![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.iwebtefl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/google-logo-icon-300x300.png\"){kind=icon}
Google has announced the launch of a new tool aimed at detecting when students submit work that is not their own, thrusting itself into long-running debates over how to root out plagiarism while also protecting students\u2019 privacy and teaching them how to responsibly cite others\u2019 work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe realized we had a real opportunity to approach this problem differently,\u201d Zach Yeskel, a group program manager for Google for Education, said in an interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is not to detect plagiarism. It\u2019s to detect similarity and originality.\u201d<\/p>\n
For years, other companies have offered services aimed at the same problems. The biggest, Turnitin, now says that it is used by more than 15,000 education institutions in 150 countries, including many U.S. high schools. The general idea is to leverage the power of big data and digital technology to automatically review student work, scanning to see if anything was lifted from another paper, scholarly work, or other source without proper citation.<\/p>\n
Google is pinning its hopes of capturing a chunk of the K-12 market for such services on a few factors. The new feature, which the company has dubbed \u201coriginality reports,\u201d will be part of its uber-popular Classroom learning management system. The originality reports will also leverage the unrivaled power and ubiquity of Google\u2019s core service, Search. And company officials said Google will not be building and maintaining a \u201cglobal repository\u201d of student work\u2014the approach used by Turnitin, which has prompted lawsuits and privacy complaints.<\/p>\n
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What do experts on writing instruction, media literacy, and education technology think?<\/p>\n
Most hope Google\u2019s new tool might help foster much-needed dialogue between teachers and students about citation, academic writing, and the sometimes-fuzzy lines between one\u2019s own ideas and the ideas of others.<\/p>\n
But they fear the opposite will happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf people just rely on Google\u2019s algorithm, conversations about what it means to make creative use of other people\u2019s work will be [replaced] with a superficial understanding of \u2018originality,\u2019\u201d said Renee Hobbs, a media-literacy expert and professor of communication studies at the University of Rhode Island.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to recognize the great limitations of a tool like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Teaching Moments\u2019<\/strong> Yeskel described Google\u2019s vision for originality reports as being a way of \u201cteeing up teaching moments.\u201d<\/p>\n Once the reporting feature moves out of testing, he said, teachers who use Classroom will be able to enable the new feature when they give students writing assignments. Before turning their work in, students will be able to use the feature to check their own writing up to three times, to see if it\u2019s been flagged for unoriginal content. Once students submit their work, the Google service will automatically generate a new originality report for teachers to use as they grade.<\/p>\n \u201cIf a student clearly copied somebody else\u2019s work from the internet and doesn\u2019t cite it properly, that\u2019s the kind of stuff we\u2019ll catch,\u201d Yeskel said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n It\u2019s not hard to imagine how that process could present an opportunity for teachers and students to have a discussion about academic writing and proper citation. But it\u2019s not at all clear how Google\u2019s originality reporting tool might actually facilitate such discussions, or improve their quality. Yeskel said additional features that might help, such as a feedback tool, are still in development.<\/p>\n Such limitations highlight a broader reality, said Danielle Nicole Devoss, a writing professor at Michigan State University.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough they claim their purpose is to help, the majority of these services are \u2018detect-and-punish,\u2019\u201d Devoss said.<\/p>\n \u2018A Pedagogy of Care\u2019<\/strong> Ed-tech historian and critic Audrey Watters, for example, said plagiarism-detection software in general frames all writers as potential cheaters, undermining the trust that is essential to strong student-teacher relationships. She said the companies making the software tend to accept as given that most writing assignments are so cookie-cutter that students can reasonably consider copying someone else\u2019s work a viable strategy.<\/p>\n When algorithms are elevated into the role of a primary audience for both students and teachers, Watters added, it inevitably leads humans to conform to machines\u2019 logic and rules.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should be thinking about how to have pedagogies of care, not of surveillance,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not sure we can ask Google to be a part of that.\u201d<\/p>\n And what about the reality that much of student writing is no longer solely text-based?<\/p>\n Narrowly casting \u201ccutting and pasting\u201d as a problem misses the reality of many modern classrooms, where student work regularly includes a mix of words, images, video clips, memes, and other multimedia\u2014much of which is recycled and repurposed from other sources.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the media-literacy world, the line between originality and plagiarism when creating such work revolves around the legal concept of \u201ctransformative use,\u201d said Hobbs, of the University of Rhode Island. Are students merely re-transmitting someone else\u2019s work? Or are they adding value to the existing work, perhaps by using it for a new purpose or audience?<\/p>\n That\u2019s not something an algorithm can detect, she said.<\/p>\n Yeskel from Google agreed.<\/p>\n \u201cIdeas come from everywhere, and a big part of the education process is about synthesizing and growing them,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of nuance there, and that\u2019s why there still always needs to be an instructor involved in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Google has announced the launch of a new tool aimed at detecting when students submit work that is not their own, thrusting itself into long-running debates over how to root out plagiarism while also protecting students\u2019 privacy and teaching them how to responsibly cite others\u2019 work. \u201cWe realized we had a real opportunity to approach […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1797,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3696,3706,3707,3494,3692],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-28139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-business","8":"category-education","9":"category-english","10":"category-events","11":"category-news","13":"post-with-thumbnail","14":"post-with-thumbnail-icon"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.beanybux.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nLike any tool, the biggest question is how it will actually be used.<\/p>\n
\nOther experts said that dynamic reflects deeper problems.<\/p>\n