University of Toronto discontinues use of Turnitin, Bb Collaborate

U of T recently decided to make some changes to the programs they use for online learning, including terminating their use of Turnitin, a plagiarism detection service, and Blackboard Collaborate (Bb Collaborate), a web conferencing tool.

U of T will now use Ouriginal, a plagiarism detection service similar to Turnitin, which is integrated directly into Quercus. The change follows a report that found an increase in reported academic offences at U of T last year, which the report partially attributes to the COVID-19 pandemic and the move to online learning. 

SEE ALSO: Turnitin to acquire Sweden's Ouriginal

AJR's comments: Monopolies are good for business. Every publisher owner knows that.

Abandoning of Turnitin

U of T’s switch from Turnitin to Ouriginal took effect on September 1. According to Vice-Provost Academic Programs Susan McCahan, the change occurred following the end of the university’s contract with Turnitin, which meant U of T could explore other options for plagiarism detection. 

“Ouriginal meets our pedagogical, functional, privacy and fiscal requirements,” McCahan stated, explaining that the software is “a similarity detection solution that combines text-matching, with writing-style analysis to promote academic integrity and help prevent plagiarism.”  

Ouriginal can also check for similarities between newly submitted work and previous work from the same academic course. According to an announcement from the Academic & Collaborative Technologies Group, community consultations with instructors indicated that the ability to check submitted work against previously submitted work was important, to prevent what they describe as “hand-me-down assignments.” 

According to the announcement, Ouriginal is able to compare new submissions with large bodies of old work — including, in some cases, work submitted anytime in the past 15 years. 

Since Ouriginal is accessed via Quercus, there will be no major changes to the way that instructors and students interact with assignment submissions. This means that work submitted over Quercus is analyzed by Ouriginal software without the student submitting the work directly through Ouriginal, similar to how Turnitin has worked in the past. 

The changes come amid an increase in reported academic offences committed by students, which, according to last year’s report on academic misconduct, rose by 35 per cent in the 2019–2020 academic year. 

In a report on academic integrity, an advisory group noted that this increase may be related to the pandemic and the associated transition to online learning, which has resulted in U of T having to lean heavily on academic integrity software given the loss of in-person proctoring. 

Termination of Bb Collaborate

Due to another supplier contract expiration, U of T will also stop using the webinar software Bb Collaborate for classes and meetings. Termination of its use took effect on August 31. Professors can still use alternate solutions for virtual courses, like Microsoft Teams and Zoom Education, while the university completes a procurement process.

Since the decision to terminate Bb Collaborate occurred close to the beginning of the fall term, some instructors found the change abrupt. Avi Hyman, U of T’s director of academic technology, sent an email apologizing to previous Bb Collaborate users for any potential miscommunication. 

“We have received some direct feedback about these changes from instructors, ranging from very positive feelings about the changes to some concern,” wrote McCahan. “To mitigate any concerns and to assist with the transition, we have put in place additional support for instructors, including additional staffing, enhanced documentation, and training through the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation and divisional [Educational Technology] offices.”

In an email to The Varsity, Michael Dennison, a sessional instructor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, wrote that he chose to use Bb Collaborate because it was integrated with Quercus, but that it didn’t offer the same features as some other programs. He added that he believes the change will not have much effect on students, since there are other programs available. 

https://thevarsity.ca/2021/09/12/u-of-t-discontinues-use-of-turnitin-bb-collaborate/

Turnitin to acquire Sweden's Ouriginal

Turnitin is set to reinforce its dominance as the biggest provider of anti-plagiarism software to universities in Australia, through a proposed takeover of competitor Ouriginal.

The move has put the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) on high alert, as it raises concerns that Turnitin is “buying out its most promising competitive threat to protect its market position,” as Ouriginal is one of just two competitors in Turnitin’s market.

Turnitin is the University of Sydney’s choice for anti-plagiarism software, and is by far the largest player in the market. The ACCC’s Statement of Issues says that Turnitin has “large databases that contain over 1.4 billion student papers” and “82 million scholarly subscription articles,” allowing it to comprehensively check student assignments against existing material.

Ouriginal is “much smaller than Turnitin in Australia.” It currently services only a handful of higher education institutions such as the University of Canberra and Murdoch University. 

Despite Turnitin’s current dominance, however, the ACCC says that Ouriginal could develop into a strong competitor to Turnitin if it does not merge.

The ACCC is concerned that the takeover will “substantially lessen competition in an already highly concentrated market and may lead to higher prices or reduced service levels for the Australian higher education sector.”

A third player, SafeAssign, is made by learning management software provider Blackboard, and is used by universities such as Griffith University, Torrens University, James Cook University and Queensland University of Technology.

The ACCC contends that Turnitin’s size gives it a commercial advantage over other software providers, as it experiences “economies of scale” (cost savings that companies gain from being larger and running more efficiently) and “network effects” (benefits from more people using your service, like how social media companies benefit from more users).

These lead to major “barriers to entry”, making it incredibly difficult for new entrants to successfully challenge Turnitin’s position.

Turnitin’s takeover reflects a growing trend of universities spending big to crack down on “academic dishonesty” to preserve their reputations. In 2018, Turnitin introduced a new product based on machine learning, which monitors the writing styles of individual students, and flags content which shows a change in tone or voice.

Students have previously expressed concerns over USyd’s “scare tactics” approach to contract cheating, arguing for a more nuanced understanding of why certain students are incentivised to cheat.

“Universities are more than happy to spend money on anti-plagarism software over the quality of our education,” said Maddie Clark, SRC Education Officer, who also said that students should be concerned about data collection and privacy by anti-plagiarism software companies.

“Instead of paying for these programs, the university should be investing in more real life staff members,” she said.

The ACCC is yet to make a final decision on the acquisition.

http://honisoit.com/2021/09/turnitin-set-to-take-over-competitor-dominate-anti-plagiarism-software-market/

Scopus Discontinued-European Research Studies Journal (ERSJ)

Journal Name: European Research Studies Journal

Short name: ERSJ

Subject Area and Category:

Business, Management and Accounting

Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Country: Cyprus (Greece)

Review date: 2021.04.27

SJR Quartile: Was SJRQ2-now Scopus discontinued. 

ISSN: 11082976

Publisher: University of Piraeus, International Strategic Management Association

Email: thalassinos@ersj.eu

APC: $1,000

Editor(s): https://www.ersj.eu/page/editors

Beall Listed: NO

Scopus Discontinued List: We should  let you know that ERSJ was discontinued from Scopus in 2018.

Frequency:

Template:

Style: A variation of Harvard it seems.

Copyright:

Similarity threshold: ERSJ runs a Turnitin report on your submission and saves it to the central repository. (We have some very strong opinions about the three journals we have found over the years that do this.) If your paper is subsequently rejected, you might have very serious problems getting the same paper accepted elsewhere.

Submission process: Online but no tracking.

Journal Web Page Comments:

Handbook comments: This journal’s conferences. This is another journal that deceptively and prominently advertises the journal as being Scopus indexed and SJR ranked on their home page (which they are not).  Therefore, we strongly suggest another journal.