Is it cheating or learning the craft of writing? Using Turnitin to help students avoid plagiarism

Plagiarism is a growing problem for universities, many of which are turning to software detection for help in detecting and dealing with it. This paper explores issues around plagiarism and reports on a study of the use of Turnitin in a new university. The purpose of the study was to inform the senior management team about the plagiarism policy and the use of Turnitin. The study found that staff and students largely understood the university’s policy and Turnitin’s place within it, and were very supportive of the use of Turnitin in originality checking. Students who had not used Turnitin were generally keen to do so. The recommendation to the senior management team, which was implemented, was that the use of Turnitin for originality checking should be made compulsory where possible - at the time of the study the use of Turnitin was at the discretion of programme directors. A further aim of the study was to contribute to the sector’s body of knowledge. Prevention of plagiarism through education is a theme identified by Badge and Scott (2009) who conclude an area lacking in research is "investigation of the impact of these tools on staff teaching practices". Although a number of recent studies have considered educational use of Turnitin they focus on individual programmes or subject areas rather than institutions as a whole and the relationship with policy

On the origin of spaces: morphometric foundations of urban form evolution

The modern discipline of urban morphology gives us a ground for the comparative analysis of cities, which increasingly includes specific quantitative elements. In this paper, we make a further step forward towards the definition of a general method for the classification of urban form. We draw from morphometrics and taxonomy in life sciences to propose such method, which we name ‘urban morphometrics’. We then test it on a unit of the urban landscape named ‘Sanctuary Area’ (SA), explored in 45 cities whose origins span four historic time periods: Historic (medieval), Industrial (19th century), New Towns (post-WWII, high-rise) and Sprawl (post-WWII, low-rise). We describe each SA through 207 physical dimensions and then use these to discover features that discriminate them among the four temporal groups. Nine dimensions emerge as sufficient to correctly classify 90% of the urban settings by their historic origins. These nine attributes largely identify an area's ‘visible identity’ as reflected by three characteristics: (1) block perimeterness, or the way buildings define the street-edge; (2) building coverage, or the way buildings cover the land and (3) regular plot coverage, or the extent to which blocks are made of plots that have main access from a street. Hierarchical cluster analysis utilising only the nine key variables nearly perfectly clusters each SA according to its historic origin; moreover, the resulting dendrogram shows, just after WWII, the first ‘bifurcation’ of urban history, with the emergence of the modern city as a new ‘species’ of urban form. With ‘urban morphometrics’ we hope to extend urban morphological research and contribute to understanding the way cities evolve

Mind the gaps! A research agenda for urban interstices

Processes of urbanisation can hardly be considered without reference to the spaces that lie between developments. However, the literature on such interstitial spaces is fragmentary. In this paper we draw together insights from the extant literature into a research agenda on urban interstices. We propose a research agenda centred on four themes: the multiple geographic scales at which the interstitial spaces of urban sprawl might be analysed; the pending nature of such spaces; their planned or unplanned character and their relational properties. We develop these themes, briefly illustrating them with reference to the case of metropolitan area of Santiago de Chile. In conclusion, we emphasise some of the implications of interstitial spaces for theories of urban politics and their value in forcing inter-disciplinarity in urban studies

A ‘Baby GDA’: Norwich’s Airspace during the Second World War

Throughout the Second World War, the Luftwaffe attacked Norwich on various occasions. The impact this had on the city was recorded visually on the ‘Norwich Bomb Map’. This cartographic depiction, however, only records a single ‘horizontal’ component of the aerial ‘battlescape’. In reality, the aerial battlefield comprised a combination of Norwich’s air defences and the flightpaths of the Luftwaffe bombers, which existed in three-dimensional space. As other scholars have developed methodologies for reconstructing anti-aircraft ‘fire domes’, this article will combine these concepts with a new approach that reconstructs historic flightpaths to give a three-dimensional overview of Norwich’s ‘Gun Defended Area’. By examining all components of Norwich’s airspace, this article will demonstrate the importance of considering the vertical component of a battlescape

Rethinking place-making: aligning placeness factors with perceived urban design qualities (PUDQs) to improve the built environment in historical district

Understanding the concept of place is critically important for urban design and place-making practice, and this research attempted to investigate the pathways by which perceived urban design qualities (PUDQs) influence placeness factors in the Chinese context. Twelve hypotheses were developed and combined in a structural equation model for validation. The Tanhualin historical district in Wuhan, China was selected for the analysis. As a result, place attachment was verified as a critical bridge factor that mediated the influence of PUDQs on place satisfaction. Among the five selected PUDQs, walkability and space quality were revealed as the most influential factors associated with place attachment and place satisfaction. Accessibility was actually indirectly beneficial to place-making via the mediation of walkability. Corresponding implications and strategies were discussed to maintain the sense of place for historic districts