The Center of Education Policy released a report based on a survey of 40 states that have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) about assessments aligned to the Common Core. This was in an effort to learn more about states' policies, progress, and challenges in assessing students' mastery of the CCSS and preparing to implement assessments aligned to these standards.

Key Findings:

27 of the 40 states surveyed have already taken steps to start assessing students’ mastery of the Common Core or will do so before the consortia-developed assessments are ready in school year 2014-15.	Half of the survey states have begun undertaking activities to prepare teachers to interpret and use the results of the diagnostic assessments being developed by the state testing consortia.
19 of the states surveyed have started working with districts and schools to plan both extra assistance for students who may need help in passing CCSS-aligned exams and remediation for students who fail the exams on the first try.	Only 8 survey states are considering temporarily suspending consequences for schools or individuals based on student performance once the CCSS-aligned assessments are administered.
33 survey states are planning to conduct public relations efforts to help educate parents and other stakeholders about the reasons why students may not perform as well on the CCSS-aligned assessments as on current state tests.	A majority of the survey states that belong to one or both of the state testing consortia expressed positive views about key features of the consortia-developed assessments.
17 of the states surveyed are considering administering CCSS-aligned assessments in addition to or instead of those being developed by Smarter Balanced or PARCC.	A majority (34) of survey states report facing challenges with various aspects of preparing to administer the CCSS-aligned assessments.

<pAccording to the Higher Education Technology Survey conducted by the Consero Group, 78% of CIOs surveyed said their departments have little or no ability to stop students from using information technology to cheat. Specifically, 30% said they had no ability to prevent cheating, while 48% classified their ability to prevent it as "low."

 

"With the evolution of technology generally, the ability to cheat has evolved," said Consero CEO Paul Mandell. So he found it surprising that the vast majority of the respondents said the IT function is not involved in preventing cheating.

Turnitin extends its remit to include HWP file type

Turnitin has recently announced that it is working in partnership with Hancom of South Korea, creators of the Hancom Office suite of software, to support the country’s most widely used word processing file type (the .hwp format) in Turnitin the world’s leading plagiarism detection service. Turnitin started accepting .hwp files earlier this year.

Turnitin is extremely proud to host the first ever series of African Integrity seminars in both Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Following on from Turnitin co-founder Dr John Barrie’s South Africa trip last year, the first ever series of African Academic Integrity Seminars are a major step forward in the region targeting the issue of plagiarism and sharing views and opinion on the nature of the problem.

The first opportunity to attend this event will be on Monday 20th May at the University of Cape Town. However, to ensure that as many of you are able to benefit from the seminar, it will be repeated on the 24th May at the University of Johannesburg.

Participants at both seminars will include Turnitin users as well as those who do not currently use the system, but wish to gain some information about its many advantages and about academic integrity in general.

The seminar has a varied programme Keynote speakers include Dr Cath Ellis from the University of Huddersfield (UK) who will be covering the subject of E-assesment, and Stella Orim from the University of Coventry (UK) who will be covering international perceptions of plagiarism. Other speakers are to be announced at a later date.

While the internet has been a boon for information access and availability, three out of four educators strongly agree that "search engines have conditioned students to expect to be able to find information quickly and easily," according to a Pew Internet & American Life Project study entitled, How Teens Do Research in the Digital World.

Most of the advanced placement (AP) and National Writing Project teachers in this study said students are "very likely" to use Google, Wikipedia, and social media sites for typical research assignments.

This is consistent with findings from Turnitin's recent research that analyzes the most frequently matched Internet sources (released in January) which show that Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers, and eNotes were the top three among secondary students. At the college and university level, the top three were Wikipedia, OPPapers (a paper mill), and SlideShare.

 

It turns out that teachers use Wikipedia much more often than U.S. adult internet users at large (87% vs. 53%), according to a Pew Research Center study, "How Teachers Are Using Technology at Home and in Their Classrooms" released on February 28, 2013.

"Wikipedia is really an encyclopedia that presents information from consensus," says Renee Bangerter, professor of English at Saddleback College in a Turnitin webcast entitled What's Wrong with Wikipedia. She goes on to say, "But it is what it is, a general encyclopedia, and in academic writing we really want students to be moving towards primary or secondary sources."

Teachers have been known to often discourage students from using Wikipedia because of concerns about the accuracy of user-generated, crowd-sourced content. Despite this, students still commonly make Wikipedia their first stop when starting their online research. If students are to use Wikipedia, they should use it to familiarize themselves with a quick summary of a topic before moving on to other more credible sources.

Turnitin recently made available The Source Educational Evaluation Rubric (SEER), as a free interactive PDF that you can use to score any website you want. You can use it to evaluate student sources, or better yet, have your students use it to self-evaluate the sources they use.

What do students’ sources suggest about their approach to online research?

Turnitin's annual study examines the sources students use in their written work and the implications of their choices. This study was conducted for both Higher Ed and Secondary Education.

The higher ed study and infographic is based on an analysis of over 112 million content matches from more than 28 million student papers submitted to Turnitin between July 2011 and June 2012. Included are recommendations for educators on how to improve student research and citation skills.		The secondary education study and infographic is based on an analysis of over 44 million content matches from more than 9 million student papers submitted to Turnitin between July 2011 and June 2012. Included are recommendations for educators on how to improve student research and citation skills.

Our team has recently re-launched Plagiarism.org, an educational and informative resource on plagiarism and best practices for ensuring originality in written work.

This site, geared toward students and writers in general, offers a wealth of information specifically about plagiarism, as well as information on how to properly attribute and cite sources. On Plagiarism.org, you'll also find an "Ask the Experts" feature, FAQs, and a resource section with downloadable handouts for students.

Visit Plagiarism.org and share this resource with your students.

Keeping students honest in and outside of class time is a challenge for most educators. Add in the movement toward online classes, and the challenge is only compounded. A recent story in U.S. News and World Report discusses the variety of ways that educators are dealing with academic dishonesty and plagiarism.

"In every single class, we have information on what plagiarism is, and a major piece is that we hold our students accountable if they're caught," says Diane Johnson, assistant director of faculty services at St. Leo University in Florida. She goes on to say that students have been disciplined in the past for copying others' work. "If you hear that one of your classmates has been reported for plagiarism, it gives you an impetus to not do it too."

Essays from essay writing services often contain extensive material cribbed from online sources as well as material from banks of standard essays that have been recycled many times over. Students who purchase so-called custom-written essays may not be getting as original work as they think. Because of the size and reach of Turnitin's databases, Turnitin is likely to flag content in so-called custom essays as unoriginal.

In a blog posting by Dan Ariely (professor at Duke University and the author of "The Honest Truth About Dishonesty" and "Predictably Irrational") entitled "Plagiarism and essay mills," he explains the results of an experiment in which he purchased custom essays to check out their quality. After receiving the absurdly poor quality essays produced by these services, he concludes, "...the day is not here where students can submit papers from essay mills and get good grades for them. Moreover, we concluded that if students did try to buy a paper from an essay mill, just like us, they would feel that they have wasted their money and won’t try it again."