The University of Namibia has procured the services of a plagiarism detection service provided by Urkund, a completely automated system against plagiarism and is being successfully used at universities and university colleges especially in Europe.

What is Urkund? How it Work? What are its Limitations?

The video below offers a good orientation on Urkund plagiarism detection software and helps to answer these questions.

From Centre for Teaching and Learning at EU Library

Basically Urkund’s system checks all documents against three central source areas: The Internet, published material and previously submitted student material.

The Internet

The Internet contains billions of pages with varying content, from material published by universities and colleges to government material, newspaper articles, books and more. There are also commercial “cheat sites”/paper mills that provide ready-made documents. Urkund covers a huge number of internet pages with particular focus on sites with educational material.

Published Material

This area is made up of hundreds of millions of books, encyclopaedias, scientific articles etc. Some are available electronically via certain databases; others exist only in printed versions. Urkund continuously work to extend our cooperation with publishers and other information providers to widen this area.

Student Produced Documents

Student documents sent via Urkund are archived to be used as source material. The great number of documents sent through the system each year by a growing number of educational organisations creates a vast and ever ground source area which aims to make it impossible for students to plagiarise other student’s material.

Steps Urkund Follows

Urkund receives student assignments either through submission through Moodle LMS or through sending to their lecturers’ Urkund analysis address (usually: lecturer.unam@analysis.urkund.com). Once Urkund receives the email, the following happens:

1. Students submit their assignments through Moodle or send it to the lecturer’s Urkund analysis email
2. Urkund receives the documents and confirms this directly back to the students. The documents then become accessible to the lecturer through the web based inbox at www.urkund.com
3. Urkund compares the text with sources on the Internet, Urkund’s own extensive archive and Urkund’s publishing partners and reports the result to the teacher within 24 hours
4. When deadline has passed (or whenever he/she likes) the teacher logs on to the web based inbox and reviews the results of the comparisons
5. Via the web based inbox the teacher selects and opens the detailed Analysis that need to be followed up on
6. Appropriate action is taken if plagiarism is detected in line with the University’s academic integrity policy

For additional help or support regarding Urkund please contact us at CODeL.