Anyone know of any places where I can get some good free stuff? I have a couple of essays that need to go through turnitin and want to make sure that they’ll get a low plagiarism score. They are a bit of a halfassed attempt, so….

I use turnitin at uni and im fairly sure it uses its own database of previously submitted work. if this is true then running it though any other software is pretty useless, unless you just copied shit from a website.

Run it through the programme yourself check the score then change some of the words in stock phrases.

Problem is that our uni only gives us one go at running it through turnitin and that’s when we submit it.

Send them to me and I’ll re-jig them if you want; I’m bored.

http://www.scanmyessay.com/turnitin.php Any good??

You could try writing your essay, rather than plagiarising it.

HTH

Zokes – they are stupidly short 750 word essays on very specific subjects where there has been a lot of research carried out. We have a stupidly low plagiarism limit of 5% and it’s pretty difficult to ensure that you’re under that limit without running it through some software…

HTH.

So.. is it plagiarised or not?

If your lecturers have decided 5% is the limit they don’t understand how turnitin works. In fact they aren’t approaching plagiarism in the right manner. Ive put journal articles I’ve written through TII and got scores of 5-20% and I know they arent plagiarised. The system should be used as back up, you can spot plagiarism a mile off if you’re worth your salt, and TII saves you time googling for phrases.

Sounds like some of your lecturers are lazy.

So how do all the other students cope without their own software?

I’ve never had an issue, but then I’ve never plagiarised anyone, so I guess it hadn’t crossed my mind…

I’m sure writers of Science Brevia articles don’t struggle, and the word limit on those is about 500 I think.

Easy way not to get caught plagiarising – do your own work.

HTH

To be honest, most of us marking these essays are ploughing through so many of them which are often heavily plagiarised, sometimes so obviously. But the procedure for reporting plagiarism is so contorted, with the result, if successful, being that the student is expelled. If you get away with plagiarism, it’s usually because we cant be arsed.

Google is usually much better than turnitin.

yawn

To be honest, most of us marking these essays are ploughing through so many of them which are often heavily plagiarised, sometimes so obviously. But the procedure for reporting plagiarism is so contorted, with the result, if successful, being that the student is expelled. If you get away with plagiarism, it’s usually because we cant be arsed

Yeh – Sadly that’s why turnitin does get used, I think. Just so we can have “incontrovertible” evidence, even if it’s ****. If it was me reading your stuff, I’d look for plagiarism if your turnitin score was high (and you’d be buggered if I felt you had done so) but I wouldn’t expect to fail you if I didn’t find it (you def get false positives).

Zokes – go and look for an argument elsewhere, you wont get one here.

Surrounded By Zulus – Member
Zokes – go and look for an argument elsewhere, you wont get one here.

Try writing your own work, then you won’t have any issues. You’ll probably have to once you’ve left uni anyway, so you may as well start now…

If you aren’t plagiarising, then why worry?

viper was good for me.

I wrote my final PGCE essay using it.

I googled quotes on reflective practice and got a whole word document of quotes and wrote around them. Started at 65% plagerised, by the time I had tinkered, it was 25%, another mess and down to 8.5% and very little work from me thinking wise other than personal input and the highest mark I got in any of my papers.

I googled quotes on reflective practice and got a whole word document of quotes and wrote around them. Started at 65% plagerised, by the time I had tinkered, it was 25%, another mess and down to 8.5% and very little work from me thinking wise other than personal input and the highest mark I got in any of my papers.

😯

Am I really the only one who has an issue with people cutting and pasting from the internet for university essays? My views on tuition fees are rapidly being reversed…

In the good old days you had it type it in by hand from the the paper you were plagiarising 🙂

Surrounded By Zulus – Member

We have a stupidly low plagiarism limit of 5% and it’s pretty difficult to ensure that you’re under that limit without running it through some software…

What mickey mouse university doesn’t have a standard 0% plagiarism requirement?

If i even use a sentance that isn’t referenced (to the letter) I would get dismissed off of the course and quite rightly so.

bloody students!

What mickey mouse university doesn’t have a standard 0% plagiarism requirement?

Turnitin is somewhat flawed, hence the 5% threshold – one would hope (blind hope, given what’s been written up there) that if a lecturer did spot plagiarism themselves, then the repercussions would be quite severe. At my old uni it was one strike (no mark for that work), then you were out.

Faced with the requirement to produce an essay on the very tedious subject of Urbanism, I once copied the entire chapter verbatim from the Macropedia Britannica* and submitted it. Wholly expecting it to be identified as plagiarism (It was my own little protest at a crappy part of the course by a crappy lecturer) I was rather surprised to have been awarded a B- for it 🙄 Stupid lecturer she was.

* back in the days of paper books and word processors.

I never have to put my work through software, using endnote its so easy to reference throughout the rough draft.

email me if you want a copy it may help future writing.

eta, does no one get a real buzz from producing a brilliant piece of original work? or am I just a compete spod?

The best plagiarism Dr North was presented with was when she was running a taught masters a couple of years ago.

The student had already got one plagiarism strike for “failure to reference” (i.e. copying chunks of papers from Google and passing them off as his own work). The next time, he handed in a print of the code from a programming assignment that was identical to an another student’s.

Dr North hauled him into her office and, in the presence of another lecturer, quizzed him about this. His simple explanation was that back home in India if you understood another student’s work, you could hand it in as your own.

Dr North, rather incensed, proclaimed “I might understand Einstein’s work, but I can’t claim that as my own..!”

He was sent down.

eta, does no one get a real buzz from producing a brilliant piece of original work? or am I just a compete spod?

I’m with you, but as usual, sensible, reasoned argument won’t get you far on STW…

Am I really the only one who has an issue with people cutting and pasting from the internet for university essays?

Depends: if you’re studying IT with a view to becoming a programmer it’s pretty much what you’ll be doing for the rest of your working life 🙂

Depends: if you’re studying IT with a view to becoming a programmer it’s pretty much what you’ll be doing for the rest of your working life

Hence MS Windows?

We have a stupidly low plagiarism limit of 5%

Wow, that is low and stupid. I use turnitin for my students’ work and only large chunks of cut and paste are challenged. You should complain vociferously through your staff-student committee. They should either let you resubmit work until it passes, or drop the meaningless and arbitrary limit. Meanwhile – quotes in quote-marks and fully referenced should solve the problem…

I saw someone hand in a photo copy of someone’s complete practical folder.

he was ejected from the course the person who lent the folder (and had no idea what had happened) got massively penalised also.

I have come to the conclusion that Turnitin is a load of crap. My original, extremely well referenced essays came back with a similarity mark of 29%.

Dr M_B asked me to check over some essays she was marking because she thought they read a bit oddly. <5 minutes with Google and it turns out the student had copied whole chunks from an non-course textbook, changing the odd word for a synonym. Essay was flagged up and sent back. Nothing happened on this occasion as they were foreign and their schooling culture allowed or even encouraged plagiarism, even though this was a UK university (not a very good one mind). Craziness.

. Nothing happened on this occasion as they were foreign and their schooling culture allowed or even encouraged plagiarism (and paid pots of money to let them study with you?)

I think that was about it CM. It was a, erm, lesser well known university that attracted a lot of foreign students. Dr(Mrs) M_B was working there for a term as they had a staffing issue.

CharlieMungus – Member
(and paid pots of money to let them study with you?)

Nail.. Head…BANG.

Am I really the only one who has an issue with people cutting and pasting from the internet for university essays? My views on tuition fees are rapidly being reversed…

It was and it wasn’t. I had the book that the quotes came from, just didn’t want to read it.

It was a reflective essay anyway, from a mickey mouse university via a rather poor college

I wrote my final PGCE essay using it.

Nope this is scarier – assuming you passed, a lot of very unfortunate kids now have someone who cheated their way through college as a teacher and influence. Nice one…

Sheeeeet! I…I…erm…I…er…agree with…er…er…erm…zokes.
😳

Nope this is scarier – assuming you passed, a lot of very unfortunate kids now have someone who cheated their way through college as a teacher and influence. Nice one…

makes a change from a lot of unfortunate kids being taught by someone who couldnt make it in the real world instead…

dons asbestos cape and legs it >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

😉

Nope this is scarier – assuming you passed, a lot of very unfortunate kids now have someone who cheated their way through college as a teacher and influence. Nice one…

You don’t even want to know how I got through my main degree then…..