Forget Wonder Woman, Spiderman or Captain Marvel, it’s teachers who are the real superheroes. From long days to overcrowded classrooms and a low net income, teachers and educators need all the support they can get. A common challenge is teaching students the importance of original thinking and how to reference and cite sources correctly. With over 17,000 cases of plagiarism reported in 2016 in the UK alone*, it is as important as ever to address plagiarism and teach students how to avoid it. That is where Urkund fits in.
As market leader in northern Europe with 20 years of experience, Urkund is at the forefront of detecting and preventing plagiarism. It can be integrated into all major learning management systems such as Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle, Brightspace and Sakai. All while being non-intrusive to the workflow. Connecting to Urkund is painless, quick and requires only a couple of steps.
Many former teachers work at Urkund, which means that we understand the challenges of the modern-day classroom. Especially the importance of feedback. At Urkund, we want to guide students rather than simply sending back a marked report.
Feedback, marking and grading in Urkund
Urkund is easily integrated into learning management systems to enable teachers to review student assignments. Thanks to our non-intrusive integrations into LMS systems, Urkund also allows you to grade your students’ tasks and give them valuable feedback directly in your LMS. Through strategic partnerships, Urkund can also provide feedback and marking functionality even if you are not using an LMS. Using our sophisticated matching technology, we check for potential plagiarism in submitted assignments. Results of our analysis are reported back to the teacher allowing them to take the matter into their own hands. In this way, Urkund is a valuable pedagogical tool that has a strong preventive effect, promoting originality and fairness in academic work. It gives students the right methodology and toolkit right from the start, enabling them to excel in the next steps of their education.
Original thinking – better education
Urkund does not only encourage a discussion around plagiarism, it also allows you to emphasise the importance of original thinking and creativity, which will ultimately elevate the quality of education.
Urkund is used by thousands of universities, colleges and schools worldwide including Glasgow University, Murdoch University, Forth Valley College, Dublin Institute of Technology, Gloucestershire College, Copenhagen Business School, Karolinska Institutet and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), to name a few.
As Grant Goodwin, quality assurance manager at the Dublin Business School, highlights: “Urkund has certainly assisted in reviewing cases of suspected academic impropriety.”
How do I get started?
Urkund is intuitive and effortless to use. Once an assignment is uploaded, it is analysed by our sophisticated software using machine learning algorithms to detect matches whilst minimising false positives. The findings are sent to the educator within seconds in an easy-to-read report that highlights text blocks that are potential cases of plagiarism and the sources from which they were taken. At this stage, the educator is in a position to determine whether these cases are plagiarism, based on solid evidence.
We understand that plagiarism is a serious problem in classrooms today. Prevention is always better than cure and it is important to teach students how to research, cite and reference correctly. Urkund is a tool to help you evaluate if there is a problem, but the ultimate solution to plagiarism is education.
Feel free to contact us at Urkund for a free trial and take the first step towards eliminating plagiarism at your learning institution.
Visit us here for more information or contact us at 02036 081 967 or sales@urkund.com
*QAA Plagiarism in Higher Education Report 2016
