Increasingly universities are using Turnitin to check on whether assignments are being plagiarised and I was looking at the results for some student work yesterday.
It struck me that although it is useful, the findings have to be treated with caution. One student had quite a high score but many of the hits related to her bibliography, which included the standard items. Another student had 0% matches which seemed to indicate it was not related to any previous academic work so perhaps a very low score is also problematic. Despite this, I think it does have a useful consciousness raising function for students making them aware of how they use sources.
Turnitin
Increasingly universities are using Turnitin to check on whether assignments are being plagiarised and I was looking at the results for some student work yesterday.
It struck me that although it is useful, the findings have to be treated with caution. One student had quite a high score but many of the hits related to her bibliography, which included the standard items. Another student had 0% matches which seemed to indicate it was not related to any previous academic work so perhaps a very low score is also problematic. Despite this, I think it does have a useful consciousness raising function for students making them aware of how they use sources.