FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Turnitin Compares College and Secondary Education Students’ Sources of Potential Plagiarism and Unoriginal Content

Secondary education students rely less on cheat sites and paper mills and more on social networks compared to college students

OAKLAND, Calif. – November 3, 2011 – iParadigms, creators of Turnitin and the leader in originality checking and online grading, today announced the results of a new plagiarism study which shows that secondary school students in the United States rely more heavily on social networks for content in their papers and less on cheat sites and paper mills compared to college students.

To see the findings in an infographic format, visit: https://turnitin.com/static/results/plagiarism_report.php

To read an in-depth analysis of the findings, download the free white paper at:

http://pages.turnitin.com/PlagiarismSECvsHE.html

“We hope that sharing this data will help educators initiate discussions with students regarding plagiarism and student writing,” said Chris Harrick, vice president of marketing at Turnitin. “Solutions like Turnitin can reduce unoriginal content by 50 to 75 percent for secondary and higher education schools while teaching students how to research, cite, and write correctly.”

The Turnitin study follows a recent report by the Pew Research Center that shows growing concern among college presidents about the issue of plagiarism. Of the 1,055 presidents surveyed, 55 percent believe that plagiarism is increasing in their institutions while just two percent believe it is decreasing.

The new Turnitin study examined 128 million content matches from 33 million student papers that were submitted to Turnitin between June 2010 and June 2011. The study uncovered the most popular categories of content used in student papers.

Web Sites Secondary Higher Difference
Social & Content-Sharing 31.1% 26.1% 5%
Homework & Academic 22.3% 22.0% 0.3%
Cheat Sites & Paper Mills 14.1% 19.6% -5.5%
News & Portals 12.3% 16.6% -4.3%
Encyclopedia 11.2% 12.4% -1.2%
Other 9.0% 3.2% 5.8%

Wikipedia remained the most popular source for both secondary and higher education. Eight sites appear on the top ten list of both secondary and higher education.

Secondary Higher Ed
1 Wikipedia 7.99% Wikipedia 10.74%
2 Yahoo Answers 7.55% Yahoo Answers 3.90%
3 Answers.com 3.37% Slideshare 3.87%
4 eNotes 2.90% Answers.com 3.57%
5 Slideshare 2.38% Oppapers.com 3.11%
6 Scribd 2.38% Coursehero 3.01%
7 Oppapers 1.93% Scribd 2.95%
8 Amazon 1.85% Justanswer.com 1.60%
9 Essaymania 1.83% eNotes 1.58%
10 123helpme 1.71% Amazon 1.21%

For more information on how to engage students during the writing process and reduce the use of unoriginal content or improper citation in student writing, visit www.turnitin.com.

About iParadigms LLC
iParadigms, LLC is the world’s leading provider of web-based solutions for plagiarism prevention. The company’s products include Turnitin, used by educators worldwide to check students’ papers for originality, to enable web-based peer review and for digital grading of student work. iParadigms’ iThenticate solution is the leader in plagiarism detection in research, publishing and many other commercial markets. The company’s solutions check millions of documents each month and are used in over 100 countries. iParadigms is headquartered in Oakland, CA with an international office located in Newcastle, United Kingdom. iParadigms is backed by Warburg Pincus.
http://www.turnitin.com and http://www.ithenticate.com

iParadigms Media Contact:
Chris Harrick, Vice President of Marketing
Phone: +(1) 510.764.7579
Email: charrick@iparadigms.com

Christine Allman
Phone: +(1) 410.975.9638
Email: Christine@kehcomm.com

All products and services mentioned in this document are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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