Turnitin re:marks – Plagiarism and the Web

FEATURED ARTICLES

Plagiarism and the Web: Myths and Realities
We recently conducted a study that examined which Internet sites students used in their written work. We classified 110 million content matches in 40 million student papers that were submitted to Turnitin over a ten-month period. We identified some interesting truths about where our students turn to for research and sources:

Plagiarism is going social
One-third of matched content is from social networks, content sharing or question-and-answer sites where users contribute and share content. 15 percent of content matches come from cheat sites Paper mills and cheat sites are the third most popular category for matched content.
Legitimate educational sites are more popular than cheat sites One-quarter of matched material is from legitimate educational web sites, almost double the number that comes from paper mills or cheat sites.

Wikipedia is the most popular site for matched content Wikipedia remains the most popular single source for student-matched content on the Web, comprising seven percent of matches. The other most popular sites, in order, are answers.yahoo.com, answers.com, slideshare.net, oppapers.com, scribd.com, coursehero.com, and medlibrary.org.

Educators with the knowledge and tools can address the growing problem Educators who employ the proper tools and technologies can significantly mitigate plagiarism. For example, institutions with widespread adoption of Turnitin see a reduction in unoriginal content of 30 to 35 percent in the first year. By the fourth year, many institutions see levels of unoriginality fall by up to 70 percent.

Download the White Paper, “Plagiarism and the Web: Myths and Realities,” for more details and recommendations on how this impacts you as an educator:

http://pages.turnitin.com/PlagiarismandtheWebSEC.html

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Product Updates

We’re always working to improve Turnitin—every month we release several features and updates. Some of them are major changes that impact your use, but most are behind the scenes optimization or subtle changes to the interface. Here are some of the changes we recently released:

Active Highlight Emphasis

Hovering on a mark causes associated highlights to become darker.

Expanded Mark Footprint

Marks containing a lot of text are wider and longer to allow for more of the comment to be read without scrolling.

Up and Down Arrow Scrolling

Using the up and down arrows will cause the paper in the document viewer to scroll up and down.

PeerMark Inbox Show and Hide All Details All the rows in the PeerMark assignment inbox can be expanded or collapsed at the click of a button.

PeerMark Scale Response Export

Export a Microsoft Excel file containing Scale Question response information for a PeerMark assignment.

Visit our Product Updates blog to watch a video explaining and demonstrating these changes:

http://community.turnitin.com/members/blog_view.asp?id=638717&post=125394

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IN THE NEWS

NBC: Green Education

Two Milwaukee teens make the case for classrooms to go paperless by using Turnitin—slashing costs while reducing the use of paper, water, landfills, and ink.

http://www.todaystmj4.com/features/specialassignment/120516624.html

UCLA: The Consequences of Undermining Success Academic misconduct cases typically fall into two categories—cheating and plagiarism. UCLA handles misconduct with due process and developmental opportunities.

http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/article/2011/04/the_consequences_of_undermining_success

BBC: Call for Universities to Unite on Plagiarism Six Welsh universities revealed nearly 1000 students were disciplined for significant plagiarism, and there is a need to make the consequences consistent.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-13280594

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UPCOMING EVENTS

User Events

Maximizing Turnitin with GradeMark & PeerMark London, UK

29 June 2011

http://community.turnitin.com/events/event_details.asp?id=152081

Turnitin UK User Group

University of Manchester, UK

21 September 2011

http://community.turnitin.com/events/event_details.asp?id=161208

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