ELEARNINGFORCE have developed an integration to Ephorus which is a Dutch developed plagiarism prevention tool.

What is Ephorus
Ephorus helps prevent plagiarism within education. It all began in 2003, when a few lecturer/teachers had had enough of increasing numbers of students handing in work that they had obtained from one another or from the internet. They decided to develop a watertight solution which they called Ephorus and which is now being used by Universities and high schools in about thirty countries. Ephorus is also used by secondary schools, vocational schools and book publishers.

Ephorus prevents plagiarism
How does it work? A student hands in their work. He sends a digital document to his lecturer/teacher. But, before it arrives, it takes a little detour via Ephorus. Ephorus then compares the document with the internet. It then produces a clear report showing any similarities found, including for example, a paragraph from a website or half a page of text from an older student who wrote a piece on the same topic. The lecturer/teacher then receives this report, automatically and simultaneously, with the student’s document. The teacher does not have to do anything else and the detour via Ephorus takes an hour at most.

Ephorus saves time
Searching the web is often the only way to establish similarities with other work if a lecturer/teacher sees a paragraph or sentence in a thesis that would have been impossible for his student to have written. But just searching the web is often extremely time-consuming and, in many cases, the source is untraceable. Ephorus, however, makes manual searching unnecessary and has a 99.99% success rate. Ephorus processes the whole document in one go and also takes work by fellow students,lesson material and previously submitted works into account. It also includes work from other educational establishments which use Ephorus.

Ephorus is extremely simple
Lecturers/teachers are always busy and are not particularly interested in learning yet another new program. That is precisely why we have three product managers working at Ephorus who are only concerned about whether or not functionality is added and how easy it is to use. Our millions of users want as comprehensive a service as possible but one that is exceptionally easy to use. Users can get to grips with Ephorus in no time at all. The manual speaks for itself and is very short; further training is not necessary. You can get to work within five minutes. Nonetheless, Ephorus does absolutely everything you would expect from a plagiarism prevention service. And more!

Visit their website for more information.

To view an example of the reports returned from Ephorus, click here