Minimizing cyber-plagiarism through turnitin: Faculty's & students’ perspectives

Abstract

This is an attempt to investigate and evaluate students’ and faculty’s experiences and understanding to the strengths and limitations of anti-plagiarism software, specifically, Turnitin and how it could be used to promote academic integrity among engineering students. 50 engineering students and 20 professors were surveyed and interviewed. The paper argues that although Turnitin is widely used these days to tackle and minimize plagiarism practices, however cyberplagiarism is increasing and the software might be inadequate in fighting such practice. The paper also questions the effectiveness and limitations of the software in relation to current practices. The findings revealed that most of the respondents perceive Turnitin positively; limitations of the software are not many and they believed that the software is effective in detecting and minimizing plagiarism incidents among their students’ papers. The study puts forward some recommendations which might help practitioners in minimizing plagiarism practices.