Abstract:

More and more frequently university students are asked to deliver some individual or group tasks in virtual environments, through the university digital platform. One disadvantage new technologies have brought is the easier plagiarism of tasks from classmates or from the Internet (blogs, specialized webs, encyclopedies…). Therefore, it is useful for lecturers to apply tools to detect possible plagiarism or copy, such as some software that scans the uploaded files and contrast with the Internet sources. The tool computes a partial preliminary percentage of plagiarism or detect duplicated documents. However, this software has limitations, while sometimes it can give the web page from which the paragraph was taken, in other cases search engines are better at looking inside pdf or word files in the Internet. The main conclusion is that although the new technologies and tools help, lecturers are the ones who take the decision about if there is plagiarism or not, where its expertise is the key.

Keywords:

Uploaded virtual tasks, digital platform, plagiarism, search engine.