Assignment 5: Turnitin (Social, Ethical, Legal, and Human Issues)

The Turnitin website is a tool that all teachers should be aware of and use! The site was very easy to navigate and use. I was a bit disappointed in my initial results. My unedited version only scored 38% plagiarized even though I copied it directly from an article on-line. The site did recognize two sentences from the site that I copied the text from, however, the remainder of the noted plagiarized work was identified work submitted by another student who also copied from the site and submitted to the University of Southern Mississippi. The instructor did identify that the papers were only being checked against those previously turned in for similar assignments and that they were not fully checked against on-line sources. This was the reason for the low score. I can see how a student could use a site like this for their benefit. I took a chance and only changed the sentences that were identified as being plagiarized and after re-submitting to the site, my paper scored a 0% plagiarized! So, I really only had to do about 15% of the work to create a paper that I could turn in as my own that wouldn’t throw up any flags to my teacher. Overall, I think this is a great site and one that I may use in the future if I have to give a writing assignment to my students.