitin process.
Did the Turnitin software find all the copied and pasted text?
What, if any are its limitations, and what are some of the potential pitfalls
associated with its use.
The assignment is given in Module 3 of the course to correspond with the Ethics block. There is
no grade issued, but the successful completion of the assignment is a requirement for passing the
course.
Methods
Since its inception, the Mandatory Turnitin assignment has been completed by 118 students as a
requirement of the CRJ-565 course. For this article, I conducted a thematic analysis of student
responses for only the classes in the Spring 2 (2011) term. A total of 27 student papers from three
different sections were reviewed. This is strictly a convenience sample and should not be construed as
scholastically viable study. Nevertheless, I found it to be a fairly revealing view of student perceptions
about the Turnitin process and plagiarism in general.
Results
Of the 27 student essays reviewed, not one had a negative comment about the use of Turnitin.
Asked to comment on Saint Leo University’s practice of mandating submissions of assignment via the
Turnitin web site, students were either supportive, or at a minimum, grudgingly accepting of the
process. I will share some of the comments that I observed.
One student stated, “Turnitin.com helps provide academia with the ability to police students as
they turn in assignments based upon research conducted on the internet.” Another acknowledges the
necessity of the web site, “Turnitin.com is a necessary website to assist instructors with plagiarism.”
Other comments were, “I do understand academic honesty and Turnitin is vital to discouraging
plagiarism” and “If I were a teacher, I would use Turnitin.”
Other positive comments about the use of Turnitin are noted below:
“The process is fairly easy and self explanatory. I think it is a great tool for students.”
“The Turnitin process is simply amazing. I had not realized its ability or imagined that so many
universities utilize it. I think this exercise should be conducted for all Saint Leo Students before they
utilize it for the first time.”
“If I were a teacher, I would use Turnitin. If nothing else, it should discourage students from
cheating. Although it has flaws, it should point out the obvious. In addition, I think it is great for
students. I always feel better about a paper if I can check it with Turnitin or Writecheck before
submitting it to the instructor.”
The next two questions that the students were asked in the assignment have to do with the
accuracy and reliability of Turnitin mechanism for finding matching text. Although the students mostly
reported similarity scores of 90% and above, a few of them noted that Turnitin did not match all the
copied and pasted text, and some found a possible glitch in the system. One student noted the failure
of Turnitin to match text that was copied verbatim, “it only found 71% of the plagiarized text, when in
fact the whole document was plagiarized.”
One student noted the following, “After submitting my test paper, it returned with 63%
similarity index. Interestingly, it found almost 100% of my first two submissions and none of my third.”
Two other students noted this apparent glitch in the Turnitin logarithms, “I did notice in this trial that
some of the text did not go red as it should for whatever reason, and that my overall paper got a 92
percent matching, which is still definitely a problem. I did expect a 100 percent rating, but that did not
happen for some reason.”
The other student describes the same glitch, “It did highlight every word of my first two choices
but failed to recognize the majority of the final post.” All three students reported lower similarity scores
on their second and third tries. Submitting more than one attempt was not part of the assignment, yet
some students did it anyway, either on purpose or by accident. It seems that in doing so, they may have
discovered a possible flaw with the system.
The next question had to do with the potential pitfalls of the Turnitin mechanism. Predictably,
several students were concerned over the reporting of “false positives” where Turnitin would show a
match of text where there was no intention of copying. Most of the concerns were not about the
manner in which the software matches text, as much as how the professors interpret the findings. One
student stated, “Turnitin generated matches in the reference sections of submitted papers. This is a
downfall if the instructor does not review the portions of the paper identifying the matched results.”
Another student states his concern that properly referenced material may be held against him if
it is misinterpreted by the professor, “Turnitin might show it as a match, but I properly referenced the
match.”
Echoing the concern of many students that professors should not rely exclusively on the overall
similarity index score, one student puts it this way, “I could envision a situation where narrowly directed
questions could produce similar responses from students, so I think that instructors should be careful in
determining the appropriate use of the software, and carefully examine results to ensure there are no
false positives.”
Another student puts it this way, “In the end the instructor will know a person’s writing style
and key words used by the student over a period of time and could identify differences, where a
computer system wouldn’t.” The consensus among the students seems to indicate that Turnitin is a
good tool, but that ultimately only the professor can determine whether matching text should be
considered to be plagiarism. After all, there are several legitimate reasons that text would match word
for word.
The comments of one student seem to summarize the general consensus outlook on the
importance of the professor interpreting the Turnitin results correctly, “I certainly can respect the utility
of this anti-plagiarism tool, especially after reviewing the lecture that articulated the astronomical rate
of plagiarism offenses. That data is extremely compelling. I do find it somewhat unsettling that higher
education has had to go to these measures which seem to be akin to a polygraph test. Of course, like a
polygraph, the final determination rests with the reviewer. I would assume that if a research paper is
found to contain an inordinate amount of previously submitted text that the reviewer would check to
insure that the material is properly cited.”
Finally, one student notes one obvious limitation of the use of Turnitin, “there is only so many
ways to say ‘the sky is blue’ without finding someone else saying it the same way.
Conclusion
Why is this important? Why has Saint Leo University taken such a proactive approach on the
issue of academic dishonesty? I think the answer to this lies in the findings of Mills in which she points
out the importance of establishing an institutional culture where “learning is valued, academic integrity
is explained and emphasized, and where faculty model academic and professional ethics” (p. iv , 2008).
I have been in the fortunate position where I can compare the cultures of two different
universities as they relate to academic honesty issues. One of these universities talks a great deal about
plagiarism, but does very little to prevent it. Conversely, Saint Leo University goes to great lengths to
prevent it. It is no accident in my opinion, that plagiarism has become an epidemic in the one university,
as compared to the very small number of plagiarism cases at Saint Leo. Just to give some perspective on
the matter, in over three years teaching at Saint Leo University, I have had only four cases of plagiarism.
By contrast, in relatively the same time period, I have had over 45 cases of plagiarism in the other
university. For me, the contrast between the two university cultures is clear and the outcomes resulting
from their different policies are predictable.
That is why I think it is important to make the students aware of the plagiarism issue early on in
their scholastic careers. The Mandatory Turnitin assignment conceived by Dr. Diemer is a perfect
example of a university taking proactive measures to instill a culture where academic dishonesty is not
tolerated. The core values of Saint Leo University are clearly stated in the course syllabi that the
students receive at the onset of every class. These core values are not just idle words. It is evident that
at Saint Leo, an organizational culture has been established and nurtured that allows these core values
to be practiced on a day to day basis.
References
Lewis, N.. (2008). Plagiarism Antecedents and Situational Influences. Journalism and Mass
Communication Quarterly, 85(2), 353-370. Retrieved April 23, 2011, from ABI/INFORM Global.
(Document ID: 1567127781).
Mills, C.. Graduate students’ perceptions of academic integrity policies, practices, observations,
engagement, and seriousness of behaviors. Ph.D. dissertation, Clemson University, United States
— South Carolina. Retrieved April 23, 2011, from Dissertations & Theses: A&I.(Publication No.
AAT 3355120).
Saint Leo University (2010). Graduate Academic Catalog 2010 – 2011. The Trustees of Saint Leo
University.
