New Software Product Delivers Constructive Plagiarism Solution in Time for New School Year.

A new Windows-based desktop software application constructively addresses the fear of inadvertent plagirism and, at the same time, delivers productivity savings and collaboration features that excite both teachers and students.

Atlanta, GA (PRWEB) August 13, 2004 -- An Atlanta-based software company has produced an exciting new desktop software product that reduces for students and teachers the fear that they might become unknowing plagiarists sometime during the new school year. The company, Uniting Networks, Inc. (UNI), considers its product, PowerResearcher, to be a constructive approach to helping solve the plagiarism problem prevalent among students in schools and universities while doing research projects and assignments. The PowerResearcher software automatically cites everything lifted from the web before it is filed or pasted into a paper or report, thus preventing those who are forgetful, lazy or simply too busy from omitting to cite their sources.

PowerResearchers citation feature has generated a lot of interest because of the enormous plagiarism problem at schools and universities around the world", says Peter Steyn, an officer of the company. While designing the product we addressed the plagiarism issue and determined that it would be a bonus if we could deliver a preventative solution within PowerResearcher. Until now, the only available solutions for educators against plagiarism by students have been detection services. Our goal was to be constructive and create a means to enable students to avoid the mistakes that might mark them as 'inadvertent plagiarists. We believe that we have achieved our goal. Prevention, in our view, is better than after-the-fact detection".

Teachers and students will be hearing a lot about PowerResearcher in the coming months", says Steyn. We see the plagiarism feature as being major but the teachers appear to consider the 360-degree Assignment Model to be as exiting". Teachers have indicated a strong interest in the products '360 Assignment Model, a process whereby they prepare an Assignment Starter Project with teaching materials that are passed digitally to their students. These materials could include lesson plans, assignment instructions, sample web pages plus the assignment schedule or plan. Students use this as the starting point for their work and always have the instructors instructions at their fingertips. Students hand in their projects digitally, thus completing the 360-degree assignment cycle.

PowerResearcher is also being touted as a great productivity tool. It combines all the common tools needed for research and writing into one easy-to-use Windows-based application. It automates many of the repetitive tasks in research such as the saving and organizing of files, the source logging and the citation formatting. This automation saves time, thereby creating more time for teaching and learning.

The fact that, in addition to the plagiarism prevention and collaboration features, there will also be significant savings of time for everybody in the research process is an added bonus", adds Steyn.

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