MSc International Business

MSc International Business

Plagiarism, Turnitin & Test Yourself - Business Research

This document sets out two important tasks that you need to undertake as part of your
postgraduate skill development:

1. Plagiarism & Turnitin Essay Assessment (preparing for your first Academic Mentor meeting)
2. Test Yourself – Business research

Introduction
As a postgraduate student it is important that you quickly become familiar with locating relevant
resources in the library and the assessments set out below are designed to help you become familiar
with navigating the system, locating useful information and understanding our plagiarism software.
This knowledge will form the basis for the first meeting with your Academic mentor (AM).

Support for information searching can be found in

the Student Learning Room’/NOW Help under the You will have four meetings and a final
‘Finding Information’/Subject Resources link which assessment with your Academic Mentor
contains information on how to use the business throughout the year.
library databases to find different types of business
At these meetings you will be reviewing
publications such as journal articles, market
your skills and professional
research reports and company financial
development. Details of these meetings
information. This is all information that you will
are in your TLD Module Handbook.
need to access during your studies.

This document sets out the first two activities you need to undertake before you meet your
Academic Mentor. Part one is a short essay, and part two is a test designed to help you find
resources to complete part one. Details of both are provided below.

1. Essay Assessment
The purpose of this assessment is to give you experience of using Turnitin, the text matching
software that is used by the Business School to identify instances of poor academic practice and
potential plagiarism within assignments. It will also give you the opportunity to use, and check your
understanding of, the Harvard referencing system as well as practice essay writing.

Turnitin UK is an online service which allows for

In all your modules which are assessed in a student submissions to be compared against
written format and are not examinations, electronic sources including work submitted by
you will normally submit electronically via students at NTU and other Universities and
a module Dropbox. materials published to the internet. One of the
aims of Turnitin is to help staff identify
plagiarism and deter students from committing plagiarism. For this reason, all your summative
coursework will normally be submitted to Turnitin and an Originality Report generated for review by

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your tutor. Another aim is to help you develop high quality academic skills in employing and
referencing other author’s arguments.

Essay Assignment Details

Write a paper of a minimum of 750 words on the following topic:

Why is it important to avoid plagiarism in Higher Education and

how might text-matching software help?

Submission Details
You need to submit a first draft of your paper to the Dropbox on the NOW course page. Your paper
will then automatically be submitted to Turnitin and an originality report produced. This will be
produced by Turnitin within 24 hours and will be accessible by you via an icon next to your report in
the Dropbox.

You should then review the originality

report for any matches found by the
software that might indicate potential
plagiarism, whether intentional or
accidental. The interpretation of
originality reports will have been
explained to you in the induction phase
of TLD.
Turnitin generally works very quickly, but generally
allow at least 2 days between submitting your draft
paper to Turnitin to look at your Turnitin report and
make amends before submitting the final version of
your paper.

You then need to make amendments to your paper and to submit a final version. You submit this
final version to the dropbox by 11pm on Sunday 6th October 2019.

Preparation for your Academic Mentor meeting

Review the originality report to see how the amendments to your draft have affected the
percentage on the final paper. You should have reduced the percentage showing on the originality
report. Why is this?

You will discuss this work at your first AM meeting to ensure that you understand the Harvard
referencing system, what plagiarism is, and how Turnitin checks your assessment submissions to
produce the Originality Report.

Save the Turnitin draft and original originality reports to your computer. You will be looking at both
in your first AM meeting, so don't forget to take your laptop to this meeting. Your Academic Mentor
will email you the precise date and time.

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Guidance on Preparing your Essay assignment

 Structure: The essay will require a minimum of three sections: an introduction, a main body
where you present your arguments and a conclusion where you bring together these arguments
and explain what you have understood, or concluded having studied what others have written
about plagiarism and text-matching software. Answer both parts of the question.
 Length: the essay will need to be a minimum of 750 words excluding your references.
 Where should I look: use the Library Onesearch facility and construct a list of key words to start
your search.
 What should I be using: you should be using up to date peer reviewed journal articles or recent
books.
 How do I use them: We are moving from the descriptive to the critical at Masters level and this
is a chance to start thinking critically, so:
o Do not cut and paste. Read the articles, ensure that you understand them and pick out
the most important arguments and write them in your own words (paraphrasing).
Explain why you think that these are useful or significant. If there is a particularly
important point then you may quote this in the manner indicated to you in the Harvard
style referencing guide.
o Do not just describe what has been said; compare what different authors have said and
explain what makes them the same or different (perhaps in terms of different
approaches that have been taken, different methods or different conclusions)
o Do not just repeat the arguments you read, critically analyse them and turn their
arguments into your argument?
 What kind of things are important? This might include ideas such as: the benefits or drawbacks
of using text matching software; the views of students and tutors; cultural issues related to
plagiarism and the use of text matching software; other ways of developing good academic
practice; the reasons why plagiarism might occur; how effective text matching software such as
Turnitin is in identifying potential plagiarism; your own views of using software such as Turnitin;
or any other relevant issue you wish to include.
 How do I reference?: When writing your paper you should make sure that any direct quotes or
use of information taken from the articles or other sources you have read are correctly cited and
referenced. Make sure that you use the Harvard referencing system. Guidance on the use of
Harvard referencing is available by clicking on Help in NOW and then following the Referencing
Link within the Academic Skills section, as shown below.

 Start making all your submissions look professional: make sure that you include your name and
student ID, your Course title, Title of the work, footers and page numbers, and ensure it is
carefully spell checked, etc.

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MSc International Business

2. Test Yourself – Business Research

 Log-on to NOW and go to NOW Help link (on first page of NOW)
 Click on the Subject Resources Link within the Finding information section

 This will take you to the Content section of the NOW Student Help learning room
 Scroll down and click the Business Link on the left hand side

 Now scoll up to the top and click Test Yourself Business Research

The test is designed to practice the information retrieval skills you will need during the course,
starting from the Library OneSearch, which you can find on the opening page of NOW. It will require
you to open another window to utilise various library databases as you work through. You might
therefore find it easier to have the test open on your phone while you use your computer to search
the databases.

Key Event Reminder:

 By 11pm Sunday 6th October 2019 you need to have submitted both your draft and final Turnitin
essays to the dropbox.
 Make sure that you have these two Originality Reports available electronically to show your
Academic Mentor (AM) at your first meeting.
 Complete the quiz above to help you complete your essay and confirm with your AM that you
have completed it in your first meeting.
 Get used to keeping a close watch on your University emails and look out for the email from your
AM indicating the time and date of your first meeting.