- Title
- The use of turnitin in the higher education sector: Decoding the myth
- Creator
- Mphahlele, Amanda
- Creator
- McKenna, Sioux
- Date Issued
- 2019
- Date
- 2019
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/124229
- Identifier
- vital:35578
- Identifier
- https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2019.1573971
- Description
- Plagiarism needs to be addressed to maintain academic standards and to safeguard the integrity of the academic project. With the evolving digital world, conventional methods of addressing plagiarism are gradually being dismissed in favour of new technologies. Unfortunately, there is a general misunderstanding about what such technologies do. This paper was written from a PhD study, and looks at how such misunderstandings emerge across the higher education sector of one country. Institutional policies and other documents related to plagiarism were analysed from public universities across South Africa, and this was then augmented with interviews with members of institutional plagiarism committees. The results of the study revealed that technology is a key facet in these universities’ attempts to reduce the incidents of plagiarism, and that Turnitin is the most favored text-matching tool. However, the software is misunderstood to be predominantly a plagiarism detection tool for policing purposes, ignoring its educational potential for student development. The implication is that, if Turnitin is primarily used as a policing tool, students are not only denied access to nuanced pedagogical interventions that might develop their academic writing, but its misuse could also change students’ behavior in undesirable ways.
- Format
- 10 pages
- Format
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education
- Relation
- Mphahlele, A. and McKenna, S., 2019. The use of turnitin in the higher education sector: Decoding the myth. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 44(7), pp.1079-1089.
- Relation
- Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education number 47 number 7 1079 1089 2019 1469-297X
- Rights
- Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Taylor & Francis Online Terms and Conditions Statement (https://www.tandfonline.com/terms-and-conditions)
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Collections
McKenna, Sioux (Prof)
RU Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning (CHERTL)
RU Department of Education
SDG 04. Quality Education
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