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1. Introduction: rationale for using Turnitin
Plagiarism is a growing problem in Universities ([8] Park, 2003; Peacock et al. , 2006; [2] Biggam, 2008). Furthermore, the reasons for plagiarism are not hard to fathom. There is the deliberate cheat consciously intent on submitting work that is not their own. Then there is the student who does not know that what he is doing counts as plagiarism, or he does know but lacks the skills to do anything about it (or thinks that it is acceptable practice). The pressure of work may lead students to turn to plagiarism as a quick solution. Some students may look at the penalty for plagiarism and decide that it is not a deterrent and decide, furthermore, that cheating was a sensible use of their resources. Some even claim that the use of Turnitin, an anti-plagiarism tool in commonplace usage in Universities ([10] Regan, 2008), has contributed to the increase of essay-bank sites as a result of a technological tit-for-tat war ([6] Kantor, 2006).
Notwithstanding the aforementioned criticism of Turnitin, other detractors criticize the effectiveness of Turnitin in either detecting plagiarism or deterring acts of plagiarism ([5] Hayes and Introna, 2005; [1] Biggam, 2007; [3] Davis, 2007). For example, [7] Marshall and Garry (2006) raise the point that many students themselves appear unaware of what constitutes plagiarism. [2] Biggam (2008) underlines this point when he identifies a variety of different types of plagiarism: wholesale unacknowledged copying of text verbatim, patchwork plagiarism, poor paraphrasing, and taking someone else's ideas without due acknowledgement.
However, the purpose of this paper is not to delve into the causes of plagiarism or to work out how to punish transgressors. This study aimed to implement part of the holistic model developed by [2] Biggam (2008) on dealing with plagiarism: the education of students to minimize incidences of plagiarism. The authors wanted to find out if students would use Turnitin voluntarily to understand the different types of plagiarism that can occur in their own work, to improve their writing skills, and to, in the end, reduce the chances of plagiarism in their final submission. The findings of this paper, based on empirical research ought to help those institutions interested in using Turnitin as a learning tool to confront...