WEB-BASED originality checking service provider Turnitin has launched a comprehensive academic integrity solution that helps educators to uphold and assess the students’ work amid the rise of remote education and blended learning brought about by the new normal.
Called Turnitin Originality, this digital tool combines the text similarity checking functionality that Turnitin is known for with new features that aid instructors address trends such as contract cheating.
It also utilizes the most extensive technology to help combat copied work and teach students the value of original thinking skills and how to properly attribute ideas and concepts to others.
Turnitin Originality analyzes whether the work is akin to other known text, or if it has signs that it was not penned by the student. It facilitates conversations between instructors and students about how to discover and express their authentic voice.
This solution is highly needed as schools and universities move to online instruction that calls for their further thoughtful and holistic approach to academic integrity. Conventional text comparison tools—which Turnitin pioneered a couple of decades ago—can determine copy/paste plagiarism or student collusion, but do not equip institutions with the right technologies required to address new forms of cheating.
Now, each institution can set new standards for academic integrity and provide its students and instructors a unified solution to support those standards. Educators can use Turnitin Originality as a teaching tool, showing their students how to identify unoriginal content before submitting their papers.
“Supporting academic integrity is a multi-layered process of setting expectations, providing tools to students so they can self-check and -correct, and then helping faculty to identify potential misconduct so that they can intervene,” said Valerie Schreiner, chief product officer and chief marketing officer of Turnitin. She noted that Turnitin Originality enables instructors and administrators to identify the full range of potential misconduct in one tool so that instances of plagiarism are “teachable moments, not punitive ones.”
For Jack Brazel, head of business partnerships, Southeast Asia, for Turnitin, this offering aids educators train students to develop original thinking.
“As they do so, we are contributing to shaping citizens of integrity in the society,” he explained. “In the Philippines, where remote education is now strongly encouraged, the launch of Turnitin Originality will give educators a better solution for upholding the culture of academic integrity.”