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So I know that a lot of people here are excellent with computers and so I have a question, but first off, some background.

The general biology department issued an assignment to complete a lab report. Our assignment was to be turned in through turnitin.com and our TA's were to be given a hard-copy as well. I took advantage of a snow day to complete the report about a week early, then had my TA review it for me to check for any large errors. I basically did everything that I could to ensure that I would receive as high of a grade as possible. The report was due on March 10.

On April 7, we were to receive our grades at the end of our lab period. Instead of receiving a grade, I received a form letter informing me that I had been accused of plagiarism. Fourteen percent of my "Materials and Methods" was similar to someone else's report. Over the past week, I've spent my time trying to clear my name. This is only considered a "Level 1 Citation", but the punishment is that it I receive a 0/60 for that assignment (putting me in danger of failing the course) and I could be removed from the Honors College (something that gets me a pretty nice scholarship, was a major reason I decided to attend Rutgers, and something that I'm rather proud of).

As of today, I am officially contesting the accusation with the Office of Student Judicial Affairs. One of the items that I plan to use in my defense is a timeline of the events that occurred. I have some e-mail records between myself and my TA to use, but I'd like to further bolster my chances.

Congratulations to anyone that read through all of that background. Here is my question though:

Is there any way that I could use data from my computer that would indicate the exact dates and times that I saved my work? If there is, how can I go about that?

This is extremely important. If anyone is further interested or can help, feel free to PM me. Thanks everyone. Best of luck to all of those in the H2H.

if you still have your work saved on your computer..

Right click on the image/object, properties, details...and there it should be all listed.

Hope this helped you out.

Definitely helpful and appreciated. It's sad that I didn't think to do that though haha.

Apparently from March 2 through March 9, I saved it 94 times.

Is there a way to find out when the dates and times of when I saved it?

Depending on what filesystem (fat32, ntfs, ext2, ext3, ...) your using on your pc files have a creation timestamp, modification timestamp and access timestamp.

These can be easily accessed if you select the properites of the file.

Alltough, it's important to note, that one can manipulate these. So it's not a 100% valid proof.

Not through the filesystem, but depending on what type of document you're speaking, the software used for it might have some headers added to indicate modification times.

I'll be perfectly honest, I frankly don't know what filesystem I'm running on my PC. And I understand that this, like almost anything else involving computers, can be manipulated and therefore would not be 100% valid proof. I'm more interested in using it as supplementary evidence in front of the Board of Student Judicial Affairs. The e-mails between myself and my TA, coupled with her willingness to speak on my behalf are certainly better evidence.

For the record, 200 people in the 1000-1200 person class were accused of plagiarism as well.

Your filesystem is dependent on your operating system.

Windows 95/98 - FAT or FAT32
Windows NT/2000/XP - NTFS

Don't know the specifics for each linux distro or for mac.

If you use backup software you may be able to see things in there? I think XP's system restore only does system files so don't look there if you have XP (you could muck up things if you restore to a point on accident).

Did you use Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, StarOffice, etc. to write the paper? If so then what version?

You big nerds!

I didn't read everything, just the bold text... if you mean images, acdsee pro can check hard disks for exact duplicates...

My computer runs on Windows Vista, so I don't know what that means in terms of my filesystem.

I typed the report using Microsoft Office Word 2007.

If no one knows, thats perfectly fine. This is really just supplementary to what I already have for my case. I also think that I have time to prepare everything, so there's no real rush. Unfortunately, my grade will probably be tied up through the summer. Perfect.

Will be NTFS most probably

Anywayz, according to the file description of Word docs can have headers with revision data, but I'm unaware if it is a default setting.

I'm not a Word user, so not sure how you can find this revision data through the program. But it's worth to check it out

Wishing you all the best

your file system IS NTFS, anyway, you've stated that you uploaded your work to some website? their timestamp should be sufficient then, all other data coming from your computer is useless i think because it can be easily manipulated.

The other problem I see is that revision dates don't seem to disprove plagiarism. All they do is point to the dates where you could have copy/pasted.

Unless the source of your alleged plagiarism is dated after you wrote your paper?

The source of my alleged plagiarism is any of the approximately 200 papers from other students who wrote the same paper and were also accused of plagiarism. Since I wrote my paper early, I was hoping data indicating exactly when I had written it might be helpful because otherwise its a case of me saying it versus the department saying otherwise. Either way, I do have some e-mails that back me up and those would be my main evidence (in terms of a timeline).

They won't show me that paper due to "legal" reasons. Technically speaking, they legally have no obligation to show me the other person's name, but I only care about the information on that person's paper. Their name is irrelevant to me. The academic advisor happens to be an officer on the Board of Student Judicial Affairs, and agrees that I should have been allowed to see the other paper.

There's a lot of problems with this whole situation, many of which are caused by an overwhelmed, biased woman who happens to be running the course.