Plagiarism software for students

Re: Plagiarism software for students

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Number of replies: 2
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I don't use Turnitin. From what I have heard the strength of the 'big' is the amount of the catalogue they check against. Turnitin is a) closed source b) a service. Not only they scrape the web and store everything they find, they in a special position that their customers entrust them work which is never intended for the web. That is a huge, not ethical, advantage they have. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnitin.

Talking of ethics, it reminded me the Christmas news: https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/12/24/204238/nyc-is-paying-2-million-for-anti-plagiarism-software-after-firing-teachers.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Plagiarism software for students

by Joost Elshoff -
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Fortunately, there's more to plagiarism checkers than just TurnItIn: there are a few more around, like OUriginal (previously URKUND) or Unicheck. From what I've heard, OUriginal has another approach to scanning and reporting, in the sense that they don't store scanned and analysed content. AFAIK OUriginal / URKUND is the only tool that also allows scanning forum posts and workshop contributions.

Essentially: all these services will have their price, so be sure to check which tool works best for you.
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In reply to Joost Elshoff

Re: Plagiarism software for students

by Dan Marsden -
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Just to clarify - Turnitin, Ouriginal (Urkund), Compilatio, Strike, Unicheck (unplag) all support the core Assignment, Workshop, Forum activities and possibly some of the other plugins also support them.

Turnitin, Ouriginal and Unicheck have just added support for Quiz essay questions in 3.11 and higher too. (older Moodle releases are also supported with a patch.)
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