The Plagiarism Problem
Everyone knows that copying has become very easy now that we have ready access to the Internet and that computers allow us to copy-paste effortlessly. Plagiarism has become more and more of a problem recently.
In many cases, students do not even know what is meant by "plagiarism". Then they are surprised when they are caught doing it and told that the penalty is dismissal.
Ngee Ann Polytechnic uses Turnitin® (a text-based similarity-check software) to help stop the spread of plagiarism.
Turnitin has a huge database of WWW materials, e-journals and student submissions. With Turnitin, lecturers have an easy-to-use tool that helps to detect cases where students have copied from the Internet or from their friends.
However, an important aspect of using Turnitin is that it presents a learning opportunity...
- students need to learn what plagiarism is and what it means to produce original work
- that by doing their own work, students learn more and take more responsibility for their own learning
- that the value of the Ngee Ann diploma is enhanced if anti-plagiarism measures are taken seriously
- that all work in the Poly should either be original, or properly cited if it is quoted or paraphrased.
Next: Survey results »