Turnitin Highlights Importance Of Originality Checking Following Ministerial Resignation Over Plagiarism Allegations
- Global education software provider Turnitin says that Aschbacher's case demonstrates the need for universities to use robust academic integrity tools to help prevent plagiarism before submission.
- The database of the plagiarism checker currently used by Slovakian institutions is predominantly Slovak content, thereby making it more difficult to identify similarity in work submitted in other languages
NEWCASTLE, England, Jan. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- With the Austrian minister for labour, families and youth, Christine Aschbacher, facing allegations of plagiarism, Turnitin has highlighted the need for education institutions across Slovakia to implement improved originality checking solutions throughout the learning process.
Christine Aschbacher has resigned due to allegations that her thesis submitted last year to the Technical University of Bratislava in Slovakia was plagiarised.
Aaran Yaverski, Turnitin Regional VP, EMEA explained: "This case demonstrates exactly why robust academic integrity solutions must be in place for universities across Slovakia. Without effective originality checks, universities are leaving themselves open to academic misconduct cases such as these.
"If institutions cannot be sure that students' work is truly their own and that their grades haven't been honestly earned, this also has major consequences for employers taking on graduates from Slovakian universities - as the Austrian government is now seeing."
Using Turnitin software, Aschbacher's thesis was found to have a significant lack of citation and referencing.
Similarity scores are a feature of Turnitin's academic integrity solutions, and are designed to help students and teachers identify unoriginal work. Turnitin has the largest academic database of its kind in the world, comparing submissions against its database of over 70 billion current and archived web pages and 1 billion student papers, with submission available in all languages.
In contrast, the plagiarism checker currently used by Slovakian universities is predominantly made up of Slovak content - meaning universities are at risk of non-Slovakian texts being submitted without accurate similarity checks, thereby increasing the chance of misconduct. Auschbacker's thesis was submitted to the Technical University of Bratislava in German.
In addition to its comprehensive similarity checker, Turnitin also offers a number of tools and resources to support institutions in upholding academic integrity. This includes assessment and grading solutions to save time marking and support the transition to online learning, as well as resources to support students' critical thinking.
About Turnitin
Turnitin is a global company dedicated to ensuring the integrity of education and research and supporting the development of original thinking skills. For more than 20 years, Turnitin has partnered with educational institutions to promote honesty, consistency, and fairness. Our products are used by educators to guide their students towards higher standards of integrity and by students and researchers to do their best, original work. Turnitin is headquartered in Oakland, Calif., with international offices in the U.K., Netherlands, Australia, Korea, India, and throughout Latin America. Over 15,000 academic institutions, publishers, and corporations use our products: Feedback Studio, Gradescope, iThenticate, Turnitin Originality, Turnitin Similarity.
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