Turnitin conducted a study in 2011-2012 to examine the secondary sources that students use in their written essays. “It is based on an analysis of over 44 million content matches from more than 9 million student papers” (Turnitin, 2013, p. 3). KEY FINDINGS The key findings from the study were: 1. “Students are relying on sources that have weak academic validity” (p. 3). 2. “Most troubling, 18% of content matches come from paper mills and cheat sites” (p. 3). In fact, the statistics showed that there was a 4% increase in the use of paper mills and cheat sites (p. 5) 3. “Secondary student sources vary considerably from the sources higher education students use in their writing” (p. 3). 4. “Educators should consider taking time to teach students how search engines work and how to evaluate and judge the quality of online content” (p. 3). I find this appalling! I think
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