Madras university set to offer online media studies

Chennai: Madras University is all set to take off with a new two-year course on journalism that trains students on effective use of smart phones as a journalism tool.

Speaking at the launch of course and facilities, Gopalan Ravindran, Head of the Journalism Department, said, conventional media has been around for a while, but digital journalism has been making sea of changes in journalism.      

A specialised online media lab has been set up on its premises for students to take up the two-year course in online media.

Apart from handling conventional tools of journalism, the course will also deal with online privacy and defamation issues.

Students completing this new course will be awarded a Master's degree in journalism.

According to sources, Madras University is one of the first in the country to offer journalism courses, as early as 1947. 

Madras University to curb plagiarism in research papers

Chennai: In an effort to curb plagiarism in research papers, the Madras University plans to purchase a specialized software that would detect copied thesis papers. 

While speaking at an International Conference on Innovations in Contemporary IT research organized by Quaid-e-Millath College for Women recently, G Thiruvasagam, Vice-chancellor of Madras University, said that the varsity has been receiving several complaints on plagiarized research papers. Soon, the university would purchase a specialized software, Turnitin to track copied research papers after the approval of senate on Feb 21. 

Briefing about the functioning of the software, Thiruvasagam said that research papers submitted by scholars will be stored in a database. When a new research paper or thesis is submitted, the software scans the database for content that may have been copied from an earlier scholar's paper. Plagiarism has affected the quality of research papers, he said.