High schools, colleges and universities alike are slowly being allowed to reopen. While educators have previously been struggling with making the switch to online classes, now they’re trying to answer tougher questions involving schools reopening amid pandemic.

When exactly should schools reopen? Should they open to all students, or only those who need to use school facilities for their learning? And of course, the question of what safety measures need to be put in place. The answers to these questions can’t be taken lightly, as they’ll affect at least 1.4 billion students worldwide.

The traditional grading scale in learning, as we know it, is facing an existential crisis. Universities and colleges have now moved most of their activities online and are currently engaged in distance learning. As with most things in life, the reality is that education technologies come with their fair share of pros and cons.

Unfortunately, some students are finding it harder to gain an education under these circumstances. Some face technological problems, like when students don’t have equal access to computers or reliable internet connections at home. As governments enforce lockdowns, students are suddenly restricted to home environments that might not be conducive to their learning. Some are forced to balance their education with providing care for younger siblings or ageing parents. All the while, many suffer from the lack of strict schedules that once gave them stability.

Over the past five years, we have made plagiarism detection more reliable and more intuitive for more than 1,000 education institutions across the globe. 

Today, I am pleased to announce that Unicheck has joined Turnitin. Together, we will further promote academic integrity by investing in technological excellence. 

Google returns about 2,410,000,000 results for the “new normal in higher education,” which is a clear indication of how vital this question is.

Some are saying that old teaching methods will have to vanish, giving way to the tech-savvy instruction. Some predict tougher competition among higher education institutions as they struggle to grow enrollments and make admissions less demanding.

To help us avoid getting lost in this round-the-clock news stream, we’ve reached out to a highly experienced specialist in making predictions based on demographic, political, and economic data.

Meet Bryan Alexander, Senior Scholar at Georgetown University and author of Academia Next,  The Futures of Higher Education.

Hardly anyone is born with the feeling that learning is important. It’s something that many of us are likely to embrace after high school graduation or even later. Who holds the key to student motivation so that they can be engaged in the knowledge discovery process? Surely, parents and instructors are involved. They can eventually help students establish their goals and find the pathway to reach them.

Here’s when fellow students also contribute greatly by showing their interest toward studies and the progress they make.

To see the world of academia through the eyes of a student and better grasp their potential motivation drivers, we’ve connected with Daniel Wong.

When investigating new instances of academic misconduct, it’s pretty easy to get buried in the minor facts and lose track of a large-scale problem.

The problem usually happens to be on the surface and signals to the instructor or course designer that a particular course requires tweaks to deliver a more personalized experience.

We contacted a true advocate of academic integrity to learn how academic dishonesty cases are now being treated in the class and tactics that every institution can apply to motivate academic integrity growth.

Please meet Dr. Zeenath Reza Khan, Assistant Professor at the University of Wollongong in Dubai, an academic integrity and cyber ethics champion, and a skillful developer of student-centered learning.

Here are the highlights of our conversation.

What does it really take to detect contract cheating if the text turns to be 100% original and goes unnoticed by plagiarism checkers? Apart from AI-driven assistants like Emma (and thoroughly studying the individual’s writing style), who or what else can tackle these issues?

We’ve connected with Pauli Alin, Assistant Professor of Technology Management at Utah Valley University, to find out how contract cheating instances are now being discovered and addressed.

It seems like the trickiest part so far has been to present a reliable proof without discrediting students’ reputation and efforts. Here’s what we’ve discovered.

E-learning has been around for quite a while, but not all the academic institutions succeeded in adopting new educational models.

We’ve talked over this issue and a lot more hot topics with Dr. Brendan Moloney, an Australian entrepreneur, author, and public speaker.

As an academic by background, Brendan used to work at the University of Melbourne and completed his PhD there as well. He had been observing big changes in the university sector and put together a team of fellow PhDs from around Australia and the world to create Darlo.

A novel coronavirus pandemic continues to cause a stir. COVID-19 cases are said to be spreading like wildfire and will reach a global peak before everything starts to slow down.

According to the official statement made by the World Health Organization, the pandemic outside China has grown 13-fold, which is a clear sign that academic institutions across the world will have to suspend studies or switch to online instruction.

Meanwhile, dozens of colleges and universities in the US, as well as the 27 EU countries and the UK, have chosen to close in-person classes until late March or early April.

You know you need to cite your references, but do you know how to do it correctly? It is important for you to show that you have spent time looking into the evidence of what is already out there before offering your perspective. Not only that, but giving credit where credit’s due can keep your originality scores high. Incorrect in-text citations or missing quotations can result in low originality scores in submitted papers, which you’ve worked hard to avoid.

So here’s a quick, full-on guide to what you need to cite, when you don’t need to cite and free online tools that you can use to help you with the process.