Scholarly Paper Changes to Streamline Process

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The homepage for Turnitin.com, where a new feature is the ability to form peer editing groups, sure to be helpful to students trying to organize a solid draft.

This year’s junior class will be the first to experience the new method of scholarly paper scoring and drafting.The main changes include the switch to Turnitin.com, an online tool that aims to take a lot of the confusion out of scholarly paper editing and submission. Other changes include the paper no longer being a graduation requirement, but instead, only needed to pass junior English.

Mr. Gregory Hurst, who’s teaching junior English this year said, “technically speaking it is a graduation requirement, simply because it’s a requirement to pass English 11.” Nothing is going to get harder or worse for students, and these changes are designed to make this whole process easier on them.

The scoring of the paper will also no longer be an anonymous process, with each student’s individual teacher providing written feedback, along with the rubric, for each submission, instead of just the second attempt and beyond. Many juniors are still in the dark about these changes, mainly due to the paper just getting started in their classes.

When asked if these changes to the paper impacted the significance of it, junior Aisha Saad said, “I’m taking the paper just as seriously as I was last year…The fact that I need to pass in order to pass English is just as serious as graduation is for me.” Fellow junior Hanna Novy also said, “The only difference this year is that kids will have a more difficult time plagiarizing other people’s work…but overall, I don’t think it will make much of a difference.”

Mr. Hurst wanted students to know that the Turnitin.com plagiarism service is not a new policing tool, and they shouldn’t be afraid of it, as many of his students had been apprehensive. Hurst said, “we plan on using it as more of a teaching tool, as opposed to a punishment system.”