University tries out Turnitin through pilot program

If the response from students and professors is positive, UNC might implement a plagiarism detection software schoolwide.

But like the pilot, the full program – if implemented – will be optional, said Todd Zakrajsek, executive director of the Center for Faculty Excellence.

As part of an ongoing review of the honor system, officials are considering Turnitin, which compares submitted student papers against a database of academic journals, web pages and other student papers.

This week, emails were sent to students in participating classes, explaining that students could decline without any negative consequences.

Zakrajsek said the program is optional because that is typically how Turnitin is run.

“Talking to people at other schools, they said that not many people opt out,” Zakrajsek said.

Eighteen professors are participating in the pilot, he said.

“We developed a purposeful sample, making sure we covered all over campus. Most professors stepped up when we asked to be a part of it.”

Amanda Claire Grayson, who will become student attorney general April 3, said Turnitin can still be effective in catching plagiarism.

“I think it will be more effective because it is a blanket approach,” she said.

“Theoretically, it would catch all students instead of just those professors who choose to check.”

But Grayson said the program will not affect the honor system’s process for evaluating claims of plagiarism.

“We’ll still go through and scrutinize the paper against the alleged source,” she said.

Junior journalism major Alyssandra Barnes, who is in a participating class, said she opted out.

“The only students who will use it will be over-concerned and probably wouldn’t have needed the technology anyways,” Barnes said in an email.

Lucila Vargas, a professor in the journalism school participating in the pilot, said she typically uses her intuition to determine if material is plagiarized.

“Students who want to plagiarize will opt out. But it does take a lot of time to do a Google search, so it will certainly be less time-consuming (for me),” she said.

Zakrajsek said additional class sections will be added to the pilot through summer school.

He said officials will then analyze student survey opinions and usage data and then decide whether or not to implement Turnitin campuswide.

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