Turnitin is making massive money from manufacturing mistrust between students & staff, while using its global database of student writing to train its 'ghostwriter' detection algorithm & profit from political demands for HE to tackle essay mills https://t.co/0fgukGne0y pic.twitter.com/vkaFxhsQy5
— Ben Williamson (@BenPatrickWill) June 28, 2019
📑 Automating Mistrust
Turnitin is the clear market-leader to solve the essay mills problem that the department has now called on universities to tackle. Its technical solution, however, does not address the wider reasons—social, institutional, psychological, financial or pedagogic—for student cheating, or encourage universities to work proactively with students to resolve them. Instead, it acts as a kind of automated ‘plagiarism police force’ to enforce academic integrity, which at the same time is also set to further disadvantage young people in countries such as Kenya where preparing academic texts for UK and US students is seen as a legitimate and lucrative service by students and graduates.
Ben Williamson takes a look at TurnItIn. He explores its past support from organisations like JISC and impact it has on higher education. The concern Williamson raises is that automated plagiarism checks will not resolve the underlying issues associated with cheating in higher education. Williamson adds further commentary in this Twitter thread:
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