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Student use of plagiarism1 software is educational, some scholars say.More than half of UK universities supply students with plagiarism detection software to boost their writing skills, despite fears it may aid cheating.

According to iParadigms, the firm that owns Turnitin, the most-used plagiarism software in the UK, most universities “use the software as a teaching and learning aid as part of the assessment process2”.

Students can run essays through Turnitin’s plagiarism checker on a number of occasionsbefore submitting3 their work for marking.“This allows students to develop their academic writing skills by ... analysing the originality report4 to identify areas for improvement,” an iParadigms spokeswoman said. However, some academics say that this practice is unethical5 as it allows students to copy chunks6 of source material and tweak7 it to avoid detection, meaning Turnitin is armingboth sides in the plagiarism war.But iParadigms said student access to the software is in line with guidance from the advisory body PlagiarismAdvice.org, which has said it “favored proactive8 education rather than detection as a means to catch and punish”.

There is no definitive guidance on how universities should use text-matching9 software, with the Quality Assurance Agency’s10 recent Quality Code11 stating only that identification of cheating “may include the use of electronic submission and software” to detect plagiarised passages.

Some universities routinely ask students to run workthrough Turnitin, while others use it only if they suspect an offence has occurred.

Mary D avis, senior lecturer in E nglish for academic purposes at Ox ford B rookes University , said discussing the reports produced by plagiarism detection software was an excellent way to teach students about writing techniq ue and use of sources, particularly when working with international students who are unfamiliar with the academic referencing used in UK higher education.

“ It is very visual and immediate,” said M s. D avis, who has researched the pedagogic12 use of T urnitin.She said tutorials with students showed how “ sy nony m substitution” , in which a fewwords in a paragraph are changed to try to pass off work as original, did not work and was flagged by T urnitin.

“ Students have to use sources for academic writing in any case, so these classes inform them how they should include them with proper attribution and their own analy sis,” she added.

Not many students tried to beat the sy stem using Turnitin, M s. D avis said. “ G hostwriting14 and essay mills15 are far more dangerous to academic standards,” she added.

“ It is better if students copy and paste16 than turn to ghostwriting because they are at least attempting to engage with the subj ect, albeit17 in the wrong way ,” she said. “ Y ou can then ex plain where they are going wrong. I t’s better to educate than to punish.”