Title:	USING TURNITIN AS A LEARNING TOOL: A PILOT STUDY
Author(s):	John Biggam , Margaret Mccann , Alexis Barlow , Alan Hogarth
ISBN:	978-972-8924-83-6
Editors:	Miguel Baptista Nunes and Maggie McPherson (series editors: Piet Kommers, Pedro Isaías and Nian-Shing Chen)
Year:	2009
Edition:	V I, 2
Keywords:	Turnitin, plagiarism, dissertations, learning tool, writing skills.
Type:	Full Paper
First Page:	140
Last Page:	147
Language:	English
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Full Contents:	click to dowload
Paper Abstract:	This paper explores the use of Turnitin as a learning tool and as a vehicle for reducing incidences of plagiarism. Plagiarism is a growing problem in Universities and the traditional approaches to tackling plagiarism are either to catch the culprits and punish them or to pretend that the issue does not exist and hope it goes away. One of the most popular tools used to help detect plagiarism is Turnitin. This paper highlights a third way to address the thorny issue of plagiarism in Universities: the use of Turnitin as a means of educating students on how to cite sources and improve their writing skills, rather than as a mechanism for gathering evidence against students. This research revolves around a case study of final year “honours” undergraduate class of students undertaking their year-long core dissertation module. Prior to final submission of their dissertation, the students are required to submit their completed work into Turnitin; however, Turnitin was set up also to allow students to voluntarily submit their ongoing work, chapter by chapter. This study is in two parts: 1) the initial set up of Turnitin and voluntary submissions throughout the academic year; 2) final compulsory submission. This paper discusses the preliminary findings of part 1 of this two-part study. The first stage of this research is still ongoing, but already the findings indicate that although the majority of students failed (so far) to voluntarily submit their ongoing work to Turnitin, but those that did, produced an interesting historical record of their learning development and skills for both staff and students, as discussed in this paper.
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