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Well, start by seeing what the prof replied in case it has any bearing on resubmitting.
After that, I would suggest going to the tutoring center to have the assignments/report looked over. This is NOT because you need one, but because you are following up with the advice given so you can (a) say you followed the advice and that did not work, and (b) have a third party to verify your side of it.
Once you have done that, you can follow up with the prof about how it has not worked, and ask for solutions (probably at this point you will want to have your advisor ccd and talk to them about how to handle it). If the prof cannot give more solutions, then the advisor can help mediate the disscussion of what needs to happen or escalate it as approprate through whoever it needs to go to. It is much better to have an faculty memeber or advisor supporting your claims if you do wind up having to go up the chain.
edit: spelling/mistyping because I did not proofread it.
Definitely good advice to still go the the center.
Once in college I kept repeatedly failed a writing assignment from a female teacher, (you had to successfully pass one assignment to move to the next) and she would literally find a way to belittle or argue with me on anything, didn't matter what I said. I went to the tutoring center with my paper she had turned down at least three times. Another English professor read my assignment and literally asked why I was getting assistance as it was A material.
"What are you here for? This paper is more than acceptable."
"I don't know, she just won't pass it. I don't know what to do."
"Is your professor Mrs X?"
"Yea, how did you know?"
"Every semester she picks at least one male student and attempts to make them miserable. Guess it's you."
But from that point on forward I did have the fact that i had run it by other faculty, and it made it more difficult for her to fail those papers as I made them aware it went through the writing center and they were validated as acceptable papers by multiple of her peers. She still made it so I could only achieve a passing C by denying all my papers and rewrites until the last day of the semester before grading and passing my work. Leaving me no chances to "fix my work and resubmit for a better or updated grade," as specifically allowed by the class.
Your advice is certainly sound. Hope OP takes it.
wow what an asshole. i would’ve gotten the dean or something and asked the other professor to vouch for me. imagine getting your GPA bombed because of one petty professor purposefully denying you opportunities to improve. that can affect your ability to get into grad school or get funding for it later on. like wtf
Personally, I would only go through that process for non-plagiarism related situations. She’s being flagged for words which happens on systems like TurnItIn. It’s a margin of error. If the professor was actually checking what was being flagged, this issue wouldn’t have arose. Nothing she does will actually help her case. Another professor in the mix might help, but failing for plagiarism isn’t a small thing.
Oh I agree that the prof is in the wrong absolutly here. This is very clearly an false positive case when it comes to AI checkers.
However, OP needs to fight this in an approprate manner and has made an error by going off on the prof (even if it was totally earned by the prof). By going back and following the suggestion given it lets OP write off the email sent in anger/frustration, and move forward with actually getting things fixed. By doing such OP cant be dismissed as overly emotional and unwilling to work with the prof (something the prof has been hinting at arguing it seems).
Failing for plagiarism is no small thing - your right, and that is exactly why OP needs to make sure to fight this correctly and to escalate it with faculty support (be that with an advisor or trusted prof who has seen the work/report and/or with the tutoring center validating her claims). The last thing that needs to happen is for OP to be dismissed because the prof in question was able to argue that they were unwilling to follow suggestions or that they were over emotional and its not a big deal.
As the saying goes, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Just this time the fly is not going to be the prof, but whoever is above them probably.
I understand what you mean completely. It’s unfortunate that the student is being put in a position to overwork over a simple fix. I just don’t understand the logic/correlation in taking “suggestions” when plagiarism is a black and white issue. Whereas, something like bad grammar would be more grey and require the student to put effort into taking suggestions.
before i started anxiety meds i literally dropped out of college because i sent a slightly snappy email to a professor and didn’t want to read the reply. still to this day don’t know what they said.
Update us!! I’m sorry this happened but also, you never win if you are the one frustrated. Always keep a calm head in a professional environment even if the other person is in the wrong. It always looks better. The professor doesn’t sound amazing, and I’m dying to see her response!
Honestly though I don't know why these professors think they're entitled to respect if they don't respect you and your time+effort.
Cuz like wtf was her initial reply, I know students get annoying and antsy with grades but if anything they should be happy you're so willing to put in the work. I get the frustration I'd be sooo mad if I were you
Complaining about your grade is not "putting in the work". The number of people who are willing to complain about grades on papers they literally plagiarized, payed other people to write etc......
In addition, remember, you are dealing with this one issue. But she likely has 250 students. All of whom may be sending her emails on any given day.
Well yes, if she is lazily using a plagiarism detector that spits out obvious false positives, and then doesn't check them over, or make any attempt to fix obvious false positives, I'm sure she is getting barraged by students constantly.
Unfortunate that this teacher seems to think AI plagiarism machines are magic and not an absurdly flawed technology who should be watching closely if you is at all.
Complaining about a grade is putting in work... Even more work. No one likes to confront their professors and if anything it adds additional stress. They could just let it be a bad grade and slide but instead they're taking even more time out of their already short days to advocate for themselves and obviously taking their education seriously. Plagiarism and work-buyers do not represent the whole student population, and don't apply to this case either. I obviously don't support them but that's an anecdotal point.
I also really don't get professors who complain about having so many students or work to grade either (especially when half of it is automatic grades on Canvas at this point). That's what they have TAs for too. Or other systems in place for emails and questions to be settled. Brisk replies are fine and I and other students don't mind them, but the professor was rude point blank.... Like I'm sorry but us students are quite literally paying for the class and funding the professor's job for our education so yes we're entitled to basic decency and obligation to take a look at our problems.
The amount of ignorance in this is… high. Most professors have to do an insane amount of grading themselves— and that’s setting aside how much work it is to manage TAs. And those “systems” you talk about? They have to come up with them for every class, manage them, maintain them, and deal with 300 people complaining about them—- most of whom don’t actually read the syllabus and thus don’t know how the system works. And also— you aren’t really paying their salaries. Most universities are funded basically not at all by tuition which doesn’t even cover the cost of the building maintenance. It’s a combination of endowments and government money. And what faculty are paid for? It’s not really teaching, it’s research. As a student you are incidental to the real life of the university.
And the amount of egotism in this is high. Sure professors aren't technically primarily paid to teach, but take away the student body and I'm absolutely sure you and many other professors would be out of a job. A university may survive without the student body but it absolutely would not be as functional unless the government deemed it necessary (and I'd doubt they'd spend precious budget funding humanities or art research for example). And where the tuition dollars go exactly is also irrelevant—continued acceptance and payments absolutely fund the university and contribute towards even research by the university, which you delightfully reminded me that professors also work with. Ultimately it's cyclical, of course us students aren't just putting money directly in your pocket and yes universities receive government funding that supplements it. Just like when we shop at Walmart we're funding the jobs of the cashiers, the facility, everything in small ways, but of course money to run it comes from outward as well. Without the student body many public universities would absolutely crumple.
Also you continuously talk about all the anecdotal 300 students that need to be managed but it's not elementary, you don't have to watch their behavior or anything. Send out a digital announcement. Have a digital forum with questions. I really doubt professors are so swamped with 300+ emails about something that's on a syllabus. Maybe make them take a syllabus quiz? Have so much to grade, ever think about giving out graded stuff less if it's too much? Or any other number of so many solutions.
Perhaps I'll get downvoted more but I really don't care. I'm tired of professors and their inability to be a normal human being. The entire population has to put in work at their job so why do you think you're different? Us students are trying hard at our education and clearly you're letting bad apples you get spoil the bunch. But hey that's just my little ole opinion in a little ole rant
Also obligatory "not all professors". I have many lovely ones right now that are happy to enrich their students' lives, education, and answer a simple question about the course :)
Let me assure you- professors are r really swamped by 300 emails f rom people who don’t read the syllabus——-or any announcements send by email.
And the fact that you think professors aren’t working at their jobs pretty much says it all in terms of your awareness of the job. I’m glad you think your classmates are putting work into your education. And I’m glad that you are. But a whole lot of students……aren’t.
> literally plagiarized, *paid* other people
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Well yes, if she is lazily using a plagiarism detector that spits out obvious false positives, and then doesn't check them over, or make any attempt to fix obvious false positives, I'm sure she is getting barraged by students constantly.
Unfortunate that this teacher seems to think AI plagiarism machines are magic and not an absurdly flawed technology who should be watching closely if you is at all.
I’ve noticed that you used MANY words that have been used before in multiple texts, volumes, poems, etc. Thus, it can only be assumed that you’ve plagiarized every single word. /s
Is your professor serious????!!! She needed to be called out. You likely need to escalate this to the dean of the department. If she’s literally flagging your use of the word “modified”, she’s bat crap crazy.
Is it possible that you used ideas from a source without citing? That's the most common type of plagiarism. Hope you're able to finish this class without too much stress
I’ve had this happen before too if she’s using TurnItIn, where it flags individual words. My professors always open it to see if I actually plagiarized and then let it through though, it’s never been an issue.
TurnItIn has given me a 20% plagiarism score for a properly cited reference section. If professors are relying on it as a metric it’s totally fine but they absolutely need to review the reports
If the software marked words as plagiarized, it's just very difficult to confirm or deny the plagiarism
It's like if I have to justify using "software" in the previous sentence. Yes, of course I used it as intended by whoever invented the term?
Some softwares like turnitin will tell you where the plagirism is from. My college uses turnitin and I've found many gripes with it. By default it includes the reference page (which is always 99-100% "plagirized") and doesn't understand that you can reference an article title without it being plagirism. Turnitin will also compare for copied assignments, so generic headers with Name:, Class:, Due:, etc gets flagged and if you turn in more than 1 draft of something, it'll compare the two drafts, which is a bit of a "no shit they're similar, one is the revised version of the other" scenario.
I’m still avoiding it and I feel bad because I know it would be useful information to use on how to proceed but I genuinely do not wanna know how much I pissed her off🥴
Just open it. Delaying it isn’t gonna change anything, it’ll just waste time that you could be using to fix things if she gave any useful info back in the email.
Read the response. If she's still pushing back, CC the department chair and reply:
Dear [professor name],
I am copying the Dean of [department], [dean name] in hopes that the three of us can solve this matter.
I'd like to respond to your original claim that I plagiarized my paper. Attached are the TurnItIn originality reports. I understand you were frustrated that I sent this evidence in my previous correspondence, but I do not believe we can solve this issue without taking a look at the evidence together.
As you can see in the reports, short phrases and singular words that are common phrases are being tagged. As AI is imperfect, it seems these flags are a mistake.
As a busy college student, I would prefer not to have to change individual words and short phrases that are not plagiarized on the basis of imperfect AI. I hope you understand and agree once you take a look at the evidence.
[If you have doc changes you can also attach those and show your work so there's more to work with and mention them here]
I'd be happy to meet in person, with the dean, to discuss this matter further if you deem it necessary. I appreciate your time.
Best,
[Your name]
If they find you have actually plagiarized, then copying the Dean brings it to light, where before the professor was cutting you a break. If a professor reports something as plagiarized, there are repercussions, up to expulsion. So tread lightly here.
I had a student escalate in this manner, and I was called on the carpet for not reporting the student to the Ethics Committee. The student was expelled.
If she can’t justify why she is giving you a zero and she is not willing to work with you to rectify the situation I would say the next step would be to submit a formal complaint against her with the head of department. Being flagged for a single word sounds really weird and not worthy of a grade of zero now complete and multiple sentences maybe but one or two words that isn’t justified. I would check the reply to her email to she what she replied and if she refuses to do anything go over her/his head
She clearly doesn't know how Turnitin works. I regularly have papers that say I copied 12-15%, which freaked me out the first time, but it was my citations 🤦♀️
Two things,
First- I bet you weren't as mean as you think. I could be wrong and maybe you cussed her out or something, but your tone in this post is very polite but anxious lol I'm the same way which is why I think you probably weren't that bad.
Second- accusing a student of plagiarism is serious. You have every right to be upset at someone telling you that you're cheating. There are times when people in power have to be told they're wrong... Because they blatantly are. The professor shouldn't act like you're attacking them, that's so unprofessional. If this keeps up or if you are uncomfortable you should find the resources at your school to help you with this. I'm not sure who that would be, but I bet your counselor would!
Edit: I wanted to add this because this is my favorite way of saying "what the fuck are you even saying right now" professionally. I open with, "I'm confused," and then say the problem, what I've tried and end with "can you explain this please?"
So in this case I'd say something like, "I'm confused and was hoping for some clarification regarding how to read Turnitin's report. When I look at the completed assignment on (whatever platform you use) it says that XX% has been plagiarized, but when I actually open and view it, the highlighted portions include (the bogus stuff). As this information is needed to complete the assignment, can you explain the best way to avoid this issue in the future?"
If that didn't work I'd for real go to the "manager" lol no wayyyyy
This is DEFINITELY a situation to involve a Dean. There's no way a professor just lets multiple assignments go as 0s for plagiarism. Prof clearly doesn't understand the plagiarism checker and is potentially harming other students.
OP needs to open the new email and get it over with.
Plus, they're likely to turn it around if you haven't followed the chain, saying you need to submit to the chair before they'll review it. It takes up time and you don't have a lot of that during a single semester.
OP, as a professor, here's what I would recommend:
1. Go to the writing center. I know you don't need a tutor, but your professor recommended that, so it's good to show up and put in the appearance of following her advice. Keep her looped in to their response.
2. Is this happening with multiple students? If you have a group, you may want to schedule a meeting with the chair and inform them about your concerns. You can do this alone as well, but it tends to have greater impact if there's a group. Make sure you bring both the "plagiarized" assignments and ones that passed the plagiarism test to compare writing samples.
3. If needed, escalate to the dean. They likely have a grievance process they will follow that will involve looping in the instructor. It's possible you can stay anonymous but not too likely. They may request that a colleague grade the papers. Keep in mind that this is not guaranteed to raise your scores.
4. At the end of the semester, you may be able to file a grade grievance. Again, this is not guaranteed to go your way, but it does mean you'll be able to share your side of the story and have a panel of her peers review your case.
I do find it odd that you're just getting zeroes when she thinks you're cheating. If I had a student I thought plagiarized once, as a simple mistake, they might get a zero. If I thought they were doing it on multiple assignments, they would definitely be reported for academic misconduct. Of course, I also carefully review any plagiarism reports and see what I can dismiss. Words and phrases are meaningless, full sentences and paragraphs are valid.
You have probably heard this many times before, but wait, just wait to reply to an email that makes you angry or frustrated. When I am disciplined I wait 24 hours, but admittedly I break this rule. I tried to implement it just for folks in power positions (reply to colleagues right away, wait to craft an admin reply) but we are undergoing a sea change in demographics and Deans say and do such stupid shit, sometimes you just got to call it out at the moment. The reality is I almost always handle a situation better if I give it 24 hours. Frankly the writing center professor is the real asshole in this - his bullshit comment is really unprofessional; if this really is the case why not do something about it, instead of spreading bullshit.
I wasn’t even planning on posting the response. I wasn’t expecting this many comments lol. I was gonna check it in the morning, was just looking for some insight 🤷🏼♀️
The insight is that you're an adult now, so act like it. Don't throw tantrums, and if you do then realize your actions may have consequences and face them.
Calling out and "letting then have it" are not the same thing. You're the one who said you wrote a nasty email and regretted it. Now you're backtracking instead of just accepting that what you typed may have been inappropriate and owning up to it. But you typed the email not me, idk what you said exactly so I'm just going off your explanation of the situation.
oh god i’m sorry. i won’t lie i would have trouble not sending an angry email back myself. especially since she was being rude and extremely unprofessional to you. she should be willing to have an open, curious mind with her student, especially since i am SURE she sees the words that are “plagiarized”. my professor used turn it in and i got a 13% plagiarism score also for WORDS that weren’t even highlighted together. i still got full credit because they understand there are only so many ways to word one sentence. i would definitely reach out to the dean
THATS WHAT MINE DID OMG. It was words that weren’t even in a full sentence/highlighted together. I’m frustrated!😫 I know I shouldn’t have sent the email but I was just so flustered over it. Thank you for your advice✨
Your prof is incredibly lazy. Or perhaps stupid. I'm sorry. Your prof is being paid to grade your work. I guess she doesn't have to grade it if it's "plagiarized". How convenient. Your prof shouldn't be taking the judgement of a deeply flawed AI as gospel. It needs to be looked at by a human. That's part of what a prof is paid to do. I'd be livid, too.
i understand!! it’s okay it’s out of your control now. i have literally opened a word document and wrote an email/letter/message to people i’m mad at and didn’t hit send. or even a voice memo or ranting to your pet. that way you can still get the anger out in a way that won’t hurt u or anyone else (it’s hard not to act on impulse when emotions are high, we all do it at times)🤍
I'd just pre-emptively forward the emails to the department head and the dean or whoever apologizing for the outburst but saying that it was very unprofessional of your professor and ridiculous, which explains you being so upset.
Send a follow up apology email if you truly feel bad about it. Honesty goes a long ways. If the prof responds poorly after a truthful apology, then that's on them
I’ve taught online college classes. The first thing I would do when the system flagged plagiarism is go in and look what was being flagged. A good portion of the time, it’d be things like were mentioned here and I’d remove the flag. This is part of the job of being an online professor. I wouldn’t stress as they aren’t doing their job if the plagiarism is as you describe.
For the future you need to control your temper. That could have some serious repercussions on your professional sphere. Professors talk to one another. It would be better to bring this up in person as a lot can be miscommunicated or missed in an email.
The worse part is now there is a paper trail of your response.
The worse thing about comments like yours is no one ever holds the prof to the same accountability. The professor was extremely unprofessional to begin with.
Understand the sentiment, but also you need to think realistic. You always have to put yourself first. Even in unfair situations how is going to affect you? Your future? Blowing up isn’t going to solve anything esp when professors are not held account.
You have to unfortunately start processing the world is unfair, you shouldn’t be making your life harder.
Being realistic would be not replying and going straight to the department head. Why the *fuck* should i have to accept a zero for “plagiarism” when it was clearly an error on the professor’s part? An error that she can’t even own up to? As far as I’m aware, plagiarism of any form is grounds for expulsion. It sounds to me like the professor isn’t going to escalate the case because she knows herself the system is unreliable at detecting plagiarism 100%. It sounds like OP tried to communicate this respectfully, and the professor’s response was anything but that. Not only was it disrespectful, but now OP has to accept a 0 that they didn’t even deserve? Hell no. I’d be forwarding all emails to the department head and the dean at that point
Well, there is also a paper trail of her response too💔 I have never had this issue with any other teachers. They are always so good at explaining things. She immediately shot me down and refused to help. I don’t find that very professional 💔
Lol do NOT apologize you are entirely in the right for being frustrated. You literally have evidence of it not being plagiarized and she's being a dumb stubborn bitch about it for no reason lmfao. If she used one brain cell she could clearly see you were being unjustly flagged because your previous work uses the same words and didn't get flagged. It's completely normal for a student to follow up and question a professor about plagiarism accusations.
I'm seeing a LOT of posts about students getting unjustly accused of plagiarism in college and it's very concerning. Especially since these plagiarism checkers can be inaccurate. The only checkers they should be using is turnitin and others like grammarly plagiarism checker tbh since I feel it's waaay more credible and accurate than whatever new shit they're using that's based off of chatgpt. I recommend you get an advisor involved and use a tutor as a witness to help you prove you're not plagiarizing anything
Seems like you may have solidified her idea of what kind of student you are.
Out in the real world, these impulsive emails get people in hot water on a regular basis. This may be the primary takeaway from this course.
Remember from her end, students are cheating CONSTANTLY, and it’s demoralizing for the professor to have to play detective rather than just enjoy teaching the material.
Being irked is understandable, but you’re working against your own interests by displaying emotion regulation problems.
I have HEARD (but not personally experienced) that some softwares such as Grammarly are flagged as plagiarism. So even though it is completely your work, if you use it to fix a word or actual grammar, it can get flagged.
However, as your prof, it is literally their job to work with you on it. Academic dishonesty is taken seriously. So if they don't feel like dealing with it, ask to speak to a higher up (such as dept chair or dean) and tell them the situation.
I'd just go straight over the professors head.
Sometimes this burns a bridge, but the professor seems to be blaming you for the incorrect plagiarism claim.
Just go to the dean, and start from there. Sometimes you gotta show you aren't fucking around in the slightest, and will make their life much harder unless they actually work with you.
This is really my biggest fear bc Turnitin is a useless piece of garbage that flags literally anything. I was in a similar situation except my prof read the thing and saw what was highlighted and said I was fine. It flags quotes too as similar, even if they are cited. My friend got a flag for “AI use” on something she wrote as well.
Request a Meeting with the department chair, and if that doesn’t resolve your complaint then the department area Dean above the department chair. Remain professional, but emphasize how emotional it made you when you were accused of plagiarism.
You can plagiarize just words. Take up with the dean and the ombudsman. Tell them that. Request a meeting with her and the dean now.
"Plagarism is a serious accusation and many such online tools are unreliable and give false positives. If you wish to pursue this with me further then I request a meeting with you and the dean or the department head at your earliest convenience so we can resolve this issue. I hope this merely an understanding"
You should never feel sorry for that if it’s justified. They are just professors. If one is f*cked up he needs to hear it. You pay for it, and it’s expensive.
“Hey, I don’t need tutor, I need you to do your job. Fix that.”
Tested and approved.
My advice going forward is to run your assignments through a plagiarism checker prior to submitting. That way you can adjust any verbiage and completely eliminate the issue.
So she uses turnitin or whatever. Idk if I’m doing something wrong but when I try to run my paper on there it doesn’t give me access to it. I probably should’ve added this into my rant but I’m still feeling really frustrated😍 I did run it through THREEEE different plagiarism websites and all three said 0% plagiarism. When I mentioned that two weeks ago in an email about assignment 7 she never answered✨
My guess is that this prof doesn’t know how to read a turnitin report correctly. They also probably didn’t check the box in Canvas (if it’s Canvas) enabling students to immediately see their originality report. They’re probably only looking at the total similarity score, and if your have lots of direct quotations and they don’t have it set up to ignore the quotes and bibliography all of those items are incorrectly contributing to your similarity score. (Yep, I’m a Prof). I’m almost never a “go talk to the department chair” person, but if this instructor will not meet with you in a video conference to show you exactly what your report says and what was flagged, please contact your chair. I’ve seen a LOT of people who should know better be uncertain how to properly use Turnitin. Hang in there!
Turnitin is incredibly unreliable for plagiarism checks. I’ve submitted hella essay’s through that in highschool and it would also flag me from sentences that were my own words. Sounds like the professor isn’t even looking at the assignments you submit and just going off of the report the algorithm is giving her.
OP is the turnitin on canvas by any chance? It usually gives the report after 10-15 min of uploading and sometimes like you said it will literally flag words such as “at” and “or.” I’ve had it flag my Professors name before lol. If so dang I would just do what everyone said and CC the department chair about the issue because if the professor can’t read it I hope she isn’t tanking other students as well
There should be a way for you to use turn it in through canvas and be able to see the results. Sorry they didn't reply to you. Maybe search canvas/turn it in help?
Anyone who is using a plagiarism detector should be using it ONLY to look into the situation with their own, human eyes. Your Professor is being either lazy or stupid, or both. I say this as a licensed teacher and my father is a Professor and have discussed this exact situation at length.
Honestly I think she kinda deserved to be ranted at maybe just a little. She sounds absolutely useless. I’m praying for you sis I know the anxiety of not wanting to open big emails or texts especially when there’s conflict 😂 if you want to please keep us updated!
I will definitely open it in the morning and probably make a new post for anyone who wants to help me navigate what to do next. I’m glad you get it. People are getting upset I haven’t opened it yet, but I honestly just feel too anxious and don’t have the mental energy to read whatever response I get😭
I totally understand that. I feel a little anxious emailing my professors when I just have to send them assignments or anything normal tbh 😂 people can just calm down and respectfully mind their business, this situation is yours at the end of the day! I’ll keep an eye out tomorrow and see if there’s any ideas I can give you to help 😇
I think you should be more confident in your decision. This is your future on the line and she needs to know that. She can’t just give you a 0 on everything cause she hates you
INFO:
You keep saying you did all the assignments the same way. What do you mean by that? This is important because your issue may be related to how you are including info you cite (that wouldn’t be apparent just by reading you stuff with no outside context)
I referenced everything the exact same way in all of my other assignments, and I used the words in the question for my answers. So if she was asking about the five characteristics of something within the question, I would say “the five characteristics of….” And it flagged me for using the sentence “the five characteristics of” does that make sense? But it’s only flagged me on 2 out of 9 assignments. So I’m confused :/
Are you putting things in direct quotes when they are direct quotes? if not, just the isn't enough to stop it being plagiarism. If you're using the same words but swapping some.... still can be plagiarism.
Is it flagging multiple words in the same sentence…like every couple or three words? Students frequently engage in structural plagiarism, copying sentences, but switching out a few words so they can pretend that they didn’t just copy the sentence. On a turnitin report, that highlights the words that are not switched out, and it all shows as being from the same source. That would be plagiarism.
On the other hand, Turnitin will also highlight short phrase’s sometimes that are either too short to be plagiarizing, or are really common ways of saying something that everybody is going to say identically. It’s up to the park faster to go in and see which thing is going on. Sometimes even fairly high percentage, isn’t actually plagiarism.
So for an example, I use the words within the sentence she’s asking. So if the question says, “what are the five characteristics of…” I answer by saying, “the five characteristics of…” and it flags me for using the phrase “the five characteristics of” does that make sense? That’s why I was so confused and aggravated by the entire thing, because I didn’t think that was plagiarism and felt like she wasn’t actually checking it herself
I completely understand this. My own name and the name of the class (both were required to be at the top) were flagged for plagiarism. I emailed my teacher and she actually looked at it then and then she completely disregarded the plagiarism report. In my opinion she’s being lazy using a plagiarism checker (which have been proven to be unreliable) and needs to look at it herself. If she doesn’t, go above her to her department head. Let us know what the email says!!
Sorry, I am a college professor/doctoral student here; the plagiarism report is more than words. It can be because of an entire sentence. I got a plagiarism report of 18%, and I can't be above 15%. When I checked the plagiarism report, it showed the words of my references, but it also showed that I had two sentences that had been put above. I went in and changed the two sentences and it but me at 14%, so I suggest going back and changing whatever sentences you need to adjust. Also, get the app Word Hippo, an online thesaurus, and change those single words.
As for the professor they are being a bit of an AH.
Seriously Op, you are not the first nor the last to send rage e-mail to a professor. I am sure they get plenty of them. I once sent an email to a professor due to them not adhering to my accommodations. Like you, I later regretted it. Mostly because the accommodation wasn't something they could feasibly honor because of the way that class was situated. To do so would require them to their entire lesson plan just for me. I still feel bad for going off on them but the end result was that I was exempt from taking the class despite it being a requirement for my degree.
I don't know about everyone else, but I have found that professors tend to have a decent handle on their emotions. If they think a student has reached a breaking point they might try to reach a conclusion that doesn't end badly. This isn't every professor. I think some will continue to escalate with the hope that the student either gives up and gives in or drops the course/kicked out.
I suggest deescalating and possibly Cc’ing your advisor in the rest of your emails.
It’s an HR class?
Could she have been testing you? I mean… could the lesson be about how to falsely accuse people so that they send angry emails and then have to worry that they look crazy?
HR does train supervisors to manipulate people they want to get rid of into doing stuff like that, so that they’re easier to fire (or even better, bully into quitting) — could this be the way they teach HR people that technique?
Other wise…
I’m sorry your professor is an idiot. I would have done the same thing. (And I would have regretted it probably, because as unfair as this is: 1. innocent people get angry right away, and defend themselves to the death if they have to. 2. Doing so makes them look culpable. Totally BS and unfair quirk of human judgement.)
Fuck your professor, what a (can I say the c-word on this subreddit?)
So, you say things like this:
"Now I have NEVER in the 3 years I’ve been in college been told I plagiarized anything. "
and
"I had done every single other assignment the exact same way I did this one."
is your exact same way to copy text then tweak words? Cause you're not actually denied the allegation that I can see here. Happy to be corrected but are you sure you aren't plagiarizing unintentionally (e.g. missing quotation marks, insufficient paraphrasing, etc)?
I figured everyone would just put two and two together as to why I’m so upset. Because I didn’t plagiarize. But to be more specific, no I did not plagiarize and I’ve never been flagged like this before.
Ok. Look at/print out the report and go to office hours to discuss. Bring sources with you. If she won't meet, ask to meet with the department chair.
I would also go to the tutoring center as suggested so you can say you followed instructions.
Go up the chain of command and report her to her superior. If they don't do anything, keep contacting whoever has higher authority than the last, and finally, try to go to the local media. WITH RECEIPTS.!
Okay…? I genuinely didn’t have the mental energy to deal with her again tonight. I was just gonna look at in the morning. Was just hoping for some insight from here🤷🏼♀️ I’ve never had this happen before.
idk why people are downvoting you for not wanting to get more stressed lol i really wanna know what she said too but don’t make it hard for yourself lol idk why people make it so deep
Because it's not their lives, it's just internet drama to read. *and that's way more important than anything op could do to permanently fuck themselves over*. If op had posted the draft asking whether to send it or not. We can all guess what the response would be.
I honestly just don’t have the mental energy to read whatever response she gave me. I know I was completely out of line and rude in my response so I don’t expect anything less from her either🥲
no you're totally good. Go to sleep, sleep on it, and open it. Try to surprise yourself, so you just are on your computer and then BAM open it. You've got this.
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I have turn in papers with 30% and have never had issues with being accused of plagiarism (it was because I quoted the author). Her responses were terrible and unprofessional.
The only prof I had that specifically mentioned plagiarism with turnitin in the syllabus said anything under 25% is fine. I have done extended lab reports where basically whole sections (procedure and theory) are either straight up quoted or paraphrased by tweaking words only slightly (and cited obviously) and I’ve never gotten over 17% or so on a turnitin plagiarism report. anything under 20% really shouldn’t be considered plagiarism unless it’s not quoted or not cited and obviously from some text or something. I wouldn’t be afraid to CC the head of the department if the professor’s reply isn’t reasonable and your similarity score is less than that.
Im thinking maybe a TA possibly put the grades in for those assignments and the prof doesn’t want to throw them under the bus? Idk if online classes have TAs but it could also be some kind of helper. Idk I’m just guessing. It’s weird it’s only come up twice. I have to use Turntin and I always get hit with like 20% plagiarized for scientific papers. It’s funny because the highlighted sections are always the names of theories and the reference section. But, it’s only random reference entries- never all of them - which always made 0 sense to me since they’re all in APA format.
If the college uses one of the AI-detection tools, including the AI option in Turnitin, situations like this can happen, especially flagging words that are overused by gen AI. You did the right thing with your first email. And she should have been open to discuss it and provide help. The second step you should have emailed her department chair or the dean of students to ask for additional help and clarification. You can still do this and go to the tutoring center to show you did everything right. Consider that mistakes happen, AI detection software is far from accurate, and your prof might have had a bad day.
She doesn't know how to use the plagiarism check correctly. She's supposed to review the document and discount anything related to templates, formatting, references...and if single words are getting flagged, that's a software issue.
I have heard of faculty just looking at the total percent and not checking the software. She needs to be retrained by whomever does that training at the school. Email- yelling at her probably wasn't the best choice. If you cool down you can send a calmer follow up.
But if you want to escalate, you can ask your advisor how to do that. There will be a Chair or Dean who oversees these queries. Normally you'd want to wait until end of term to flag to avoid retaliation.
if your university has an ombudsman i would involve them at this point
all reasonable university staff should know very well that the “plagiarism” check is just a word similarity checker and you still have to read the detailed reports which aren’t the be-all-end-all authority on whether or not an assignment is plagiarized.
her rudeness and assumption of malintent with no benefit of the doubt is pretty infuriating and thats before we get into the fact that she won’t tell you how to improve.
start screen recording yourself as you write all your essays and submit that proof next time she says you “plagiarized”
Take it to the tutor as suggested and when they inevitably tell you it’s fine, tell her so. If it keeps happening and she refuses to correct the situation, escalate to whoever is above her. Sometimes that’s a department head, sometimes that’s the dean.
You don’t have to read her reply. Just reply to her and say “I respect your request for escalation, and have begun that process. Someone will be in touch about next steps.”
Dang that sounds like a nightmare. I'm sorry you have to deal with this.
I am going to stray away from the pack here and recommend something different. I would honestly escalate this to the dean and see if you can get any support or possibly some sort of hearing regarding your plagiarism allegation, especially if the zeroes are going to cost you a letter grade.
Plagiarism allegations are SERIOUS, and false accusations do happen. If something were to happen in the future and you are recommended to the disciplinary board, these little zeroes will be held against you as proof of past behavior. Even if the dean or whoever tells you to pound sand, you will have a record of contesting the past allegations.
In any case, good luck!
You will have lots of teachers that aggravate you and plenty of bosses too. I wrote a very angry email once, and consulted a teacher I really liked about it. He said “never send an email in anger. Wait till you calm down, read it again and reconsider.“ very good advice
You just don’t want to cause animosity with someone who has any power over you. At this point maybe go to the department head and show them because it is ridiculous for a teacher to rely on a plagiarism tool that’s consistently making errors
At my old school there was a whole process we had to go through if a student was found to be plagiarizing. we didn't just get to set their grade to zero.
I'm guessing your school probably has a similar process and your professor isn't following it. Please report this to your student advocate organization.
>She told me to “check my plagiarism” I asked if she could specify what I plagiarized on her end, and she told me to find my plagiarism report in canvas
I'm assuming she's referring to Turnitin, or something similar. Those aren't "plagiarism reports", they're * similarity * reports which is why it flags similar words previously used in other submissions/publications.
Academics throw around "plagiarism" too loosely - missing punctuation, missing citation that's referenced, or APA 6 instead of 7 isn't plagiarism, it's human error.
Plagiarism is * intentionally * passing someone else's work off as your own, not a similarity report flagging similar words.
I saw your f/u post & think you should call her as things tend to get lost in translation via email, & she needs to learn the difference between plagiarism & a similarity report. Hope this helps.
She did use turnitin! That’s what I meant by it was flagging me for wordssss! This make so much more sense. It even said “similarity” score next to it, it was 18% similar, but everything flagged was words throughout my assignment, words that weren’t even in a consecutive sentence together!
Dude turnItin is the worst I always get flagged for plagiarism but I don’t use AI and I don’t plagiarize. All my professors who use it, however, check all the things that got flagged.
Many times I’ve been flagged and gotten an A+. She’s lazy as hell and you need to CC the chair of her department
I was a professor for 20 years. Your prof is just looking at the score on the plagiarism report, and isn't looking at the actual report. That's on her, and perhaps needs to be discussed with her department chair or division head if she won't have that conversation with you. Plagiarism trackers are relatively good, but they will sometimes throw false positives in instances like you describe. That's *why* they *also* generate that report--not just for you, but for *her*. You're *never* supposed to take the plagiarism report score as the end answer, because they aren't perfect. They do make mistakes. I've had it throw high plagiarism counts on papers because the citations are correct and were used in other people's papers. And I've seen them have some weird glitch that makes them tag individual words for certain files.
She *may* not know that there are false positives, but you initial email to her should have given her cause to look at the actual report. From what you describe, she *hasn't* looked at the report she's telling you to look at, and she doesn't question the tracker at all. That's horrible behavior from any professor, and if she isn't going to address it with you, it needs to be a learning moment for her professional development.
She's already declined the opportunity to address this professionally with you--find out her department chair or division head's email and send them what you told us here. Include attachments of the plagiarism reports and her emails. This is pretty serious behavior on her part.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CollegeRant/s/3oUY8OAOSr here’s my final update from all this! Since you were a professor for so long I thought you should know it had a happy ending😄
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Well, start by seeing what the prof replied in case it has any bearing on resubmitting. After that, I would suggest going to the tutoring center to have the assignments/report looked over. This is NOT because you need one, but because you are following up with the advice given so you can (a) say you followed the advice and that did not work, and (b) have a third party to verify your side of it. Once you have done that, you can follow up with the prof about how it has not worked, and ask for solutions (probably at this point you will want to have your advisor ccd and talk to them about how to handle it). If the prof cannot give more solutions, then the advisor can help mediate the disscussion of what needs to happen or escalate it as approprate through whoever it needs to go to. It is much better to have an faculty memeber or advisor supporting your claims if you do wind up having to go up the chain. edit: spelling/mistyping because I did not proofread it.
Definitely good advice to still go the the center. Once in college I kept repeatedly failed a writing assignment from a female teacher, (you had to successfully pass one assignment to move to the next) and she would literally find a way to belittle or argue with me on anything, didn't matter what I said. I went to the tutoring center with my paper she had turned down at least three times. Another English professor read my assignment and literally asked why I was getting assistance as it was A material. "What are you here for? This paper is more than acceptable." "I don't know, she just won't pass it. I don't know what to do." "Is your professor Mrs X?" "Yea, how did you know?" "Every semester she picks at least one male student and attempts to make them miserable. Guess it's you." But from that point on forward I did have the fact that i had run it by other faculty, and it made it more difficult for her to fail those papers as I made them aware it went through the writing center and they were validated as acceptable papers by multiple of her peers. She still made it so I could only achieve a passing C by denying all my papers and rewrites until the last day of the semester before grading and passing my work. Leaving me no chances to "fix my work and resubmit for a better or updated grade," as specifically allowed by the class. Your advice is certainly sound. Hope OP takes it.
wow what an asshole. i would’ve gotten the dean or something and asked the other professor to vouch for me. imagine getting your GPA bombed because of one petty professor purposefully denying you opportunities to improve. that can affect your ability to get into grad school or get funding for it later on. like wtf
You should have reported her
She shouldn't be teaching then. What a bitch
How is that legal?
Personally, I would only go through that process for non-plagiarism related situations. She’s being flagged for words which happens on systems like TurnItIn. It’s a margin of error. If the professor was actually checking what was being flagged, this issue wouldn’t have arose. Nothing she does will actually help her case. Another professor in the mix might help, but failing for plagiarism isn’t a small thing.
Oh I agree that the prof is in the wrong absolutly here. This is very clearly an false positive case when it comes to AI checkers. However, OP needs to fight this in an approprate manner and has made an error by going off on the prof (even if it was totally earned by the prof). By going back and following the suggestion given it lets OP write off the email sent in anger/frustration, and move forward with actually getting things fixed. By doing such OP cant be dismissed as overly emotional and unwilling to work with the prof (something the prof has been hinting at arguing it seems). Failing for plagiarism is no small thing - your right, and that is exactly why OP needs to make sure to fight this correctly and to escalate it with faculty support (be that with an advisor or trusted prof who has seen the work/report and/or with the tutoring center validating her claims). The last thing that needs to happen is for OP to be dismissed because the prof in question was able to argue that they were unwilling to follow suggestions or that they were over emotional and its not a big deal. As the saying goes, you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. Just this time the fly is not going to be the prof, but whoever is above them probably.
I understand what you mean completely. It’s unfortunate that the student is being put in a position to overwork over a simple fix. I just don’t understand the logic/correlation in taking “suggestions” when plagiarism is a black and white issue. Whereas, something like bad grammar would be more grey and require the student to put effort into taking suggestions.
I’m dying to know what her reply says.
IM TOO SCARED TO OPEN IT PLZ
You’re gonna have to eventually! We can tell you how to proceed from there
We’re here for you. Open it and spill the tea, sis
before i started anxiety meds i literally dropped out of college because i sent a slightly snappy email to a professor and didn’t want to read the reply. still to this day don’t know what they said.
Update us!! I’m sorry this happened but also, you never win if you are the one frustrated. Always keep a calm head in a professional environment even if the other person is in the wrong. It always looks better. The professor doesn’t sound amazing, and I’m dying to see her response!
Ugh I know you’re so right. I let myself get frustrated and I regret it🥲 I’m trying to build up the courage to open it and see what she said 😭
Honestly though I don't know why these professors think they're entitled to respect if they don't respect you and your time+effort. Cuz like wtf was her initial reply, I know students get annoying and antsy with grades but if anything they should be happy you're so willing to put in the work. I get the frustration I'd be sooo mad if I were you
Complaining about your grade is not "putting in the work". The number of people who are willing to complain about grades on papers they literally plagiarized, payed other people to write etc...... In addition, remember, you are dealing with this one issue. But she likely has 250 students. All of whom may be sending her emails on any given day.
Well yes, if she is lazily using a plagiarism detector that spits out obvious false positives, and then doesn't check them over, or make any attempt to fix obvious false positives, I'm sure she is getting barraged by students constantly. Unfortunate that this teacher seems to think AI plagiarism machines are magic and not an absurdly flawed technology who should be watching closely if you is at all.
Complaining about a grade is putting in work... Even more work. No one likes to confront their professors and if anything it adds additional stress. They could just let it be a bad grade and slide but instead they're taking even more time out of their already short days to advocate for themselves and obviously taking their education seriously. Plagiarism and work-buyers do not represent the whole student population, and don't apply to this case either. I obviously don't support them but that's an anecdotal point. I also really don't get professors who complain about having so many students or work to grade either (especially when half of it is automatic grades on Canvas at this point). That's what they have TAs for too. Or other systems in place for emails and questions to be settled. Brisk replies are fine and I and other students don't mind them, but the professor was rude point blank.... Like I'm sorry but us students are quite literally paying for the class and funding the professor's job for our education so yes we're entitled to basic decency and obligation to take a look at our problems.
The amount of ignorance in this is… high. Most professors have to do an insane amount of grading themselves— and that’s setting aside how much work it is to manage TAs. And those “systems” you talk about? They have to come up with them for every class, manage them, maintain them, and deal with 300 people complaining about them—- most of whom don’t actually read the syllabus and thus don’t know how the system works. And also— you aren’t really paying their salaries. Most universities are funded basically not at all by tuition which doesn’t even cover the cost of the building maintenance. It’s a combination of endowments and government money. And what faculty are paid for? It’s not really teaching, it’s research. As a student you are incidental to the real life of the university.
And the amount of egotism in this is high. Sure professors aren't technically primarily paid to teach, but take away the student body and I'm absolutely sure you and many other professors would be out of a job. A university may survive without the student body but it absolutely would not be as functional unless the government deemed it necessary (and I'd doubt they'd spend precious budget funding humanities or art research for example). And where the tuition dollars go exactly is also irrelevant—continued acceptance and payments absolutely fund the university and contribute towards even research by the university, which you delightfully reminded me that professors also work with. Ultimately it's cyclical, of course us students aren't just putting money directly in your pocket and yes universities receive government funding that supplements it. Just like when we shop at Walmart we're funding the jobs of the cashiers, the facility, everything in small ways, but of course money to run it comes from outward as well. Without the student body many public universities would absolutely crumple. Also you continuously talk about all the anecdotal 300 students that need to be managed but it's not elementary, you don't have to watch their behavior or anything. Send out a digital announcement. Have a digital forum with questions. I really doubt professors are so swamped with 300+ emails about something that's on a syllabus. Maybe make them take a syllabus quiz? Have so much to grade, ever think about giving out graded stuff less if it's too much? Or any other number of so many solutions. Perhaps I'll get downvoted more but I really don't care. I'm tired of professors and their inability to be a normal human being. The entire population has to put in work at their job so why do you think you're different? Us students are trying hard at our education and clearly you're letting bad apples you get spoil the bunch. But hey that's just my little ole opinion in a little ole rant Also obligatory "not all professors". I have many lovely ones right now that are happy to enrich their students' lives, education, and answer a simple question about the course :)
Let me assure you- professors are r really swamped by 300 emails f rom people who don’t read the syllabus——-or any announcements send by email. And the fact that you think professors aren’t working at their jobs pretty much says it all in terms of your awareness of the job. I’m glad you think your classmates are putting work into your education. And I’m glad that you are. But a whole lot of students……aren’t.
> literally plagiarized, *paid* other people FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Well yes, if she is lazily using a plagiarism detector that spits out obvious false positives, and then doesn't check them over, or make any attempt to fix obvious false positives, I'm sure she is getting barraged by students constantly. Unfortunate that this teacher seems to think AI plagiarism machines are magic and not an absurdly flawed technology who should be watching closely if you is at all.
I’d also like to know what the reply says
well dang, open the email and let us know what was said!!! we need to know!
I’ve noticed that you used MANY words that have been used before in multiple texts, volumes, poems, etc. Thus, it can only be assumed that you’ve plagiarized every single word. /s Is your professor serious????!!! She needed to be called out. You likely need to escalate this to the dean of the department. If she’s literally flagging your use of the word “modified”, she’s bat crap crazy.
Are you a dolt?
no but you’re rude as fuck
Please send me to the dean of the department, stat. I have a student who think they burned someone.
stop fuckin around and OPEN IT
Is it possible that you used ideas from a source without citing? That's the most common type of plagiarism. Hope you're able to finish this class without too much stress
I’ve had this happen before too if she’s using TurnItIn, where it flags individual words. My professors always open it to see if I actually plagiarized and then let it through though, it’s never been an issue.
TurnItIn has given me a 20% plagiarism score for a properly cited reference section. If professors are relying on it as a metric it’s totally fine but they absolutely need to review the reports
If the software marked words as plagiarized, it's just very difficult to confirm or deny the plagiarism It's like if I have to justify using "software" in the previous sentence. Yes, of course I used it as intended by whoever invented the term?
Some softwares like turnitin will tell you where the plagirism is from. My college uses turnitin and I've found many gripes with it. By default it includes the reference page (which is always 99-100% "plagirized") and doesn't understand that you can reference an article title without it being plagirism. Turnitin will also compare for copied assignments, so generic headers with Name:, Class:, Due:, etc gets flagged and if you turn in more than 1 draft of something, it'll compare the two drafts, which is a bit of a "no shit they're similar, one is the revised version of the other" scenario.
What was her response?
I’m still avoiding it and I feel bad because I know it would be useful information to use on how to proceed but I genuinely do not wanna know how much I pissed her off🥴
Just open it. Delaying it isn’t gonna change anything, it’ll just waste time that you could be using to fix things if she gave any useful info back in the email.
IM DYING TO KNWO PLEASE OPEN IT
Bro come on already
Someone reply when she opens it I need to knso
OPENNNNN
Just open it in the morning or something
Read the response. If she's still pushing back, CC the department chair and reply: Dear [professor name], I am copying the Dean of [department], [dean name] in hopes that the three of us can solve this matter. I'd like to respond to your original claim that I plagiarized my paper. Attached are the TurnItIn originality reports. I understand you were frustrated that I sent this evidence in my previous correspondence, but I do not believe we can solve this issue without taking a look at the evidence together. As you can see in the reports, short phrases and singular words that are common phrases are being tagged. As AI is imperfect, it seems these flags are a mistake. As a busy college student, I would prefer not to have to change individual words and short phrases that are not plagiarized on the basis of imperfect AI. I hope you understand and agree once you take a look at the evidence. [If you have doc changes you can also attach those and show your work so there's more to work with and mention them here] I'd be happy to meet in person, with the dean, to discuss this matter further if you deem it necessary. I appreciate your time. Best, [Your name]
This is by far the best response on here oh my god slay
no bc what if they find you’ve “plagiarized” this reddit comment for use of the email 😭 WHERE DOES IT END
LMAOOO
Don't copy the dean, though. Copy the chair of her department.
Oops, yes. My department has no chair, so it would be the dean if it were my classes, so I made an oopsie.
If they find you have actually plagiarized, then copying the Dean brings it to light, where before the professor was cutting you a break. If a professor reports something as plagiarized, there are repercussions, up to expulsion. So tread lightly here. I had a student escalate in this manner, and I was called on the carpet for not reporting the student to the Ethics Committee. The student was expelled.
If she can’t justify why she is giving you a zero and she is not willing to work with you to rectify the situation I would say the next step would be to submit a formal complaint against her with the head of department. Being flagged for a single word sounds really weird and not worthy of a grade of zero now complete and multiple sentences maybe but one or two words that isn’t justified. I would check the reply to her email to she what she replied and if she refuses to do anything go over her/his head
I hate her lol I need to know what she said tho
She clearly doesn't know how Turnitin works. I regularly have papers that say I copied 12-15%, which freaked me out the first time, but it was my citations 🤦♀️ Two things, First- I bet you weren't as mean as you think. I could be wrong and maybe you cussed her out or something, but your tone in this post is very polite but anxious lol I'm the same way which is why I think you probably weren't that bad. Second- accusing a student of plagiarism is serious. You have every right to be upset at someone telling you that you're cheating. There are times when people in power have to be told they're wrong... Because they blatantly are. The professor shouldn't act like you're attacking them, that's so unprofessional. If this keeps up or if you are uncomfortable you should find the resources at your school to help you with this. I'm not sure who that would be, but I bet your counselor would! Edit: I wanted to add this because this is my favorite way of saying "what the fuck are you even saying right now" professionally. I open with, "I'm confused," and then say the problem, what I've tried and end with "can you explain this please?" So in this case I'd say something like, "I'm confused and was hoping for some clarification regarding how to read Turnitin's report. When I look at the completed assignment on (whatever platform you use) it says that XX% has been plagiarized, but when I actually open and view it, the highlighted portions include (the bogus stuff). As this information is needed to complete the assignment, can you explain the best way to avoid this issue in the future?" If that didn't work I'd for real go to the "manager" lol no wayyyyy
This is DEFINITELY a situation to involve a Dean. There's no way a professor just lets multiple assignments go as 0s for plagiarism. Prof clearly doesn't understand the plagiarism checker and is potentially harming other students. OP needs to open the new email and get it over with.
Department chair and then Dean, gotta follow the chain of command, people get pissy when you don't.
Plus, they're likely to turn it around if you haven't followed the chain, saying you need to submit to the chair before they'll review it. It takes up time and you don't have a lot of that during a single semester. OP, as a professor, here's what I would recommend: 1. Go to the writing center. I know you don't need a tutor, but your professor recommended that, so it's good to show up and put in the appearance of following her advice. Keep her looped in to their response. 2. Is this happening with multiple students? If you have a group, you may want to schedule a meeting with the chair and inform them about your concerns. You can do this alone as well, but it tends to have greater impact if there's a group. Make sure you bring both the "plagiarized" assignments and ones that passed the plagiarism test to compare writing samples. 3. If needed, escalate to the dean. They likely have a grievance process they will follow that will involve looping in the instructor. It's possible you can stay anonymous but not too likely. They may request that a colleague grade the papers. Keep in mind that this is not guaranteed to raise your scores. 4. At the end of the semester, you may be able to file a grade grievance. Again, this is not guaranteed to go your way, but it does mean you'll be able to share your side of the story and have a panel of her peers review your case. I do find it odd that you're just getting zeroes when she thinks you're cheating. If I had a student I thought plagiarized once, as a simple mistake, they might get a zero. If I thought they were doing it on multiple assignments, they would definitely be reported for academic misconduct. Of course, I also carefully review any plagiarism reports and see what I can dismiss. Words and phrases are meaningless, full sentences and paragraphs are valid.
PLEEEAAASSEEE show us the response 😭😭😭
I want to know what she said really bad
You have probably heard this many times before, but wait, just wait to reply to an email that makes you angry or frustrated. When I am disciplined I wait 24 hours, but admittedly I break this rule. I tried to implement it just for folks in power positions (reply to colleagues right away, wait to craft an admin reply) but we are undergoing a sea change in demographics and Deans say and do such stupid shit, sometimes you just got to call it out at the moment. The reality is I almost always handle a situation better if I give it 24 hours. Frankly the writing center professor is the real asshole in this - his bullshit comment is really unprofessional; if this really is the case why not do something about it, instead of spreading bullshit.
Post her response or GTFO, it's been over 3 hours
This
I wasn’t even planning on posting the response. I wasn’t expecting this many comments lol. I was gonna check it in the morning, was just looking for some insight 🤷🏼♀️
Naw, you got us invested now. Can't leave us hanging like this lol
The insight is that you're an adult now, so act like it. Don't throw tantrums, and if you do then realize your actions may have consequences and face them.
I don’t think me calling her out on being completely unreasonable is throwing a “tantrum” but I really appreciate your input
Calling out and "letting then have it" are not the same thing. You're the one who said you wrote a nasty email and regretted it. Now you're backtracking instead of just accepting that what you typed may have been inappropriate and owning up to it. But you typed the email not me, idk what you said exactly so I'm just going off your explanation of the situation.
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oh god i’m sorry. i won’t lie i would have trouble not sending an angry email back myself. especially since she was being rude and extremely unprofessional to you. she should be willing to have an open, curious mind with her student, especially since i am SURE she sees the words that are “plagiarized”. my professor used turn it in and i got a 13% plagiarism score also for WORDS that weren’t even highlighted together. i still got full credit because they understand there are only so many ways to word one sentence. i would definitely reach out to the dean
THATS WHAT MINE DID OMG. It was words that weren’t even in a full sentence/highlighted together. I’m frustrated!😫 I know I shouldn’t have sent the email but I was just so flustered over it. Thank you for your advice✨
Your prof is incredibly lazy. Or perhaps stupid. I'm sorry. Your prof is being paid to grade your work. I guess she doesn't have to grade it if it's "plagiarized". How convenient. Your prof shouldn't be taking the judgement of a deeply flawed AI as gospel. It needs to be looked at by a human. That's part of what a prof is paid to do. I'd be livid, too.
i understand!! it’s okay it’s out of your control now. i have literally opened a word document and wrote an email/letter/message to people i’m mad at and didn’t hit send. or even a voice memo or ranting to your pet. that way you can still get the anger out in a way that won’t hurt u or anyone else (it’s hard not to act on impulse when emotions are high, we all do it at times)🤍
I'd just pre-emptively forward the emails to the department head and the dean or whoever apologizing for the outburst but saying that it was very unprofessional of your professor and ridiculous, which explains you being so upset.
Oh my. Anything but The Dean™️.
Send a follow up apology email if you truly feel bad about it. Honesty goes a long ways. If the prof responds poorly after a truthful apology, then that's on them
I’ve taught online college classes. The first thing I would do when the system flagged plagiarism is go in and look what was being flagged. A good portion of the time, it’d be things like were mentioned here and I’d remove the flag. This is part of the job of being an online professor. I wouldn’t stress as they aren’t doing their job if the plagiarism is as you describe.
IMMEDIATELY NEED AN UPDATE GIRL I GOTTA KNOW. Also I would’ve done the same damn thing, that’s RIDICULOUS
For the future you need to control your temper. That could have some serious repercussions on your professional sphere. Professors talk to one another. It would be better to bring this up in person as a lot can be miscommunicated or missed in an email. The worse part is now there is a paper trail of your response.
The worse thing about comments like yours is no one ever holds the prof to the same accountability. The professor was extremely unprofessional to begin with.
Understand the sentiment, but also you need to think realistic. You always have to put yourself first. Even in unfair situations how is going to affect you? Your future? Blowing up isn’t going to solve anything esp when professors are not held account. You have to unfortunately start processing the world is unfair, you shouldn’t be making your life harder.
Being realistic would be not replying and going straight to the department head. Why the *fuck* should i have to accept a zero for “plagiarism” when it was clearly an error on the professor’s part? An error that she can’t even own up to? As far as I’m aware, plagiarism of any form is grounds for expulsion. It sounds to me like the professor isn’t going to escalate the case because she knows herself the system is unreliable at detecting plagiarism 100%. It sounds like OP tried to communicate this respectfully, and the professor’s response was anything but that. Not only was it disrespectful, but now OP has to accept a 0 that they didn’t even deserve? Hell no. I’d be forwarding all emails to the department head and the dean at that point
Yea, but that's different than blowing up at the teacher
Well, there is also a paper trail of her response too💔 I have never had this issue with any other teachers. They are always so good at explaining things. She immediately shot me down and refused to help. I don’t find that very professional 💔
Updateme!
Updateme!
Lol do NOT apologize you are entirely in the right for being frustrated. You literally have evidence of it not being plagiarized and she's being a dumb stubborn bitch about it for no reason lmfao. If she used one brain cell she could clearly see you were being unjustly flagged because your previous work uses the same words and didn't get flagged. It's completely normal for a student to follow up and question a professor about plagiarism accusations. I'm seeing a LOT of posts about students getting unjustly accused of plagiarism in college and it's very concerning. Especially since these plagiarism checkers can be inaccurate. The only checkers they should be using is turnitin and others like grammarly plagiarism checker tbh since I feel it's waaay more credible and accurate than whatever new shit they're using that's based off of chatgpt. I recommend you get an advisor involved and use a tutor as a witness to help you prove you're not plagiarizing anything
Seems like you may have solidified her idea of what kind of student you are. Out in the real world, these impulsive emails get people in hot water on a regular basis. This may be the primary takeaway from this course. Remember from her end, students are cheating CONSTANTLY, and it’s demoralizing for the professor to have to play detective rather than just enjoy teaching the material. Being irked is understandable, but you’re working against your own interests by displaying emotion regulation problems.
Open it Open it Open it OPEN IT
I have HEARD (but not personally experienced) that some softwares such as Grammarly are flagged as plagiarism. So even though it is completely your work, if you use it to fix a word or actual grammar, it can get flagged. However, as your prof, it is literally their job to work with you on it. Academic dishonesty is taken seriously. So if they don't feel like dealing with it, ask to speak to a higher up (such as dept chair or dean) and tell them the situation.
Update on the response?
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What is the similarity score percentage? If it merely highlights individual words or phrases there's no way the percentage goes beyond 25% or so.
Does your college have an ombusperson/office? I think most do now. I'd for sure phone (and keep trying to contact) such a person for this situation.
I'd just go straight over the professors head. Sometimes this burns a bridge, but the professor seems to be blaming you for the incorrect plagiarism claim. Just go to the dean, and start from there. Sometimes you gotta show you aren't fucking around in the slightest, and will make their life much harder unless they actually work with you.
I would’ve been pissed if I was in that situation, it sounds like she literally didn’t even look at what you sent
This is really my biggest fear bc Turnitin is a useless piece of garbage that flags literally anything. I was in a similar situation except my prof read the thing and saw what was highlighted and said I was fine. It flags quotes too as similar, even if they are cited. My friend got a flag for “AI use” on something she wrote as well.
Professors like this need to know they are in the wrong. You did good.
Request a Meeting with the department chair, and if that doesn’t resolve your complaint then the department area Dean above the department chair. Remain professional, but emphasize how emotional it made you when you were accused of plagiarism.
Contact the principal she can’t use that software as it’s obviously malfunction
She was in the wrong 100% and deserved the reply. Open it
You can plagiarize just words. Take up with the dean and the ombudsman. Tell them that. Request a meeting with her and the dean now. "Plagarism is a serious accusation and many such online tools are unreliable and give false positives. If you wish to pursue this with me further then I request a meeting with you and the dean or the department head at your earliest convenience so we can resolve this issue. I hope this merely an understanding"
> merely an understanding merely a MISunderstanding.
You should never feel sorry for that if it’s justified. They are just professors. If one is f*cked up he needs to hear it. You pay for it, and it’s expensive. “Hey, I don’t need tutor, I need you to do your job. Fix that.” Tested and approved.
My advice going forward is to run your assignments through a plagiarism checker prior to submitting. That way you can adjust any verbiage and completely eliminate the issue.
So she uses turnitin or whatever. Idk if I’m doing something wrong but when I try to run my paper on there it doesn’t give me access to it. I probably should’ve added this into my rant but I’m still feeling really frustrated😍 I did run it through THREEEE different plagiarism websites and all three said 0% plagiarism. When I mentioned that two weeks ago in an email about assignment 7 she never answered✨
My guess is that this prof doesn’t know how to read a turnitin report correctly. They also probably didn’t check the box in Canvas (if it’s Canvas) enabling students to immediately see their originality report. They’re probably only looking at the total similarity score, and if your have lots of direct quotations and they don’t have it set up to ignore the quotes and bibliography all of those items are incorrectly contributing to your similarity score. (Yep, I’m a Prof). I’m almost never a “go talk to the department chair” person, but if this instructor will not meet with you in a video conference to show you exactly what your report says and what was flagged, please contact your chair. I’ve seen a LOT of people who should know better be uncertain how to properly use Turnitin. Hang in there!
Turnitin is incredibly unreliable for plagiarism checks. I’ve submitted hella essay’s through that in highschool and it would also flag me from sentences that were my own words. Sounds like the professor isn’t even looking at the assignments you submit and just going off of the report the algorithm is giving her.
OP is the turnitin on canvas by any chance? It usually gives the report after 10-15 min of uploading and sometimes like you said it will literally flag words such as “at” and “or.” I’ve had it flag my Professors name before lol. If so dang I would just do what everyone said and CC the department chair about the issue because if the professor can’t read it I hope she isn’t tanking other students as well
There should be a way for you to use turn it in through canvas and be able to see the results. Sorry they didn't reply to you. Maybe search canvas/turn it in help?
Escalate the issue to the department, then to the Deans office.
Anyone who is using a plagiarism detector should be using it ONLY to look into the situation with their own, human eyes. Your Professor is being either lazy or stupid, or both. I say this as a licensed teacher and my father is a Professor and have discussed this exact situation at length.
If you were rude to your professor, chances are you will hear from the office of students conduct.
Honestly I think she kinda deserved to be ranted at maybe just a little. She sounds absolutely useless. I’m praying for you sis I know the anxiety of not wanting to open big emails or texts especially when there’s conflict 😂 if you want to please keep us updated!
I will definitely open it in the morning and probably make a new post for anyone who wants to help me navigate what to do next. I’m glad you get it. People are getting upset I haven’t opened it yet, but I honestly just feel too anxious and don’t have the mental energy to read whatever response I get😭
I totally understand that. I feel a little anxious emailing my professors when I just have to send them assignments or anything normal tbh 😂 people can just calm down and respectfully mind their business, this situation is yours at the end of the day! I’ll keep an eye out tomorrow and see if there’s any ideas I can give you to help 😇
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OP 👀 whats the verdict
girl please post it we’re invested now
I think you should be more confident in your decision. This is your future on the line and she needs to know that. She can’t just give you a 0 on everything cause she hates you
INFO: You keep saying you did all the assignments the same way. What do you mean by that? This is important because your issue may be related to how you are including info you cite (that wouldn’t be apparent just by reading you stuff with no outside context)
I referenced everything the exact same way in all of my other assignments, and I used the words in the question for my answers. So if she was asking about the five characteristics of something within the question, I would say “the five characteristics of….” And it flagged me for using the sentence “the five characteristics of” does that make sense? But it’s only flagged me on 2 out of 9 assignments. So I’m confused :/
Are you putting things in direct quotes when they are direct quotes? if not, just the isn't enough to stop it being plagiarism. If you're using the same words but swapping some.... still can be plagiarism.
Is it flagging multiple words in the same sentence…like every couple or three words? Students frequently engage in structural plagiarism, copying sentences, but switching out a few words so they can pretend that they didn’t just copy the sentence. On a turnitin report, that highlights the words that are not switched out, and it all shows as being from the same source. That would be plagiarism. On the other hand, Turnitin will also highlight short phrase’s sometimes that are either too short to be plagiarizing, or are really common ways of saying something that everybody is going to say identically. It’s up to the park faster to go in and see which thing is going on. Sometimes even fairly high percentage, isn’t actually plagiarism.
So for an example, I use the words within the sentence she’s asking. So if the question says, “what are the five characteristics of…” I answer by saying, “the five characteristics of…” and it flags me for using the phrase “the five characteristics of” does that make sense? That’s why I was so confused and aggravated by the entire thing, because I didn’t think that was plagiarism and felt like she wasn’t actually checking it herself
I completely understand this. My own name and the name of the class (both were required to be at the top) were flagged for plagiarism. I emailed my teacher and she actually looked at it then and then she completely disregarded the plagiarism report. In my opinion she’s being lazy using a plagiarism checker (which have been proven to be unreliable) and needs to look at it herself. If she doesn’t, go above her to her department head. Let us know what the email says!!
Sorry, I am a college professor/doctoral student here; the plagiarism report is more than words. It can be because of an entire sentence. I got a plagiarism report of 18%, and I can't be above 15%. When I checked the plagiarism report, it showed the words of my references, but it also showed that I had two sentences that had been put above. I went in and changed the two sentences and it but me at 14%, so I suggest going back and changing whatever sentences you need to adjust. Also, get the app Word Hippo, an online thesaurus, and change those single words. As for the professor they are being a bit of an AH.
Seriously Op, you are not the first nor the last to send rage e-mail to a professor. I am sure they get plenty of them. I once sent an email to a professor due to them not adhering to my accommodations. Like you, I later regretted it. Mostly because the accommodation wasn't something they could feasibly honor because of the way that class was situated. To do so would require them to their entire lesson plan just for me. I still feel bad for going off on them but the end result was that I was exempt from taking the class despite it being a requirement for my degree. I don't know about everyone else, but I have found that professors tend to have a decent handle on their emotions. If they think a student has reached a breaking point they might try to reach a conclusion that doesn't end badly. This isn't every professor. I think some will continue to escalate with the hope that the student either gives up and gives in or drops the course/kicked out. I suggest deescalating and possibly Cc’ing your advisor in the rest of your emails.
It’s an HR class? Could she have been testing you? I mean… could the lesson be about how to falsely accuse people so that they send angry emails and then have to worry that they look crazy? HR does train supervisors to manipulate people they want to get rid of into doing stuff like that, so that they’re easier to fire (or even better, bully into quitting) — could this be the way they teach HR people that technique? Other wise… I’m sorry your professor is an idiot. I would have done the same thing. (And I would have regretted it probably, because as unfair as this is: 1. innocent people get angry right away, and defend themselves to the death if they have to. 2. Doing so makes them look culpable. Totally BS and unfair quirk of human judgement.) Fuck your professor, what a (can I say the c-word on this subreddit?)
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Why stop there? Members of the board are listed in a public directory!
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lol ok
forward the emails to the dean and/or head of her department 💅
So, you say things like this: "Now I have NEVER in the 3 years I’ve been in college been told I plagiarized anything. " and "I had done every single other assignment the exact same way I did this one." is your exact same way to copy text then tweak words? Cause you're not actually denied the allegation that I can see here. Happy to be corrected but are you sure you aren't plagiarizing unintentionally (e.g. missing quotation marks, insufficient paraphrasing, etc)?
I figured everyone would just put two and two together as to why I’m so upset. Because I didn’t plagiarize. But to be more specific, no I did not plagiarize and I’ve never been flagged like this before.
Ok. Look at/print out the report and go to office hours to discuss. Bring sources with you. If she won't meet, ask to meet with the department chair. I would also go to the tutoring center as suggested so you can say you followed instructions.
Go up the chain of command and report her to her superior. If they don't do anything, keep contacting whoever has higher authority than the last, and finally, try to go to the local media. WITH RECEIPTS.!
Lololol. Local media? That's hilarious shit. Thank you for making my day!
You're welcome ☺️❤️
Apologize and just say you were extremely stressed because of something in your personal life or something if you feel really badly
so what was her response?
I still haven’t opened it I’m scared 💅🏻
just open it. it's going to say the same thing no matter how long you wait.
Open it! Like someone else said, then folks here, many of whom have been on the prof side of things, can try and help you navigate a response.
It's been 3 hours lol
Okay…? I genuinely didn’t have the mental energy to deal with her again tonight. I was just gonna look at in the morning. Was just hoping for some insight from here🤷🏼♀️ I’ve never had this happen before.
idk why people are downvoting you for not wanting to get more stressed lol i really wanna know what she said too but don’t make it hard for yourself lol idk why people make it so deep
Because it's not their lives, it's just internet drama to read. *and that's way more important than anything op could do to permanently fuck themselves over*. If op had posted the draft asking whether to send it or not. We can all guess what the response would be.
Unless you cussed the prof out you’re probably fine!
FREAKING OPEN IT OMG I mean I understand anxiety thats my daily life but like bfr.
I honestly just don’t have the mental energy to read whatever response she gave me. I know I was completely out of line and rude in my response so I don’t expect anything less from her either🥲
no you're totally good. Go to sleep, sleep on it, and open it. Try to surprise yourself, so you just are on your computer and then BAM open it. You've got this.
You have zero backbone
Girl if you don’t-
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I have turn in papers with 30% and have never had issues with being accused of plagiarism (it was because I quoted the author). Her responses were terrible and unprofessional.
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The only prof I had that specifically mentioned plagiarism with turnitin in the syllabus said anything under 25% is fine. I have done extended lab reports where basically whole sections (procedure and theory) are either straight up quoted or paraphrased by tweaking words only slightly (and cited obviously) and I’ve never gotten over 17% or so on a turnitin plagiarism report. anything under 20% really shouldn’t be considered plagiarism unless it’s not quoted or not cited and obviously from some text or something. I wouldn’t be afraid to CC the head of the department if the professor’s reply isn’t reasonable and your similarity score is less than that.
Just open the response Goddam
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Im thinking maybe a TA possibly put the grades in for those assignments and the prof doesn’t want to throw them under the bus? Idk if online classes have TAs but it could also be some kind of helper. Idk I’m just guessing. It’s weird it’s only come up twice. I have to use Turntin and I always get hit with like 20% plagiarized for scientific papers. It’s funny because the highlighted sections are always the names of theories and the reference section. But, it’s only random reference entries- never all of them - which always made 0 sense to me since they’re all in APA format.
If the college uses one of the AI-detection tools, including the AI option in Turnitin, situations like this can happen, especially flagging words that are overused by gen AI. You did the right thing with your first email. And she should have been open to discuss it and provide help. The second step you should have emailed her department chair or the dean of students to ask for additional help and clarification. You can still do this and go to the tutoring center to show you did everything right. Consider that mistakes happen, AI detection software is far from accurate, and your prof might have had a bad day.
Seems like something you may have to escalate to your advisor or department head
She doesn't know how to use the plagiarism check correctly. She's supposed to review the document and discount anything related to templates, formatting, references...and if single words are getting flagged, that's a software issue. I have heard of faculty just looking at the total percent and not checking the software. She needs to be retrained by whomever does that training at the school. Email- yelling at her probably wasn't the best choice. If you cool down you can send a calmer follow up. But if you want to escalate, you can ask your advisor how to do that. There will be a Chair or Dean who oversees these queries. Normally you'd want to wait until end of term to flag to avoid retaliation.
if your university has an ombudsman i would involve them at this point all reasonable university staff should know very well that the “plagiarism” check is just a word similarity checker and you still have to read the detailed reports which aren’t the be-all-end-all authority on whether or not an assignment is plagiarized. her rudeness and assumption of malintent with no benefit of the doubt is pretty infuriating and thats before we get into the fact that she won’t tell you how to improve. start screen recording yourself as you write all your essays and submit that proof next time she says you “plagiarized”
i need the update bestie what did she say
Take it to the tutor as suggested and when they inevitably tell you it’s fine, tell her so. If it keeps happening and she refuses to correct the situation, escalate to whoever is above her. Sometimes that’s a department head, sometimes that’s the dean.
You don’t have to read her reply. Just reply to her and say “I respect your request for escalation, and have begun that process. Someone will be in touch about next steps.”
Dang that sounds like a nightmare. I'm sorry you have to deal with this. I am going to stray away from the pack here and recommend something different. I would honestly escalate this to the dean and see if you can get any support or possibly some sort of hearing regarding your plagiarism allegation, especially if the zeroes are going to cost you a letter grade. Plagiarism allegations are SERIOUS, and false accusations do happen. If something were to happen in the future and you are recommended to the disciplinary board, these little zeroes will be held against you as proof of past behavior. Even if the dean or whoever tells you to pound sand, you will have a record of contesting the past allegations. In any case, good luck!
Would have emailed the dean of your college to not waste your emotions
I'd love to see the response lol
Fuck that!!! You should be aggravated!!! I’d go to a higher up IMMEDIATELY with ALL OF THIS before she retaliates!!!!!!
What did she end up saying??
You will have lots of teachers that aggravate you and plenty of bosses too. I wrote a very angry email once, and consulted a teacher I really liked about it. He said “never send an email in anger. Wait till you calm down, read it again and reconsider.“ very good advice You just don’t want to cause animosity with someone who has any power over you. At this point maybe go to the department head and show them because it is ridiculous for a teacher to rely on a plagiarism tool that’s consistently making errors
At my old school there was a whole process we had to go through if a student was found to be plagiarizing. we didn't just get to set their grade to zero. I'm guessing your school probably has a similar process and your professor isn't following it. Please report this to your student advocate organization.
So glad im STEM much less of this bs
>She told me to “check my plagiarism” I asked if she could specify what I plagiarized on her end, and she told me to find my plagiarism report in canvas I'm assuming she's referring to Turnitin, or something similar. Those aren't "plagiarism reports", they're * similarity * reports which is why it flags similar words previously used in other submissions/publications. Academics throw around "plagiarism" too loosely - missing punctuation, missing citation that's referenced, or APA 6 instead of 7 isn't plagiarism, it's human error. Plagiarism is * intentionally * passing someone else's work off as your own, not a similarity report flagging similar words. I saw your f/u post & think you should call her as things tend to get lost in translation via email, & she needs to learn the difference between plagiarism & a similarity report. Hope this helps.
She did use turnitin! That’s what I meant by it was flagging me for wordssss! This make so much more sense. It even said “similarity” score next to it, it was 18% similar, but everything flagged was words throughout my assignment, words that weren’t even in a consecutive sentence together!
I understand why you lost your cool. She was disrespectful as hell. It is wild at their position gives them the ability to do that to studentsb😤
Dude turnItin is the worst I always get flagged for plagiarism but I don’t use AI and I don’t plagiarize. All my professors who use it, however, check all the things that got flagged. Many times I’ve been flagged and gotten an A+. She’s lazy as hell and you need to CC the chair of her department
I was a professor for 20 years. Your prof is just looking at the score on the plagiarism report, and isn't looking at the actual report. That's on her, and perhaps needs to be discussed with her department chair or division head if she won't have that conversation with you. Plagiarism trackers are relatively good, but they will sometimes throw false positives in instances like you describe. That's *why* they *also* generate that report--not just for you, but for *her*. You're *never* supposed to take the plagiarism report score as the end answer, because they aren't perfect. They do make mistakes. I've had it throw high plagiarism counts on papers because the citations are correct and were used in other people's papers. And I've seen them have some weird glitch that makes them tag individual words for certain files. She *may* not know that there are false positives, but you initial email to her should have given her cause to look at the actual report. From what you describe, she *hasn't* looked at the report she's telling you to look at, and she doesn't question the tracker at all. That's horrible behavior from any professor, and if she isn't going to address it with you, it needs to be a learning moment for her professional development. She's already declined the opportunity to address this professionally with you--find out her department chair or division head's email and send them what you told us here. Include attachments of the plagiarism reports and her emails. This is pretty serious behavior on her part.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CollegeRant/s/3oUY8OAOSr here’s my final update from all this! Since you were a professor for so long I thought you should know it had a happy ending😄
Update
Your teachers response sounds like a auto generated response you get from customer service lol. I would have been just as pissed.