Sean Michael Morris

Sean Michael Morris, director of digital learning at UMW, spoke to University World News about plagiarism-detection firm Turnitin. A long-time critic of the company, he said the rise of ed tech was tied to larger stresses being placed on college teaching. He said that as budgets shrink, class sizes grow, and large courses are often taught by time-strapped adjuncts.

“As classrooms get larger, 40, 50, 200 students,” he said, “teachers throw up their hands and say, ‘How am I going to grade so many essays? I’m going to let technology do it for me.’”

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