turnitin.com

**palmer_eldritch** · 3rd January 2007, 02:17 PM

Anyone make use of this anti-plagiarism thingy, turnitin.com? Is it recommended?

**Ric_** · 3rd January 2007, 04:11 PM

Looks interesting... how much we talking? I like the way it has Moodle integration too.

**palmer_eldritch** · 3rd January 2007, 04:22 PM

We're having a demo / sales pitch for it here at the end of the month, apparently. I'm attending in a 'technical capacity', so we shall see. The demo videos on the site have quite humourous voiceovers, I know that much.

**palmer_eldritch** · 4th January 2007, 11:45 AM

The teacher concerned here has just told me the cost - for a college of approx. 2000 students it's £1100. Also, on the web site they have a list of what I assume is current users - this includes 'all colleges and universities in the UK'. Interesting.

**palmer_eldritch** · 4th January 2007, 11:56 AM

More news on the price of this (I'm talking to myself here, obviously

), apparently it's an annual fee of £400 plus 41p per student on roll, with a month's free trial.

**Ric_** · 4th January 2007, 12:28 PM

Probably best to trial it during the coursework handin period then to see how many of the little tykes get caught cheating and therefore see if it is worth investing in (would be £850-ish for me).

**russdev** · 4th January 2007, 12:41 PM

But then do schools need system like this as coursework in traditional format is being phased out.

**palmer_eldritch** · 4th January 2007, 01:11 PM

Quite. In my experience it's very obvious when a stude's plagiarised - their work suddenly makes sense!

**john** · 4th January 2007, 09:14 PM

We had a brochure on this at work before Christmas if I remember correctly, think it went to our exams officer to see what they thought of it, no doubt will be discussed by manglement etc

**palmer_eldritch** · 31st January 2007, 04:19 PM

Just had the sales pitch by a young chap from Northumbria Education, who sell turnitin in Europe. Apparently 85% of UK universities use it and 40 colleges. That's '40', not '40%'. My overall impression was that signing up to a service like turnitin is a bit like having an anti-virus or anti-spam system - you have a system to deal with a problem and without it, certain important people connected with your yearly income are going to ask questions come audit / inspection time. I would think these questions have already been asked at HE level - perhaps for FE it is only a matter of time?