Capstone Turnitin issues?

So I just turned in my capstone, and I got back the originality report from Turnitin, and it came back matching 77% to my Tech Writing paper. After reading a lot of posts of people just modifying their tech writing papers, I did the same. Did you guys also have that issue and did you guys still pass, or did you guys have to write a whole new paper as to not get that much matching on the originality paper?

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Sigaro

I had a similar issue until I followed the writing center guidelines to REMOVE references and short phrases. Try following these steps to filter your originality report down:

1) Exclude matches of less than 20 words.
2) Exclude References

Full Instructions from WGU [wgu login required]

If it still comes back high, contact the course mentor and ask them for guidance on how to proceed. I believe it is common with the tech/capstone projects. I submitted my capstone the day I got my tech writing back so I don't think the TurnInIn database had time to update.

colemic

That's weird... I never thought you could plagiarize yourself. When I did my MSISA capstone, I didn't have another paper to build off of, but even if I did, I don't remember seeing any specific instruction that said you couldn't repurpose/build off of one you personally wrote earlier, and I would have gotten into it w/ my mentor if they had an issue with that.

pixa241

Yeah I don't know how I would plagiarize my own work. It makes no sense. I guess I will just wait to see what they say when they grade it.

cyberguypr

Although I can't locate it right now I specifically remember a post from the WGU community where someone reused a paper for their capstone and it wasn't an issue. On the flip side, some academic institutions have clear policies indicating that work submitted for other classes can't be reused/recycled for another as the paper is no longer considered "original".

colemic

Easy response to that - don't ask the same questions twice, and you won't get recycled answers.

DonDeal

I know you can reuse most of your prospectus in your capstone written report. However, I don't know about prior work outside of the course.

CyberfiSecurity

colemic wrote: »

That's weird... I never thought you could plagiarize yourself.

Yes, you could; some schools give you warning some dismiss you from the program. Last year, there was a guy at Nova Southeastern University that turned his paper in one class, and he modified a little bit for the second class. The faculty found out, he was dissmissed from the Ph.D program. Even though you refer to your early writing, you have to quote and cite the same as other authors.

Example:

The Threats of Cyber Warefare

Cyberfi Security, 2010, research showed that cyber warfare is a serious threat to modern economy. In most cases business lost millions dollars in conpensation, remediation, and compliance violations (Cyberfi Security, 2010).

CyberfiSecurity

pixa241 wrote: »

So I just turned in my capstone, and I got back the originality report from Turnitin, and it came back matching 77% to my Tech Writing paper. After reading a lot of posts of people just modifying their tech writing papers, I did the same. Did you guys also have that issue and did you guys still pass, or did you guys have to write a whole new paper as to not get that much matching on the originality paper?

Good thing you have Turnitin.com for free, my school only offer to the faculty. I always check these sites to ensure that I don't violate the policy. Usually, these services will match 4 words and more. Sometimes, it even go to the references for citation.

Danielm7

CyberfiSecurity wrote: »

Yes, you could; some schools give you warning some dismiss you from the program.

Except that at WGU the tech writing class project is basically a proposal for what you will do for your capstone project. Every person I've talked to, including the capstone mentors suggest editing your tech writing paper, adding on, then submitting it. It's not randomly using 1 paper to satisfy a different class, the two classes are connected.

pixa241

Danielm7 wrote: »

Except that at WGU the tech writing class project is basically a proposal for what you will do for your capstone project. Every person I've talked to, including the capstone mentors suggest editing your tech writing paper, adding on, then submitting it. It's not randomly using 1 paper to satisfy a different class, the two classes are connected.

Yes that is what I have read, and that is also what I did, so I am just hoping it doesn't get sent back.

colemic

I still stand by my opinion that if you ask me to expound upon the same topic twice, I may choose to give you the same answer. I shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel, or take a different position on a subject, to avoid repeating what I have already told you.

JMO.

tprice5

CyberfiSecurity wrote: »

Good thing you have Turnitin.com for free, my school only offer to the faculty.

I feel like all schools should be providing access to this. Would certainly cut down on plagiarism incidents if would-be-cheaters knew what they were facing.

colemic wrote: »

I shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel, or take a different position on a subject, to avoid repeating what I have already told you.

Agreed. In this situation though it seems more about skirting the validations in TurnItIn.com as opposed to actually trying to combat plagiarism.

CyberfiSecurity

It happended to me once for my Undergrduate course, but I did not know the rules that you cannot use 4 words or more. Honestly, I quoted a lot in my paper. 30% of my papers were from sources, and I was told to rewite my paper. I did not get the disciplinary action because It did not have the opportunity to use TurnItin.com; and also the teacher did not teach about it.

colemic

colemic wrote: »

I still stand by my opinion that if you ask me to expound upon the same topic twice, I may choose to give you the same answer. I shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel, or take a different position on a subject, to avoid repeating what I have already told you.

JMO.

I reused 2 SMART goals verbatim from a previous course (in the same degree); I was at 25% for TurnItIn, but no one said anything... and if they had, I would have reiterated my argument from above.

Drovor

Danielm7 wrote: »

Except that at WGU the tech writing class project is basically a proposal for what you will do for your capstone project. Every person I've talked to, including the capstone mentors suggest editing your tech writing paper, adding on, then submitting it. It's not randomly using 1 paper to satisfy a different class, the two classes are connected.

Same here. I followed the guidelines from the Capstone mentor which was basically change most of my proposal to past tense and add 2 additional sections. No issues here.

zidian

I was at 31% on my capstone when I turned it in and didn't get any push-back on it.

I started doing what Drovor said with changing to past tense and found that to be a slow processes. Instead I just highlighted a paragraph at a time and rewrote it, often ending up with two or three paragraphs instead. That's pretty normal since I had more information after completing the project. I type really fast so that may have been a contributing factor to rewriting as well.

Tyb

I was at 49% and it was from my proposal, I was concerned so I did email the mentor. He said it was fine and you are re-purposing the previous work.

TLeTourneau

This is from the capstone course description in MyCourses on the site in the sidebar under Course Tips:

"There are no concerns with originality if your Capstone matches your Tech Writing. First of all, you can’t plagiarize yourself, so even if the Turn It In scan kicks your Capstone back, we can have it manually reviewed if the similarities are between two papers that you produced yourself. Secondly, when you copy content from the Tech Writing for the Capstone, think more of re-purposing than re-using. There ought to be al least some (perhaps only minor) changes when you port content from the proposal (Tech Writing) to the final report (Capstone). Some of the adjustments might be slight…perhaps just changing the tense of some of the verbiage to reflect that you have completed activities that you had previously only proposed to do. Other adjustments might be more significant…like finding new “Prior Work” that is now relevant or omitting work that is no longer relevant to the project that you eventually executed. The bottom line is that you should re-purpose the Tech Writing work, where possible, but you should not worry about an originality hit. If one occurs, we can manually review it to clear the scan if the “hits” are between two versions of your own work."