Turnitin (updated again)

Following on from my previous post, I know that my dissertation was put through turnitin by someone (I set up a turnitin account as we were asked to do) because I have an email receipt dated 6 June 2013 which clearly shows this is the case. It looks as though I put it through because turnitin thanks me in that auto-email. I didn't manage to upload it to Turnitin. But obviously somebody did, especially since there is a copy of my dissertation on Turnitin. It is technically possible for someone other than the student to upload students' work to turnitin, which turnitin expects to be the instructor ie. the tutor marking the work, not an administrator (such as the admin Team Leader, Robert Brown). Turnitin expects the uni's admin to check that the correct tutors are written down and verified. 

Indeed, I note that turnitin's info on their website states that it is part of universities' Acceptable Use Policy (and consequently their legal agreement with turnitin) that universities (their customers) don't "distribute anything that contains false or misleading indications of origin or statements of fact". They must not "restrict any other user's enjoyment of the site" or "engage in" libellous, defamatory....actions" or "copyright...privacy, or any other proprietary right". And more broadly, the uni must not allow any person to have access to the account who is not at their institution; not the relevant instructors there etc. In my case, they have clearly entered misleading and missing information and impacted on my enjoyment of the site. They breached privacy by allowing a non-bbk email supposedly belonging to an anonymous instructor onto my profile which shouldn't be there. This may well have constituted or enabled cyber crime and it also potentially endangers my copyright. In terms of libellous and defamatory, one: the completely false facts entered about my academic record and degree on turnitin is an attack on my reputation. Two, there are further possible defamatory statements either within the locked turnitin similarity report or such statements or hints could be made about that report that are false. My dissertation is my original work and extremely thoroughly referenced so the turnitin report should be excellent. But given that the instructor (whoever they were at that time) has blocked my access to it, they are leaving it open to defamatory remarks or gossip behind my back. No one has said or written anything to me and my degree results, transcript and certificate went through smoothly and promptly, so it must be fine. Nevertheless, others don't know that because they can't check for themselves and I find it beyond unacceptable to restrict access to a report on my own work which belongs to me! 

It's possible that this turnitin academic record is such that it makes me look as though I didn't do the course properly so for all I know that affected my M.Res application. Something is clearly abnormal and nobody informs me why despite using whatever it is (if it is anything other than discrimination) to ruin my future prospects as a graduate. Anthony Price claimed in an email 10th February 2014 that he was unable to access his "past records" so couldn't write a reference. Later (30th March 2015) he sent me an invitation to let him add me to his "professional network on LinkedIn" so I politely accepted. However, when I asked him only 4 months later via LinkedIn if I could merely put his "name down as my referee on my application forms" he answered rudely claiming he "cannot state his reasons" why he couldn't do it (emails exchanged via LinkedIn July 2015). Why ask to add me to his network if when I ask for something perfectly normal, he's unpleasant. The point of LinkedIn is to network. Well don't do the job of dissertation supervisor if you're going to be impossible about references! You should have left it to Susan James to get on with being the supervisor because it was her subject/research area and she takes her job/responsibilities seriously. 

This mess I've been left to try to cope with after graduating is totally unacceptable. I have the right to clear my name so that future study and job applications, whenever/wherever/whatever they may be, are not contaminated by this disinformation and total lack of co-operation from college staff.

When I first noticed that someone had uploaded (what appears to be) my work on Turnitin, I assumed that this might just be a standard checking procedure. I believed the names written down as the instructors were relevant people and I assumed they had uploaded my work. 

However, when I logged into my Turnitin account recently, I noticed that something is clearly very wrong:

Two of the three instructor names had changed. One instructor was now apparently the same person as the third one, so instead of being written down as an instructor for one module, he was now down twice - the same module but now also for the dissertation. The second module had changed to being anonymously called 'moodle admin' and their email address is a serious internet security issue, a far as I'm concerned.  Nobody outside of the University should gain access to profiles on Turnitin. Yet this email address showed that they are not at my university. This is important because, according to Turnitin's rules, people at other educational institutions should not be able to access my profile and should not have, or been given, any course ID codes or access. And the email has the wrong location in the middle of its address. The email does not appear in any internet searches or match any educational institutions or companies, other than ones which no longer exist or were created at a later date. Who is this so-called instructor and how did they get past internet security checks to gain access to my profile and possibly my work? And, as an instructor, upload anything they like to my turnitin profile and generate reports about my work and fill in fields? Why are key details on my profile able to change retrospectively and without me even being notified? A Turnitin profile should be true, accurate and represent the facts as they were at the time, when the person was on the course. It should not be listing changeable, random things, rendering the profile a nonsense version of events. 

I have been looking into what Turnitin means by an instructor and so am now even more baffled. As I understand it, an instructor should be someone who is marking your work, and is using Turnitin to improve their student feedback. But none of the instructors listed on my profile before or now had ever taken my tutorials or ever lectured to me for that module or supervised my dissertation. The current list of instructors are all admin names so surely should be listed as admin not instructors. Originally I assumed admin must have organised the uploading of my work. I presumed they were at liberty to do this because Turnitin assumes it was me (as stated in my email receipt) or a verified instructor/lecturer. Instructors (who would be lecturers marking my work that year) could have uploaded my work in order to mark it better. But now I notice no lecturer has been written down at all, so this clearly wasn't the case. 

There's a long list of other problems with my Turnitin profile, including:

• the wrong course title on my homepage: it should read BA Philosophy. Alongside this incorrect course title are the years (2012-13), which gives the impression that my course at Birkbeck College was only 1 year long. No, it was a 4 year part-time UG degree (3/4 of full time so only one year longer than the 3 year full time version).
• There are nonsense course module dates: Political Philosophy's end date on turnitin was 9th April 2013. This date is wrong on three counts. As can be seen in philosophy dept. admin emails, the upload deadline for during the year essays was April 1st 2013; the original upload deadline for the extended essays was April 22nd 2013; then the final deadline for uploading/submitting the extended essays coursework and dissertation was 20th May. The end date stated on turnitin for the Further History of Philosophy module was 8th November 2013 (despite the start date being entered as 18th October 2012) and the dissertation end date was entered as 3rd November 2013, with a start date of 1st May 2013! I'd finished all supervisions and had written the final draft to submit by end of March 2013! How random and bizarre are all these dates! Not to mention impractical for uploading. 
• no notes or discussions were ever filled in; 
• There are no grades (or comments) entered 
• There was an incomplete list of fields for the essays that would need to be submitted for Political Philosophy module (only the 1st essay instead of all 5 essays in addition to the coursework extended essay). So my uni designed the tabs on my profile such that it was impossible for me to upload any political philosophy essays, other than the first essay of the year. 
• My student name is the short version of my name (Liba) so doesn't match my degree transcript and certificate (Libuse). 

I don't know how the course modules came to be entered into my profile so I'm not sure why it's so messy. Now, it appears as though only my dissertation was uploaded by someone. Why didn't they upload all my work for me? Turnitin allows instructors to upload a student's work for them so my uni didn't have to make such a fuss about whether students had uploaded it themselves, especially when there were so many technical problems with uploads and email circulars about the technical hitches with Blackboard/Turnitin. How can students or past students have plagiarism checking reports generated by changeable, questionable names and then not even be able to see reports concerning their own work?! I think this is outrageous. Turnitin should never have invented a feature which means students' work (and thus their copyright, including their moral rights, and their property since the work belongs to them) can be used and potentially abused without their knowledge or consent and with no transparency. 

I have a right to know and control who is doing what with my work and my intellectual property! This is evidence my work was interfered with in the college to my detriment and reputation. 

Indeed, I have asked turnitin to look into this suspicious activity on my account, the misinformation and breach of security that an anonymous person and suspicious email gained access to my turnitin account. I have a record of the issues I raised with them and a turnitin case number. However, I am logging the turnitin problem elsewhere too (outside of both turnitin and Birkbeck College).

Below are photographs of what my Turnitin account looked like when I logged in. As you can see, there are all kinds of rubbish written on my turnitin account as well as completely blank fields. So, I am totally vindicated that I chose to email all my work instead of trusting a supposed plagiarism checker which purports to help students check their work, not be a system to try to catch out or trip up diligent students attempting to write and upload their work. 

Turnitin is allowed to function as they do on the understanding that they are providing a public good which catches perpetrators. This wrongly labels all students as the only potential perpetrators (ie. of plagiarism) and ignores the harms universities can commit against students through their institutional role of Content Controller on turnitin. However, my experience of turnitin has shown me that turnitin has the ability to enable perpetrators to abuse the system, as long as they are a university/institution. In my case, this has happened by allowing my university to use turnitin to victimise me, my reputation and my academic degree work!😠They're not even getting the basics right e.g.setting out the tabs.

I guess that's proof enough the system was fraught with errors and worse.  My university made it impossible for me to make use of turnitin, never mind gain better feedback from it or derive any enjoyment from it! Just as well I took the belt and braces approach - at least, by not relying on turnitin and emailing all my essays during the year and emailing my coursework (both extended essays as well as my dissertation, alongside the anti-plagiarism declaration statement, see my email below),  I have concrete evidence of what my work looked like and when and to whom it was submitted! 

I have hidden the ID numbers in these photos in case they should remain private. However, these photos still show the clear evidence of the disgraceful state in which my uni left my turnitin account. 

On the 29th May 2021, my turnitin homepage looked like this:

I took another photo of my homepage on the 11th June 2021 and it looked like this:

The final year history module had the following fields when I took this photo:

Of course all these fields, titles and everything is created, filled in and controlled by the university. So I have no idea why essay 5 has the shortest deadline, 11th March instead of 1st April. Admin emails stated the last upload date was April 1st for tutorial essays for that academic year. 

There are no similarity reports here because there are no uploads but someone has set it to blocked so I wouldn't see any reports had they been generated. 

Here I was given only one field for just the first political philosophy essay. And it was explained by admin in an email that you can't upload the essay such that it mismatches with the title of the field, otherwise it won't be submitted because it'll be filed under the wrong assignment. So this made it impossible for me to upload not only my 4 other essays, but also my extended essay. Uploading any of these to the field for essay numbered 1 would mean I'd have failed to submit that work. Nothing uploaded here by any instructors and so no similarity reports, although again, they were pre-blocked too so I wouldn't be able to read them.

And here's the section for my dissertation. Someone uploaded this for me, without my knowledge. At the time this photo was taken, I could view the pages of what was uploaded, there were no comments left using the comments tool beside it, but the report was disabled to ensure I couldn't access it:

All the discussion boards and grade book sections (which includes totals; averages; letter grades; and if any essays were late or absent) for each of the three modules are completely blank or have an automatic zero in them. 😠 

As the system stands, the uni should use turnitin from year one because it's the best year to learn and practise how it all works because the first year doesn't count in terms of grades. Not sure why not. If you're on the course you're surely capable of working at that level, aren't you? 🤔 Or don't use it at all for that year group going through (class of 2013)  because it distorts the student's academic record. It's important to see all years otherwise the uni can make up anything about the student's performance in the first three years. If a uni is going to use the turnitin system do so properly and respectfully and not generate misinformation or undermine security, privacy, data and copyright. 

And students need to be aware that the turnitin system is not all it should be!  

It was all very simple, Birkbeck had the accurate facts in their student database for my  entire degree, all they had to do was fill it in on turnitin as well. This is what my turnitin should have looked like. Here's my academic record I printed at the end of my degree, which is my official uni profile (I have only erased my personal details and IDs):

Update: I've just received (15th June 2021 10:54 am) an email from Turnitin in which they say they can't explain why Birkbeck have allowed themselves continuous access to this day and "why this access is in place" beyond my course end date June 30 2013. Clearly therefore it shouldn't be! 

So I demand that Birkbeck's turnitin access is terminated and all my data held by Birkbeck College erased.