Turnitin to Advance

I just now find that Turnitin is being acquired by Advance (the parent company of CondeNast, parent of The New Yorker)!

Here's a link to the article. The article includes some analysis of Turnitin both as a product, and as a business, so it is a good overview of the issues.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-03-06-turnitin-to-be-acquired-by-advance-publications-for-1-75b

Yes, as a teacher and parent I bemoan the need for something like Turnitin (i.e. plagiarism detection), but recognize its helpfulness in the classroom. To their credit, Turnitin long tried to disavow the term "plagiarism detection" and instead focus on its quasi-LMS functions surrounding the "similarity analysis".

They had started to add grammar-checking as well, which would I think further legitimize the whole tool, and speed students' development of writing ability. Yes, of course every student's every sentence should be read and commented-upon carefully by the teacher; but that is not practical -- schools commonly grant English composition teachers extra time in their work schedule because of the expected extra time required for commenting on student essays. In my teaching experience, I found that even basic spelling and grammar-checking tools were quite helpful in allowing students a preliminary screen of their work; and those tools that applied a numeric score were even better, as they engage our natural human competitive drive to beat a specific score. Even if the effort to improve the score is intuitive -- that is, the student may not recognize the specific grammar or style improvement -- the student learns inductively how to improve any essay.

Unfortunately, Turnitin's LMS functionality was rather rigid -- for example, deadlines were absolute, while in the real world deadlines are rarely zero-based. That is, even aside from good ex-post-facto excuses, there are often pre-granted individual or group excuses. In addition, the paper turned in 1 minute late is patently different from a paper turned in 1 week late, and is usually treated differently.

Of course, spell-checkers are famously deaf to idioms and other linguistic nuances, and grammar-checker are as well. We still need, in the end, an experienced human to interpret and evaluate the essay -- but that person's time can be best spent on that "last mile" of meaning and style, allowing the student to independently work on writing before another person sees it.

Comments

Review: Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World

Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World by James Carroll My rating: 4 of 5 stars Fascinating comprehensive worldview, with Jesuitical logic in a broad sweep that links religion in a circular way to violence and the solution to violence. The author shows a great command of history and religion, with extensive endnotes to support or expand upon most of his claims; however, some sweeping indictments will certainly be resisted by the more fundamentalist People Of The Book (that is, the Abrahamic religions). A core symbolic thread is Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac on Mt.Moriah, the supposed site later called Jerusalem -- the author deftly cites that scene throughout the many centuries since the original event, demonstrating the human tendency to misinterpret that near-sacrifice in order to rationalize our own tendency to violence and scapegoating. I started the book in audio form, but found it unlistenable -- the author's c...

Review: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders My rating: 4 of 5 stars Must-read for any teacher of writing, and certainly for any would-be writer; also for any aficionado of Russian literature. This book is a distillation of the author's creative-writing class; reading it feels much like attending his class -- all that's missing is the back-and-forth of a seminar. View all my reviews

Review: The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir

The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir by Sherry Turkle My rating: 5 of 5 stars I cannot stop talking about this book, and not just because the author is a favorite of mine, with her earlier books about the effect of technology on education and our psyches. She describes encounters with so many other famous writers and technologists -- she was Present at the Creation of our computer-saturated internet world. Note that the title is purposely plural: several personal points are interwoven into the chapters, sometimes repeating details that a "normal" book would elide. But she is a talented writer and psychologist: the very writing style is intended to affect the reader and illustrate psychological points. I did cringe at the repeated references to the Freudian incident with her stepfather (fear not, dear reader -- no outright abuse here, just psychological trauma unearthed by years of analysis, along with all-too-typical infidelity and familial...

Thomas Education

Search This Blog