See something you like? Old-time research meant scouring microfiche, World Book and stacks of periodicals, using notecards and carefully paraphrasing, properly quoting and citing your sources. In these e-file, virtual days, it’s all too easy for writers (including students and professionals) who see what they need—to simply borrow it. In a cut-and-paste world, providing an attributing link might be the furthest some go to credit their sources—but that could be trouble.
From high school to college to the work force, plagiarism continues to be a pertinent issue for student and professional writers alike. Writers continue to struggle with proper paraphrasing and citing thus offering up papers that match content to other written work.
The question is, “What can be done to help combat this growing issue?” Web-based content matching services provide writers with valuable feedback for ensuring their writing is unique. A leading originality checking program, Turnitin, provides web-based plagiarism prevention, digital markup and peer review features, thus providing a viable and easy-to-use option to help address and solve the problem.
Created by iParadigms, the Turnitin technology allows students to submit their written assignments to be checked against an extensive database of other students’ papers, websites and academic resources for unoriginal content. Based on these reports, educators can identify writing that is attributed correctly and writing that closely matches content in Turnitin’s database. This allows educators to have data-driven, informed conversations with students about the importance of producing original content, academic honesty and proper citations.
Turnitin also dramatically cuts the amount of time that it takes to review papers and allows educators to provide richer feedback to student writing. Additionally, the peer review feature allows students to electronically review and comment on their classmate’s written work providing them valuable feedback before the paper is submitted. And, since the process is all done electronically, teachers and students can expect to see a drastic reduction on the amount of ink and paper used.
For students who don’t have access to Turnitin in their school, the company also offers WriteCheck, a website that allows students to submit up to two versions of a paper to check for unoriginal content before submitting the paper to their instructor. In addition, iThenticate, a plagiarism detection program used in research, publishing and many other commercial markets, and Turnitin for Admissions, a new service created for admissions professionals to help them make fair and more informed choices when evaluating applicant-created documents, complete the company’s comprehensive offerings.
These solutions provide a worthwhile resource for any educator looking to help students become better writers. Visit www.turnitin.com. Educators interested in the subject area, visit www.plagiarism.org.
1 Comments