12001

12001

General Session - Conference Presentation Only (20 minutes, no formal paper), Refereed Paper with Presentation (20 minutes)

Kiriakidis Peter, Research & Education Consulting Corporation, Toronto, Canada, KiriakidisPeter@yahoo.com
 * What is the Impact of TurnItIn on Reducing Unoriginal Work of Postgraduate Online Students?**

An accredited online university in the United States of America implemented TurnItIn in online classes in order to reduce unoriginal writing of online postgraduate students. The research problem was the lack of empirical research-based findings on the impact of TurnItIn on academic integrity. The purpose of this research was to examine the similarity index percentages, found in each TurnItIn report of each student’s assignment submitted to www.TurnItIn.com, in order to provide stakeholders with research-based findings. This study was grounded in the social learning theory of Vygotsky. The research question that guided this study was “What is the impact of TurnItIn on reducing unoriginal writing in online classes of postgraduate students?” Archived data containing the similarity index rates of TurnItIn reports were collected for 107 postgraduate students before and after the implementation of TurnItIn reports in online classes. The findings revealed that the implementation of TurnItIn reduced unoriginal writing in postgraduate online classes. The empirical evidence was that the implementation of TurnItIn has helped the online institution at the research site to reduce unoriginal writing. The TurnItIn program has the potential to help postgraduate online students to ensure original writing, which is essential for them to become lifelong learners. Education stakeholders may use these findings to improve academic integrity.

All audiences online education, postgraduate online students, online institutions, academic integrity, plagiarism, policies on reducing unoriginal writing, staff development programs for online faculty members on TurnItIn reports