Adventus.io, a SaaS-based student recruitment platform, announced its recent integration partnership with Turnitin, a leading provider of technology solutions in academic integrity, to help broaden access to international education.
Adventus.io is in the international study and admissions space, with a mission to help students make confident study decisions through a marketplace that connects the world’s institutions, recruiters and service providers.
As edtech providers, aligned in objectives to advance quality and integrity in global education, an integration with Turnitin supports Adventus.io’s quality assurance checks when matching the right students with the suitable courses.
Adventus.io’s role in transforming international student recruitment
International education is a high-stakes enterprise, acutely felt by the prospective students who make life-changing decisions to pursue higher education in a foreign country, the institutions that seek to attract quality, diverse candidates, and the recruitment agents that support the process.
Not to mention its significance in sustaining the global economy, where international education in Australia, for example, is among the country’s top five largest exports.
Given the importance of international student recruitment for the education sector and enriching society at large, it’s unfortunate that the industry faces systemic issues that impact outcomes for its key stakeholders. In the context of institutions, they undertake huge effort and expenditure to source candidates and qualify recruitment agents to move students through a lengthy enrolment pipeline. In turn, recruitment agents face difficulties in building enough institutional partnerships to make optimal student placements. The end result? Ambiguity and limitations for students when assessing their study options and undue risk in their decision-making.
Enter Adventus.io, who saw the urgency in streamlining the international student recruitment and admissions process to deliver better outcomes for all. Trusted by 1300+ institutions globally for student recruitment, Adventus.io enables customers to attract quality students and diversify their student cohort, with an extensive presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Possessing an intrinsic understanding of the challenges in international recruitment and admissions, and having developed a fit-for-purpose marketplace that overcomes traditional limitations, Adventus.io is using technology as the engine for change.
What Adventus.io was seeking in a technology partner
Seeking to deliver quality compliance checks in the industry, Adventus.io is committed to transparency and integrity in the application process. For instance, the Statement of Purpose that students are required to produce as part of their application must be checked for unoriginal text that may constitute plagiarism, to ensure students have written the content themselves.
Prior to their partnership with Turnitin, Adventus.io relied on a manual process for detecting text similarity in SoPs and related admissions content, which was cumbersome across the volume of applications to process. Adventus.io sought to address this inefficiency by deploying similarity-checking software that could boost accuracy and consistency in their workflow.
Turnitin emerged as the preferred partner due to its robust tools, including its Similarity Report, and its reputation in effectively combating plagiarism. Turnitin’s value alignment with Adventus.io was another factor in qualifying its suitability as a partner. “In the rapidly evolving landscape of higher education’, says Adventus.io’s Tanika Perera, Director of Quality Assurance & Customer Experience, ‘Adventus.io focuses on providing quality applications over quantity. Turnitin aligns with this philosophy by streamlining our application review process, ensuring efficiency and maintaining high standards.”
Confirming Turnitin’s API capabilities was another factor in Adventus.io working with Turnitin; incorporating Turnitin Similarity into the Adventus.io platform and internal systems, helping to minimize friction across distributed Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa teams.
Manushree Bahukhandi, Director of Business Development, Alliances, APAC at Turnitin, recognized that,“Our partnership with Adventus.io stemmed from the idea of providing a solution that could increase efficiency and deliver tangible results. The initial partnership conversation from the get-go was borne out of a fundamental question of 'what can we do together to make it a win-win?' from the perspectives of both Adventus.io and Turnitin, and to the benefit of stakeholders”, says Manushree.
The benefits of the Adventus.io-Turnitin partnership
By joining Turnitin’s Technical Integration Partner program to help ensure originality and integrity of student content in their application process, Adventus.io gained access to Turnitin Similarity and its Similarity Report; a tool used by educators worldwide. Powered by a comprehensive, industry-leading database of 47 billion current and archived Internet pages, 1.9 billion student papers, and over 190 million articles from the top 97% of publications, it provides peace of mind for Adventus.io in detecting text similarity and maintaining due diligence at every stage of the student application process.
As Tanika Perera explains, “Turnitin Similarity plays a pivotal role in our workflow by not only identifying plagiarism issues in Statement of Purpose (SOP) content but also detecting similarities when students replicate content from other applications. The tool significantly enhances the overall quality of our admissions process.”
Key benefits:
- Time savings: Adventus.io has seen a significant reduction in the turnaround time of applications courtesy of the Turnitin integration and workflow. Identification of text similarity in student applications and flagging of potential plagiarism that was impractical to do manually, can now be achieved instantly, at scale.
- Accuracy and consistency: With access to Turnitin’s premier similarity-checking software, Adventus.io are assured that no integrity breaches will go unnoticed and are able to validate the originality of applications they progress.
- Values alignment: In harmony with Adventus.io’s values of ‘transparency’ and ‘attention to detail’, the Turnitin partnership applies these principles in the quality and integrity checks of submitted content, inspiring trust in their shared goals for international education.
- Streamlined workflow: The efficiencies afforded by Turnitin’s technology have enabled Adventus.io to modify their workflow to effectively remove the step of manual
The positive impact is clear, according to Adventus.io: “The partnership with Turnitin has significantly reduced turnaround time while elevating the quality of applications. The integration has effectively eliminated the need for manual intervention in the application review process.”
When asked to reflect on how the partnership with Turnitin supports best practices in student recruitment and admissions, Adventus.io acknowledges the immediate wins in making integrity checks easy and scalable, but crucially, points to the broader implications in advancing their service deliverables. In the words of Tanika, “Our partnership with Turnitin enables us to track plagiarism effectively, ensuring that each application reflects originality. This commitment to authenticity supports best practices in student recruitment, setting a high standard for admissions.”
Evaluating the integration experience
Turnitin’s mission to ensure the integrity of global education and meaningfully improve learning outcomes is embedded in our software solutions, and it also extends to the partnerships we forge in support of the education sector. According to Manushree, Turnitin’s Alliances arm is dedicated to “finding newer and greener opportunity fields where our solutions can be integrated”, and in the case of Adventus.io, this sparked initial conversations with them about Turnitin becoming the first to enter into an integration partnership with Adventus.io in the Asia-Pacific region.
The integration process commenced with a proof of concept in January 2023, culminating in the full integration going live by the end of May 2023. By leveraging Turnitin's APIs, they were able to seamlessly integrate the tool into Adventus.io's Internal System. According to Tanika, “The experience was smooth, and the implementation process was efficient, ensuring a hassle-free integration.”
Turnitin’s Manushree recalls, “My initial conversation with Adventus began at the peak of COVID-19, and it was remarkable to see how the teams came together across departments and spanning across South Asia and South-East Asia geographies, to identify success milestones. In the face of both opportunities and challenges, we collectively developed feedback and invaluable insights on where all of us could come together and collaborate.”
The future looks bright for Adventus.io and Turnitin
Following the success of the integration and ongoing benefits, Adventus.io will continue partnering with Turnitin long term, to effectively tackle student misconduct throughout the entire admissions process and support their benchmarks for quality and integrity.
Indicative of their confidence ahead, Tanika Perera summarizes Turnitin’s role in facilitating their operations through a fundamental understanding of their mission and objectives: “In alignment with Adventus.io's values, Turnitin serves as a key partner by upholding these principles. The tool allows us to maintain the highest standards in application review, ensuring authenticity and quality.”
The Turnitin Partner Program offers flexible collaboration models for educational technology vendors, government bodies, research organizations, and scholarly publishers. Speak with Turnitin’s Alliances and Partnerships team about how a partnership can bring value to your organization.