Summary

NCTE Position Statement on Machine Scoring

The NCTE position statement brings up several concerns about machine scoring and why schools should not use it. Standardized tests decontextualize writing and machine scoring grades writing superficially rather than on if the prompt fulfills the purpose of communicating meaning to another person. When grading on surface-level errors, a machine could fail nonnative speakers instead of taking their grown into account. Standardized tests graded by machine or taken on the computer are also unfair to school districts that have less funds and thus have students less experienced with technology. 

The NCTE offers an alternative: portfolios. Portfolios can show student growth over time and contain a larger variety of writing. Writing should be assessed based on local values and national standards. 

“Anxiety and Archive: Understanding Plagiarism Detection Services as Digital Archives” by James P. Purdy

Purdy’s article is an analysis of the plagiarism detection software Turnitin, the rhetoric it uses, and the alternative uses for the software. Purdy argues that TurnItIn could be seen as an archive with alternative uses outside of surveillance of plagiarism. While TurnItIn judges the integrity of other papers, its questions are called into question, especially since it archives student papers for profit without their explicit permission. Users must pay to have access to the archie. TurnItIn is an archival and surveillance tool that justifies itself by using appeals to fear, accessibility, and efficiency. If there is anxiety about using online sources to plagiarize papers, which TurnItIn claims is more popular and pervasive than ever, then teachers can use TurnItIn to save time and energy finding plagiarism. TurnItIn, however, has an algorithm for detecting “stolen” work that often sorts perfectly legitimate papers into the archive in which it keeps the works suspected of plagiarizing. While some of TurnItIn’s practices are not compatible with theories of writing and citation, it can be used as a digital archive for student work. TurnItIn has archival functionality that would make it very useful for a teacher or for other students who are doing research. TurnItIn, for example, could be used to track how many sources a student uses in a paper. 

“A Pedagogy of Resistance Toward Plagiarism Detection Technologies” by Stephanie Vie 

Vie argues that educators need to be cautious of TurnItIn because it creates notions of authorship and plagiarism that can be detrimental to the classroom. Vie rhetorically analyzes two sites- SchoolSucks and TurnItIn. These two sites appeal to students and administrators, respectively, and have different philosophies. SchoolSucks attempts to mock authority, while TurnItIn presents itself as an extension of authority or as an authority itself. Students can learn about plagiarism just by looking at both sites. Vie concludes that although educators use TurnItIn as a time-saving tool, that it needs to be looked at critically because it does not fully interrogate the meaning of plagiarism or authorship. 

Discussion

Anxiety is a central theme in this week’s readings. Anxiety on the part of administrators and teachers trying to catch students plagiarizing, anxiety on the part of NCTE council members as machine scoring becomes more popular,potential anxiety on the part of students who must often work in these changing learning environments. Even Brain Rules Chapter 4 is about how prolonged stress can create unhealthy situations for people. 

Sometimes, being under pressure can be a good thing. In the cause of Vie and Purdy’s articles, there is pressure to use TurnItIn as a “gotcha” plagiarism detection software that has caused scholars to think critically about its pedagogical implications. TurnItin promotes a certain ideology of writing that many educators don’t agree with, the idea that legitimate writing is 100% from a sole author’s brain. This environment of stress has maybe created the need to for teachers to talk to their students more in-depth about what plagiarism really is. Notions of authorship come from Western notions that it is possible to own an idea, and citation is not something that comes naturally to a lot of students. In my own reflective writing, I am usually loathe to find outside sources unless I am making a direct reference to a text. It takes effort and time. The pressure to use machine scoring as a way of grading papers has also created dialogue that explains the nature of writing. 

Stress, as Brain Rules explains, can be very detrimental as well. Vie and Purdy criticize TurnItIn because it labels students papers as being plagiarized based on principles that don’t always match what students learn through their instructors.TurnItIn creates an environment where students are “guilty until proven innocent” (Purdy 5). I certainly remember having moments in high school or during my undergraduate degree where my plagiarism score caused me to be anxious about the assignment. As a student who has gone to public school and has taken national standardized tests like the ACT, GRE, and SAT, I also know how stressful these tests can be. In the context of public schools, I do think that standardized testing also creates an environment of surveillance and punishment that can damage a learning environment, especially when tests are graded by machine. I went to public school in Florida and Texas, two states that had yearly standardized tests. Teachers often taught for the tests, which limited the curriculum. Machine scoring also exacerbates the problem because it often grades on grammar, word choice, syllabus counts- all surface level issues. The NCTE position statement also mentions how assessment software can be “gamed.” There is an academic sentence generator from the University of Chicago. It would be an interesting (or hilarious) endeavor to create a paper full of empty academic sentences and see how it gets scored. 

Works Cited

National Council for Teachers of English. "NCTE Position Statement on Machine Scoring." NCTE.  National Council of Teachers of English. n.d. Web. 22 Sep. 2014.

Purdy, James P. "Anxiety and Archive: Understanding Plagiarism Detection Services as Digital Archives."Computers and Composition 26 (2009): 65-77. ScienceDirect. Web. 22 Sep. 2014.

Vie, Stephanie. "A Pedagogy of Resistance Toward Plagiarism Detection Technologies" Computers and Composition 30(2010): 3-15. Science Direct. Web. 22 Set. 2014.