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How has Turnitin changed the balance of trust between tutor and student, and what legal and ethical issues have arisen following the system's introduction?

In the fight against academic plagiarism, Turnitin has emerged as the most prominent online system of verifying the originality of work submitted by students. However, the numerous legal and ethical arguments surrounding the use of Turnitin are evidence of the lack of clarity in terms of the uses to which universities can put students' work, and some critics have argued that forcing students to pass their work through a Turnitin check is tantamount to a presumption of guilt. In recent years, numerous legal cases have been launched regarding various aspects of Turnitin's operation, ranging from claims that copyright is being violated to wider accusations of privacy infringement. Supporters of the system argue that Turnitin is a vital part of the battle against student plagiarism, but it's clear that numerous ethical and moral questions remain not only about the way in which Turnitin works, but also the ways in which different universities implement the system.

Turnitin uses a proprietary algorithm to compare submitted papers to several databases, including an internal database of previously submitted papers and many of the major academic databases. Like Google, the company continually crawls new websites, adding pages as part of an effort to ensure that material from websites hasn't been used by students in their own work. Furthermore, Turnitin has access to numerous electronic databases of printed books and journals, ensuring that text even from many older publications can be detected in newly-submitted work. By the middle of 2009, Turnitin's database was believed by many commentators to be second only to Google's in terms of the breadth and scope of its coverage of the largest possible range of printed work.

However, some critics have argued that Turnitin violates students' rights by keeping copies of their papers in its database after submission. Turnitin insists that it only retains work in order to be able to cross-references it with work submitted later by other students, but there are concerns that the intellectual property rights of students and universities are being undermined by Turnitin's database. Furthermore, there's a legal argument that suggests universities may be contravening their students' rights if they insist on them submitting work to Turnitin, since by doing so they are effectively forcing their students to abandon elements of their intellectual property. Although Turnitin insists that its actions do not constitute intellectual property theft per se, it's clear that this is a legal minefield that has not yet been resolved.

A number of Canadian universities, in particular, have expressed unease concerning Turnitin, and in some cases the system has been banned. Under the terms of the Patriot Act, the US government could theoretically access any papers submitted to Turnitin, and many Canadian universities are worried that this could result in their students' work being illegally disseminated. This is not just an ethical issue, since the Canadian universities are also worried that they would be deemed partly liable in any resulting court case. While there is no evidence to suggest that Turnitin has ever disclosed the details of students' work to any outside party, there remain fears among some academics regarding the potential for such release of work, and some critics argue that Turnitin represents the beginning of a decline in the integrity of intellectual copyright in the online, mass-media reproduction age. However, supporters of the service counter this argument by noting that inclusion in the Turnitin database arguably helps to protect a student from having his or her work copied by someone else.

It's clear that Turnitin represents a major challenge to notions of intellectual copyright within the academic world, particularly in cases where universities require students to use the system as part of the submission process. Some universities use complex Virtual Learning Environments (VLE's) that incorporate Turnitin submission as part of the basic course structure, and many critics argue that this represents the creation of a climate of suspicion and fear that will ultimately prove conducive to a decreased level of trust and openness in terms of student-tutor relations. Others, however, argue that the massive amount of material freely available on the internet makes it more important than ever for universities to be able to ensure that material being submitted is entirely original.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buchanan, Andrew (2006). 'Ethics in Academia: How Plagiarism is Damaging Work'. London: Senecca Press

Donaldson, Gerry (2008). 'The Turnitin Dilemma'. London: A.M. Preston Books

Matthews, David (2005). 'Academic Copyright'. New York: Denverdale Publications

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