Before Submitting: Institutional Discourses on the Use of Educational Software in an Era of Datafication

• In Event: Cultural and Transdisciplinary Considerations in Curriculum

Abstract

As instructors are asked to do more, teach larger courses, and incorporate composition across the curriculum, with fewer resources, digital technologies can take on increased prominence in undergraduate classrooms (Gourlay & Oliver, 2018). But the ways in which institutions prepare instructors to use educational software and what role software tools should play in the development of individual instructors’ pedagogy is not well understood. In this study, we examine the discourse of technology configuration and implementation for teaching using Turnitin (a text similarity/plagiarism detector). We observe that institutions provide direct instruction about how to protect students’ rights as well as providing clear distinctions about the role of instructors (make informed judgements) and technology (making a quantitative classification) in identifying plagiarism.

Authors

• Michael Brown, Iowa State University

• Carrie Klein, State Higher Education Executive Officers Association