Grigar, Dene. “What New Media Offers.”

Grigar, Dene. “What New Media Offers.”  Computers and Composition. 24.2 (2007): 214-217.

Summary: “Why are we interested in new media? What does new media offer rhetoric, and, just as important, what does rhetoric offer new media?

This question led me to create a course in spring 2005 entitled “Telematic Texts.” It focused on shifting practices in reading, knowledge-making, and the conceptualization of space and time as well as the intersections of rhetoric, new media, biological systems, and consciousness––topics I saw as germane to a study of what I have begun to call “Media Rhetoric.” A Humanities-based course, it was not simply concerned with understanding what it means to be human but rather what it means to be human in an age when communication among the world’s population is occurring via satellites and broadband technologies instead of face-to-face interactions and our ideas and art instantiated in pixels instead of as expressions captured in print or on canvas.”

Area Cluster: 106

Methodology: Theory

Citations: KHayles RBarthes MMcLuhan JBolter

Quotes:

Putting it more simply—in a world whirling so fast and so knotted together as it is, traditional approaches to text net us little in the way of understanding in what it means to be human today. Needed are theories and methodologies that provide new ways of understanding that are open and far-seeing. For Huber, that would be postcolonial cultural studies and trandisciplinarity, respectively.

What does new media offer rhetoric? Well, from the standpoint of postmodern, postcolonial, transdisciplinary thinking, a new way of seeing, a new way of defining, a new way of knowing––of loving text. Just for an academic to be able to admit aloud non-objectively in public that she loves text is a big step toward changing the power relationship between her and it, from one that is viewer-object to one that is lover-beloved. In this way, she––okay––“I” am open to text and text can open up to me. This means that text can include not only word-texts but also sound-texts, motion-texts, image-texts, and the like. So for myself, what new media has to offer is a way of seeing that allows for vistas beyond the print artifact and beyond the orator’s podium.

Hammill, Bobbi Ann. “Teaching and Parenting:Who Are the Members of Our Profession?”

Hammill, Bobbi Ann. “Teaching and Parenting: Who Are the Members of Our Profession?” College Composition and Communication 59.1 (2007): 98-124. 

Summary:

This qualitative investigation explores the perceptions of four women compositionists regarding mothers, teaching, and scholarship in the field of composition. I examine narrative case studies about four women who have PhDs in composition from the same doctoral program. Findings indicate that each of these four women perceives her mother as a literacy sponsor and sees her father as a literacy doer. Participants reveal that their mothers supported their educational decisions and encouraged them to gain more education than they themselves had. Participants pursued a doctorate for practical reasons such as proximity, cost, job security, promotion, and tenure as well as knowing someone else who had done it. In addition, each of the four participants identifies as a teacher first and scholar second, and each also expresses self-doubt regarding her ability to write and publish academic discourse. Participants view teaching as an ethical responsibility much like mothering and protect the memory of their mothers in various ways. Although participants separated from their mothers in order to pursue higher education, they still exemplified rhetorical ties to them (abstract 98).

 

Hammill’s article discusses the role of motherhood in relation to the role of teaching and finally as central to the current figuring of females in the academy and particularly in our discipline. She describes the alienation many women still face as they struggle to negotiate their ethical duty as nurturers of literacy and awareness, which she sees as stemming from motherly impulses and her participants’ own mothers, and the constraints to success placed on practitioners of writing instruction, which are still limited primarily to peer-reviewed, published research.

Area Cluster:
101-Practices of Teaching Writing; 103-Theory; 107-Institutional and Professional

Methodology:
Narrative case-studies, Surface lit-review, Inattention to issues of race/class when it comes to the idea of “mothering,” Non-disclosure of the identities of her informants and how she came to ask them to participate in her project. 

Most Valuable Citations:
JBerlin ABerthoff WBishop PBizzell LBloom LBrodkey HCixous RConnors SCrowley PElbow JEmig RFulkerson ARGere CGlenn SJarratt WOng LWPhelps LWorsham

Money Quotes:

“Each one of these women shares a narrative of self-doubt in regard to her own abilities as a scholar, researcher, and academic writer despite the reality that she has earned a doctorate in rhetoric and composition” (99).

 

“Mothers as metaphors receive much attention in the field of composition research in both positive and negative forms; thus, ambivalence guides a lot of the thinking in the field about mothers. Research shows that people either see mothers as nurturers in language acquisition or as subverted victims” (103). 

 

“The research of Chodorow, Gilligan, and Belenky et al. explains why motherhood is connected to teaching because mothers are said to be the people who usually express their feeling of responsibility toward their families first and their careers or other interests second and because they are generally known as being the first language teachers their children have” (104). 

 

“…[W]hen one examines the tole of mothers, one will find these particular women are oftentimes compared to teachers, nurturers, and literacy sponsors and are relegated to a seemingly subordinate position of ‘other’ and ‘listener,’ who carries the ethical responsibility of taking care of others” (105).

Burns, Leslie David. “On Being Unreasonable: NCTE, CEE, and Political Action.”

Burns, Leslie David. “On Being Unreasonable: NCTE, CEE, and Political Action.” English Education 39.2 (2007): 120-143.

Summary:
Leslie Burns starts out with a quote from George Bernard Shaw in which he states: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man” (Burns 120). Framing her argument with Lackoff’s description of what literacy education should include, Burns advocates using a “moral nurturing” pedagogy as opposed to one rooted in elitist and hierarchical “strict father” model of teaching. Though she acknowledges that the professional organizations associated with our field have made strides toward embodying a true rhetoric of political activism and social change, she believes that CEE and NCTE need to do more to advance social justice in the public sphere, particularly when it comes to state-imposed literacy mandates.

She highlights the increasingly aggressive and regulatory strategies the government has used to sublimate linguistic diversity and inclusive Englishes, and cites our discipline’s modesty and compliance as a problem. She claims that “…no one should be seen to know more about the teaching and learning of English than literacy teachers, a group that includes classroom teachers, literacy educators and researchers, and English language arts teacher educators and researchers from all levels” (137), and opines that we are in a prime position as insiders on the outside of the policy making sphere and that this unique positioning may mean that we are “freer to act now than ever before” (142). She asserts that the critical mass of literacy experts which we have amassed within our discipline should recognize that acting unreasonably and persistently will be the only way we can ever hope to “change the world.”    

Area Cluster:
107-Institutional and Professional; 112-Community, Civic and Public

Methodology:
History; Historiography; Theoretical framework; Call to action against mere calls to action; Call for professional stability, unity, organization, and to somehow usurp the federally lucrative educational system using a “moral nurturing” rhetoric.  

Most Valuable Citations:
HGiroux AGramsci GLackoff 

Money Quotes:

“In literacy education, nurturant morality is the keystone of an ethical liberal philosophy (Kuchapski, 2002) emphasizing individual capacity, social diversity, student-centered education, experience-based curricula, constructivist pedagogies, collaborative relationships, a focus on progress, decentralized decision-making, and local government” (121). 

 

“It is not simply the case that members of the US Department of Education have taken political positions that undercut professional teachers’ more significantly, these individuals participate in a systematic movement to frame discourse about education in ways that permeate public conversations” (124). 

 

“While NCTE has spent considerable energy calling for action, it has not provided constituents with with re-framed ideas necessary for them to take control of conversations and activate their own progressive nurturant frames in the minds of others” (128).

 

“NCTE’s reasonable measured response demonstrates the way in which accepting the strict father frames of its opposition has lead to an acceptance, however reluctant, of NCLB even though it is an anti-public education and anti-teacher mandate” (129).

Jack, Jordynn. “Space, Time, Memory: Gendered Recollections of Wartime Los Alamos.”

Jack, Jordynn. “Space, Time, Memory: Gendered Recollections of Wartime Los Alamos.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 37 (2007): 229-250.

Summary:
In this article, [Jack] examine[s]configurations of space and time in memory texts written by men and women who lives at Los Alamos, New Mexico, during World War II. These accounts each use somewhat different parameters to frame their recollections, drawing attention to the gendered hierarchy of space-times involved in the work of the Manhattan Project. Despite their heterogeneous authors and motivations, however, these frameworks circumscribe memories within a narrow time and space – the physical boundaries of the Los Alamos site and the frantic tempo of wartime work. In this way, they construct a collective memory of Los Alamos that overlooks the broader spaces and times within which the development of the atomic bomb was situated. Far from being neutral, like dates on a calendar or coordinates on a map, space and time function ideologically to shape memories in ways that support the ideological interests of scientists (229). 

 

“…[I]n this article, [Jack] explore[s] the scientific configurations of space-time that writers used in their remembrances of Los Alamos, and the effects of those space-time configurations for collective memories of a significant scientific and political development. The following sections consider how writers frame their memories with relation to scientific, domestic, and natural space-time, respectively. The concluding section considers how these appeals ultimately construct a narrative of scientific discovery that supports the epistemic authority of science, while simultaneously downplaying issues of power, responsibility, and accountability the Manhattan Project engendered” (234). 

Area Cluster:
103-Theory; 104-History; 105-Research

Methodology:
Historiography, Narrative Analysis, Critical Theory

Most Valuable Citations:
CBazerman BBiesecker KBurke SDobrin KFoss SFoss CGlenn DMassey

Money Quotes:

“By examining the spatiotemporal frameworks that shape memories of Los Alamos, we can better understand how popular memories of scientific events are shaped along ideological, as well as geographic or chronological, lines” (230).

 

Even though people writing accounts of life at Los Alamos occupied different spaces and statuses within the complex, the public memories created by their writing overwhelmingly refer to the frantic tempo of work, the patriotic duty of sacrifice, and the feeling of being part of something important. These memories “…bolster the epistemic authority of science, construct a patriotic narrative of duty, and exclude the ethical and political considerations that were attached to the decision to build the atomic bomb. By bracketing off these broader issues related to the bomb’s development, these accounts sustain a narrative of scientific ingenuity while leaving moral accountability to others” (231). 

 

“The intensity of time and the spatial isolation of Los Alamos functions to limit and justify the lack of consideration for long-term consequences of the Manhattan Project. Instead, few of the writers question their tole in bringing about the most destructive weapon humankind had ever seen” (246).

Romano, Susan. “The Historical Catalina Hernandez: Inhabiting the Topoi of Feminist Historiography.”

Romano, Susan. “The Historical Catalina Hernandez: Inhabiting the Topoi of Feminist Historiography.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 37 (2007): 453-480.

Summary:
This article asserts the viability of key topoi in feminist historiography: first, to establish presence for everyday women rhetors, and second, to explore ramifications of their positioning within variant historical narratives. Catalina Hernandez was one of six European women recruited to Christianize indigenous girls immediately following the military conquest of Mexico. Her letter to the civic judicial council seeking autonomy for her community of women teachers was perceived as sufficiently dangerous to warrant its deletion from the historical record and the subsequent ‘disappearance’ of the writer herself; only excerpted accounts of Catalina’s writing remain. I seek the historical Catalina Hernandez in the sophistic mode, assaying four motives and four contexts for the production and reception of the her letter (abstract 453).

 

“[Her] process has been to examine first the extant accounts of the incident: the sixteenth-century documents and contemporary scholarship on colonial education. [She] then propose[s] two alternative contexts, one looking at the (sic) Catalina’s community identity, and the other reconstructing a conversation in which the beatas theorize rhetoric from recent experience. each of four narratives… develops an identity for Catalina: woman in love, illuminata, woman of community, analyst of rhetorical phenomena. each narrative possesses a connection between this identity and her writing. Each is developed within the context of feminist topoi in historiography” (458).

 

Catalina was thought to be associated with the illuminati, a religious category which was tolerated for the first half of the 1500s but was soon heavily persecuted during the Spanish Inquisition, with practitioners first jailed and then burned at the stake. Her letter asks for justice but is dismissed as “disturbed,” not passed along to the queen but excerpted and paraphrased, and is not preserved in the historical record. Romano contends that theAudiencia wrote to the Queen about Catalina’s grievance (the exile of a male missionary on accusation of improper sexual relations with the beatas) in code and that correspondence between the Audiencia and the Bishop in charge of the missionary work in America also transpired in coded language. Despite the extremely limited amount of information that exists about Catalina Hernandez, Romano constructs her rhetorical history as someone who had a strong sense of justice and who sought to exercise her voice in order for it to be served. Unfortunately, the geographical distance of Hernandez from the Queen may have skewed her assessment of the rhetorical situation and her letter was not received favorably. No one knows what happened to Catalina Hernandez after the Audiencia articulated their intentions for her to be interrogated for traces of “illuminati,” but Romano finally gives voice to a historically unrecognized yet rhetorically savvy woman who was likely punished for both the success and the failure of her letter to the Audiencia. 

Area Cluster:
104-History; 105-Research

Methodology:
Research, Gender critique (a la Kathleen J. Ryan, 2006), Emotion, Inspiration (in the Aspasia sense)

Most Valuable Citations:
BBiesecker XLGale CGlenn SJarratt KKCampbell 

Money Quotes:

“Because no rich body of evidence informs my study and because no extant scholarly conversation provides impetus for advancing discussion about this incident, the topoi of feminist historiography have been home to my rhetorical invention, and the disputational topoi – those uncomfortable places absent resolution - have proved particularly useful. In this specific case, for example, methodology was inspired, not given, by what I call the ‘evidence’ or ‘Aspasia’ topos – the Gale-Jarratt-Glenn debate” (454). 

 

“One function of this topos has been to inspire calibration of the connections between mainstream rhetoric and Catalina’s particular performance and her particular education, as well as to inspire responsible uses of available evidence. My agenda is thus aligned with the Alliance of Rhetoric Societies inquiry into how best to study people doing rhetoric at the margins (Bizzell and Jarratt), and it is mindful in maintaining incompleteness” (455).

Powell, Annette Harris. “Access(ing), Habits, Attitudes, and Engagements: Re-Thinking Access as Practice.”

Powell, Annette Harris. “Access(ing), Habits, Attitudes, and Engagements: Re-Thinking Access as Practice.” Computers and Composition 24.1 (2007): 16-35.

Summary: “Government efforts to universalize access have resulted in narrow constructions of access as ownership of technology. This article posits a more substantive dialogue of access, one that goes beyond connectivity issues, to consider how the “practice of access” influences technology-use, examining attitudes and ideas about communication and computing technologies. Looking at one effort to address the digital divide in a technology camp for middle school students, I argue that access is practice and that if we examine the “practice of access” in our classrooms and in our research, we look not at the technology but at the practices—what gets reinforced, valued, and rewarded by local communities. The “practice of access” is a more useful way of understanding how social and economic infrastructures mediate access. In this way, access is re-cast as a mutable practice that is influenced by real, everyday practices.”

Area Clusters: 106

Methodology: New Literacy Studies, Critical Race Theory, Activism/Service Learning

Citations: DBell ABanks CSelfe GHawisher JGrabill DBrandt DBarton MHamilton

Quotes:

A substantive, meaningful access recognizes social, political, and economic factors implicated in the literacies individuals bring to technology and the circumstances under which these literacies are deployed. (17)

 I argue for an exploration of what I call “access as practice.” As compositionists, if we consider the “practices of access” in our classrooms and in our research, we look not at the technology but rather at the actual practices—what gets reinforced, valued, and rewarded by local communities. If we consider “access as practice” not static but rather as rich, complex, and not easily categorized, or if we think of access as an on-going process, we might better understand access as the way that one uses technology in a given context. (18)

 I found that simply having a computer available to them did not completely open access for these students. Access was continually in flux and predicated upon these students’ negotiation of everyday social and literacy practices. As the camp unfolded, I became interested in the assumptions that we, as instructors and researchers, made about the participants, their technology use, and how those uses shape their access. In order to move beyond simplistic notions of access, where “getting in is enough,” we need to focus on the pedagogical and practical aspects of technology: How can we meet students where they are? (23)

Looking at Erica and Kevin, one might be inclined to ask, where is the Divide? There is an assumption, I think, that literate practices are easily analyzed in terms of race and socio-economic background. However, social and economic backgrounds are distinct categories though they are often combined to suggest that they explain “class” and “culture.” These terms need to be unpacked in order to understand the full meaning of adaptation. Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) notion of “Habitus,” a set of understandings and expectations, provides a way to do this. What represents cultural, economic, and social capital in one’s home community dictates access to a large degree. This form of access is not controlled by outside forces but rather, by internal/communal ones. (26)

How these students use the computers—their practice of access—is related to the kinds of skills, habits, culture, beliefs, and assumptions they have prior to turning on a computer. This social context of access is neglected in the Digital Divide discussions. By recognizing and valuing these students’ practices of access, researchers and teachers can begin to understand something about how technology functions in their lives and productively reflect on how to better engage these students’ practices of access and extend the possibilities available to them. (30)

The issue really is how teachers and researchers can use the discursive narrative of the Divide to theorize and enact a meaningful and agentic access that opens contested spaces and expands opportunities for a multiplicity of “discourses”—diverse ways of thinking, speaking, relating, reading, writing (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996)—that might occupy digital spaces. How students negotiate these digital spaces—both engage in and resist them—is crucial in helping us to address this and other divides. We need empirical and longitudinal studies that examine actual practice in technologized contexts, to both measure the varied effects of differential access and to develop a template for African American technology use that is not based solely on deficit. (33)

Kiedaisch, Jean and Sue Dinitz. “Changing Notions of Difference in the Writing Center: The Possibilities of Universal Design.”

Kiedaisch, Jean and Sue Dinitz. “Changing Notions of Difference in the Writing Center: The Possibilities of Universal Design.” The Writing Center Journal, 27.2 (2007): 39-59.

Summary: Kiedaisch and Dinitz begin by citing peer tutor journals that demonstrate a lack of sensitivity toward ESL writers and students with learning disabilities. They partially attribute the cause to their own use of highly anthologized texts in the tutor-training course that “other” such writers, despite making qualifications that their advice should not be taken as a standard approach. In response, the authors offer a new approach that  “would explore how all of us, directors, tutors, and tutees alike, bring aspects of our identity to tutoring and how these various aspects might shape a session.” By “recruiting tutors who have as part of their identity some of the aspects [they] had previously considered ‘different’,” “assigning readings that explore[d] aspects of identity from the point of view of the tutor as well as the tutee,” and “encourag[ing] more formal writing involving self-reflection about identity and tutoring” the authors’ tutors began to make connections between literacy and identity. But to address the question of a more efficient, less-relative application the authors suggest writing center ultimately adopt nine principles of Universal Design, a conceptual model that is “suited to a broad range of users.”

Area cluster(s): 101 (Practices of Teaching Writing), 102 (Composition/Writing Programs), 107 (Institutional and Professional)

Methodology: textual analysis

Citations: NGrimm SScott SShaw JMcGuire PEmbry

Money quotes:

However, in all of these textbooks, as in our own class, this explicit sensitivity and positioning are then somewhat subverted. The assumption of these chapters is almost always that the student writer, not the tutor, is the ESL student or has the learning disability, suggesting that such differences disqualify a student from being a tutor. (43)

The hope is that through seeing diversity as an essential element of course design rather than an add-on, instruction can be planned from the start to meet the needs of a wide range of users, thus reaching more students more effectively and requiring fewer accommodations for individuals. (50)

By embracing UD, which originated in the disability community, we allow ourselves to be challenged by our interactions with that community and thus model a pluralistic approach. At the same time, we acquire a new avenue for rethinking and redesigning our writing centers so that they become places where considerations of identity are woven into the fabric of every session, places open to being changed by their constant and varied encounters with diversity, places that are not only examples of but also agents for instituting a pluralistic approach to educations. (57)

Condon, Frankie. “Beyond the Known: Writing Centers and the Work of Anti-Racism.”

Condon, Frankie. “Beyond the Known: Writing Centers and the Work of Anti-Racism.” The Writing Center Journal, 27.2 (2007): 19-38.

Summary: Condon outlines the role that predominantly white writing center directors should play at their institutions when it comes to the work of anti-racism. She makes suggestions for “meaningful re-envisioning” at centers that fall under five areas previously identified by Chesler and Crowfoot — mission, culture, power, resources, and structure – while also adding a sixth, the personal. Queries (or questions for reflection) for writing center directors and tutors at predominantly white institutions are included in the appendices.

Area cluster(s): 102 (Composition/Writing Programs), 103 (Theory)

Methodology: lit review, practitioner

Citations: VVillanueva MOmi HWinant MChesler JCrowfoot HGiroux EOBrien

Money quotes:

Anti-racism work necessitates both inward or private reflection aimed at personal transformation and an outward, public turn that is at once both humble and determined and is aimed at productive engagement in collective and institutional transformation. (22)

On critical challenge for white writing center directors and tutors attempting to articulate and put into practice anti-racism will be how we make sense of conflicts between what we believe we know about working effectively with student-writers one-with-one and the knowledge, experience and perceptions of faculty, staff, and students of color. (24-25)

Within predominantly white institutions, to fulfill a writing center mission that articulates a commitment to anti-racism will require writing center directors to give students, faculty, and staff of color meaningful access to the decision-making processes of our centers. (26)

To take on racism is, in a critical sense, to take on ourselves; to struggle not only to remake our world, but also to remake our consciousness. (30)

For whites, at least, the thought and labor of anti-racism necessitates a willingness to acknowledge what we do not know—to risk uncertainty and failure and to do so publically. (32)

Mahala, Daniel. “Writing Centers in the Managed University.”

Mahala, Daniel. “Writing Centers in the Managed University.” The Writing Center Journal, 27.2 (2007): 3-18.

Summary: “One of my basic purposes in this essay is to show how writing centers have been shaped by the forces currently driving the shift towards the managed university and to suggest ways we can exploit and resist these forces to create progressive change in the future. More specifically, I will illustrate the dynamics of these forces in the emergence of two new programs in the writing center at the U of Missouri-KC where I teach: the Community Narrative Project (CNP) and the Advanced Preparation Program (APP). While these initiatives are local and in some ways unique, they illustrate how emerging pressures in the managed university can complicate traditional alliances as well as some of the core values of writing centers. On a more helpful note, the initiatives also illustrate tactical strategies whereby writing centers can appropriate dominant institutional rhetorics and contradictory institutional goals and turn them to service the less powerful.” (3-4)

Area cluster(s): 102 (Composition/Writing Programs), 107 (Institutional and Professional), 112 (Community, Civic & Public)

Methodology: history, practitioner

Citations: DBrandt GRhoades MCooper

Money quotes:

As public subsidy for higher education weakens, the space for private an commercial interests in literacy sponsorship increases (8).

Writing centers sponsor literacy whenever they define and enact specific literacies in their own activities – that is, whenever they conduct or enable research, help tutors develop new understandings of literacy or reconceive their own identities as writers, or host events from colloquies to poetry slams. (9)

In my view, what must be most vigorously protected is the writing center’s legacy of using writing to protect access of higher education for all students, including the most marginal ones, and defining writing in the most spacious and variable terms. Writing centers should seek to create a space for a culture that celebrates and supports students in popular, experimental or activist writing at the margins of the curriculum and beyond it. Just as important, writing centers need to continue to help students perform assigned writing tasks, teaching them to critically decode the designs that institutions impose on them and their writing. (15-16)

[T]he struggle of writing centers to define themselves depends on a shrewd reading of the shifting terrain of higher education and on our ability to creatively fashion alliances in an increasingly fluid and unpredictable situation. (16)

Brown, Renee, Brian Fallon, Jessica Lot, Elizabeth Matthews, and Elizabeth Mintie. “Taking on Turnitin: Tutors Advocating Change.”

Brown, Renee, Brian Fallon, Jessica Lot, Elizabeth Matthews, and Elizabeth Mintie. “Taking on Turnitin: Tutors Advocating Change.” The Writing Center Journal, 27.1 (2007): 7-28.

Summary: Seeking a better understanding of the relationship between plagiarism detection service Turnitin.com and their writing center, the authors investigate current scholarship on plagiarism (Howard, Shamoon and Burns, and Kail and Trimbur), run a few sample papers through Turnitin to test claims made by the company, explicate student perceptions, and ultimately argue that there are serious pedagogical limitations and unethical dimensions to the program.

Area cluster(s): 106 (Information Technologies), 107 (Institutional and Professional)

Methodology: textual analysis, case study

Citations: RMHoward LShamoon DBurns HKail JTrimbur BMarsh

Money quotes:

“Having the database” is crucial to Turnitin’s business model, which depends upon adding value to its product by continuously expanding the amount of original work it collects from students and other sources and then holds forever. Each sales transaction to a college or university then creates a dependent economic relationship between Turnitin and the university, leaving institutions that might want to choose a different software company to decide between losing access to all of their students’ papers and renewing their licenses with Turnitin. (16)

Avoiding the thesaurus becomes problematic once students understand how Turnitin defines and detects “plagiarism,” however. While most people would agree that a thesaurus can be helpful, it becomes downright essential to using Turnitin when writing something that involves a set of standard or agreed upon terms that professional writers repeat without quoting or citing. (22)

Considering only textual similarity as a way to identify plagiarism is a limited way of looking at the problem, however, and causes distress for students who seek to learn the appropriate discourse practices of their field of study and the writing center tutors trying to support them. (22)

Believing that Turnitin will function as a “cure all” detracts our attention from asking why or how students plagiarize and places an emphasis on what they plagiarize. The danger in such a focus is that the teaching of proper paraphrasing may be overlooked for the simplest solutions to preventing plagiarism that we’ve demonstrated, such as using the thesaurus (24).

For students who have had little or no instruction on how to cite sources, Turnitin is not the answer. Writing center staff should press their faculty and administration to offer all students the opportunity to learn how to document their sources before they require them to use Turnitin. Second, writing center staff should promote in-service education for all instructors who use Turnitin so that they are familiar with the program and lean to use it in limited, pedagogically sound ways. And, finally, we believe that all members of the writing center community need to keep up with technological innovations related to plagiarism detection so that faculty can be warned against and tutors can be prepared to deal with programs that are potentially detrimental to the educational process in composition. (27)