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Students Beware! Oulu University Bring in Plagiarism Database |
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By Ata
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Wednesday, 27 January 2010 |
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Oulu University has begun using a sophisticated piece of software in its war against student plagiarism.
A student’s work can now be fed into the Urkund Information System and analysed against previously published data. Urkund assesses how much is found in common but the lecturer is responsible for interpreting the results.
‘Students reports or their pro-gradu (Masters Thesis) are put through Urkund,’ explained Oulu University’s ethics task forced member Prof. Esa Hohtala. He recommends that students use the system to avoid being accused plagiarism.
A Zoologist, Hohtola explained to 65DN that, ‘Plagiarism is not really a problem in my department because students just do their experiments and then write about their own results. With the new Bachelor’s thesis, however, the temptation is there because it’s entirely based around other literature. However, I have fed Pro-Gradus written in very good English through Urkund and found no correspondence at all.’
Urkund’s data base includes public websites, scientific articles, encyclopaedias and books.
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