Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences has adopted the Urkund anti-plagiarism service to be used by its teachers in the struggle against copy and paste fraud committed by students. Urkund is an online service that checks documents sent to it via email in an automated process for text strings copied from Internet resources. It also compares text with its own database of previously checked documents.
A teacher wishing to use Urkund needs an Urkund account which is tied to a special email address. Documents can be sent as single email attachments to this Urkund email address for processing. If you are a staff member and do not yet possess an Urkund account, you can request one from Kaisa Vesämäki.
By far the easiest way to use Urkund is via the Moodle integration that is available now. The Urkund assignment will see students hand in documents just as in a normal Moodle assignment, but with the difference that the documents will be sent from Moodle to Urkund for processing and that Urkund will send back the result of the analysis to the assignment in Moodle within 24 hours. The teacher can open the analysis report from the assignment’s grade page without needing to access Urkund separately. Grading and commenting is done as in any other Moodle assignment.
If you wish to add an Urkund assignment to your course, there is a page in the Moodle manual to help you (http://moodle.tokem.fi/mod/book/view.php?id=51005&chapterid=17021). If you need more help than the manual can offer, you can always contact us at the eLearning Centre.
It is advisable to inform the students about Urkund and the repercussions they would face should they be caught committing fraud. After all, prevention of plagiarism is far more efficient than prosecution of the culprits.