Turnitin Guide for Instructors

by Ed Sadowski Arapahoe Community College Library

Using Turnitin and Other Tools to Detect and Prevent Plagiarism

Littleton, Colorado

Revised 2012

Turnitin Guide for Instructors Table of Contents Assistance and training materials for faculty...next page

What is Turnitin? How does it work?...1

Accessing Turnitin: website and D2L Setting up Turnitin on the Turnitin website...2 Using Quick Submit...3 Setting up Turnitin within D2L...4

Plagiarism detection techniques Rapid response plagiarism detection...5 Using Google (Google to the rescue)…6 Pointers for “quickie” plagiarism detection...7

Plagiarism prevention Educating the student and other classroom tips...8 Student submissions of drafts as a plagiarism teaching tool...9

Resources to help the student with Turnitin Websites with information and tutorials...9 Student guide to a plagiarism checkup...9 What does my Turnitin™ Originality Report mean?...9 Plagiarism tutorials...10 Free plagiarism checks...10 Checklist for understanding the Originality Reports...10 Some frequently asked questions...11

> Contact Turnitin support by clicking Helpdesk within Turnitin.

> Turnitin training material on the Turnitin.com site : click Help within Turnitin to access help topics. Within the assignment in-box, click View Training Material for manuals and videos. The same training material is available under Training.

Assistance and training materials for instructors

USING TURNITIN TO PREVENT PLAGIARISM This guide is for instructors who have access to Turnitin’s plagiarism prevention system to deter plagia-rism and promote academic integrity. Below you will find a basic introduction to Turnitin and how to use it from the from within Desire2Learn (D2L) or, optionally, from the Turnitin website. Included also are instructions for Quick Submit, the easiest way to use Turnitin on an individual paper without the time-consuming process of having to fully enroll an entire class in Turnitin. Also included are tips for preventing and detecting plagiarism.

What is Turnitin? Turnitin helps to “plagiarism proof” assignments. “Turnitin does not detect plagiarism but, rather, gener-ates a similarity index indicating text matches to the Turnitin databases. Instructors and their students can use that information to determine if there are issues with intentional or unintentional plagiarism.” (Turnitin blog) Turnitin helps prevent plagiarism by comparing student papers and assignments against the following sources and indicating matches with existing content: Archived and current text and pages on the Internet All other student submissions that have been sub-

mitted to Turnitin Commercial databases of online jour-nal articles and periodicals (ProQuest)

How does Turnitin work? Access through Desire2Learn (D2L) and Turnitin web-site Instructors may use Turnitin through D2L or through the Turnitin website. Though an instructor can use either method to access Turnitin, it is strongly recommended that an instructor make the decision on which method to use before a semester begins because these two op-tions do not work in conjunction with each other. In oth-er words, student submissions submitted through D2L cannot be seen by the instructor who may also have a Turnitin account directly through the Turnitin Web site and vice versa. You may find that using Turnitin directly through D2L is the most efficient option as you can simultaneously use D2L to post other course materials, such as lecture notes, a syllabus, or student grades. In addition, many students at ACC are familiar with logging into D2L and using the tools. You can use both options for multiple courses or switch back and forth between semesters, but the two methods of using Turnitin are not linked in any way. The Turnitin tool is similar to other tools in D2L, and grade book columns are automatically created when you create a Turnitin assignment. The Turnitin grades work in conjunction with other grades in D2L, so a calculated,

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end-of-semester grade is easy to obtain. If using the website, you can keep a database of Turnitin grades via the website.

The basics of how Turnitin works An instructor makes the decision to use Turnitin

through D2L or the Turnitin Web site The instructor creates an assignment through the

Turnitin Web site or through D2L The instructor or students submit papers to the

Turnitin assignment you created Turnitin compares the text in the paper against text

on the Internet, other student submissions, and com-mercial databases (as listed above)

Turnitin generates an Originality Report for each stu-dent submission and highlights any text that dupli-cates text found in other sources

The instructor uses this information to decide if the du-plicated text is plagiarized. In many cases, students will have properly cited the duplicated text, and this dupli-cated text may not indicate plagiarism at all. The instruc-tor remains the arbiter of what constitutes plagiarism. Below are the instructions for getting started with the two methods of Turnitin access: through the Turnitin Web site and through D2L.

Turnitin website access (To use Turnitin without D2L)

You must first register with Turnitin as an instructor. To do so, Click New Users on the upper right page at turnitin.com 1. Enter the administrator-provided account number. 2. Enter the account join password. Follow the sign-up instructions There are two ways of using Turnitin: (1) the full fea-tures and (2) Quick Submit. To fully access Turnitin requires establishing classes and assignments, then signing up students. Once the instruc-tor establishes a class, instructors can sign up students or students can join themselves. Instructors can submit papers to Turnitin themselves or instructors can have students submit their own papers–in either case, in-structors need to create a Turnitin assignment first. Other features of Turnitin include Grademark, Gradebook, Peer Review, Digital Portfolio, Calendar, Dis-cussion Boards, and Libraries. For explanations of all these features, manuals, videos, and help topics are available on the Turnitin site and linked from within Turnitin (see Assistance and Training Materials on last page of this handout). Quick Submit is a fast and easy method for occasional plagiarism checks and a good way to try out Turnitin be-fore using its full features. Whether using Quick Submit or the full features, you will have to know how to use the plagiarism reports (“Originality Reports”)—explained in the Turnitin manuals and videos. Instructions for Quick Submit (non-established classes)

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are as follows: 1. Start at your instructor homepage. This is the page

you start with after you log in with your e-mail ad-dress and password from the Turnitin homepage at turnitin.com.

2. Quick Submit will not appear as an option until you activate it. To activate Quick Submit, click the User Info tab

3. Under Account Settings on the right side, change ac-tivate Quick Submit to Yes.

4. Click the large Submit button on the bottom to cre-ate the change.

5. When you go back to your main page again, you will now notice a Quick Submit button on the left side or on the top.

6. Click this Quick Submit button to enable you to up-load anything you want checked.

7. The quick submit inbox will appear. This inbox con-tains all papers you will have plagiarism reports (“Originality Reports”) made with quick submit (color coded for levels of plagiarism).

8. To quick submit a paper, click the submit paper button on the upper right.

9. Under customize your search, check off any or all of the sources to be checked for plagiarism: search the Internet; search student papers; search periodicals, journals, and publications.

10. If you might be re-submitting the same paper again (revised by a student), do not check off search stu-dent papers. If you do check off search student pa-pers, your second submission of the same paper will

be treated as plagiarism, mistaking the second paper as a plagiarism of the first paper. A way to avoid this problem is to create the assignment as a Revision As-signment.

11. Click the submit button. 12. Under submit paper, make selections for your sub-

mission. 13. First select type of upload with the pulldown menu

under submit a paper by: file upload; cut and paste; zip file. If you are uploading a document stored in your computer, select file upload. You will then click the browse button below to select the document after you have filled in the name of the student and title of the paper. If you are submitting some text from a document, you may select cut and paste.

14. You will now upload the paper for quick submit. Click the browse button to locate the document file from a floppy disk (A:), computer hard drive (C:), CD (D:), or flash drive (E:). Or, you can cut and paste from the submission pull-down menu.

15. Double click the file you wish to upload, or select the file then click the open.

16. Click the submit button. 17. A box will appear asking, “Is this the paper you want

to submit?” The text of the paper will be displayed. Click yes, submit.

18. A “digital receipt” will appear with the paper title, author, and ID. If you wish to submit another paper, click submit again.

19. To see your Originality Reports, go back to the quick submit inbox (click inbox).

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20. An Originality Report will be generated in a few minutes (the report icon will be grayed out until the report is completed, then the icon color will display, indicating the proportion of matches). If the gray does not change color, click the refresh button of your Web browser.

Submitting papers for established classes Click the submit icon next to the desired assignment on your class homepage (after you have set up classes and assignments and signed up students). Instructions for submitting a paper are basically the same as above.

Setting up Turnitin within D2L Turnitin automatically works with assignments that are

submitted within D2L

> Log in to D2L

> To use Turnitin with D2L, you must first enable Plagia-

rism Detection.

When you create a New Folder and Folder Properties,

check off Enable for this Folder (How Does Plagiarism

Detection Work?).

When you enable Plagiarism Detection, an options area

appears at the bottom of the Edit Folder page. Here you

can enable detailed Originality Reports for Dropbox sub-

missions and adjust options that control end user visibil-

ity and report frequency.

Thereafter, all assignments submitted will be analyzed by

Turnitin and Plagiarism Reports will be generated, viewable

and accessible from within the Dropbox folders.

More detailed instructions

(from D2L Wiki from University of Wisconsin-

Oshkosh, at idea.uwosh.edu/D2Lwiki – go down

the page for Turnitin info)

1. Go to Dropbox in the navigation. 2. Select New Folder (NOTE: Dropboxes do not have to be new to enable Turnitin, existing dropboxes can be modified by editing the folder.) 3. Give your dropbox a name – usually the name of the assignment 4. Check the box labeled Plagiarism Detection Fill in additional fields as necessary (How do I use the

dropbox…) 5. Modify Plagiarism Detection Options as necessary.

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Generate Originality Reports: check this box to ena-ble Turnitin’s originality reports Allow submitters to see Originality Reports: check this box to let students view their report Automatic plagiarism detection on all submissions: check this box to have Turnitin generate reports for all submissions. Identify individual submissions for plagiarism detec-tion: This option is not functional, an originality report will be generated for every submission Check Submissions Against: Use Paper Database: This will compare the student’s paper to Turnitin’s large database of papers submitted by other students from around the country. Current and archive internet: This will compare the students’ papers to text on the internet. Periodicals, journals, & publications: This will com-pare the students’ papers to articles available in a varie-ty of online databases.

Index files for Plagiarism Detection: Check this box if you would like the students’ papers to Turnitin’s data-base. Click the Save button

Rapid Response Plagiarism Detection

Instant coffee. Minute rice. Turnitin Quick Submit. Google.

There are the “quicker solution,” shortcut options to tasks we are faced with.

Checking a student’s paper for plagiarism is no excep-tion.

An instructor can sign up the whole class under Turnitin, and every paper routinely gets the Turnitin scrutinty, a report generated to show the percentage levels of legiti-macy, or “originality,” in the paper.

Or the instructor can pick and choose the occasional pa-per that looks suspicious and check it for plagiarism. The simplest way is to simply google some phrases from the paper and see if it guiltily matches something on a web-site. Another relatively simple way is to use Turnitin’s Quick Submit.

To use the Turnitin Quick Submit, the whole class does

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not have to be set up within Turnitin. All that is required is that the instructor be registered (“joined”) within Turnitin, and that the Turnitin Quick Submit option is en-abled.

The downside of using something like Google or Quick Submit is that it’s less labor intensive for the busy in-structor pressed for time than using the full-featured Turnitin. Saving time with the abbreviated plagiarism checkups using Google or Quick Submit means that many other cases of plagiarism might be missed by not using the full Turnitin. A glaring case of plagiarism may catch the instructor’s eye, but less obvious cases will es-cape notice.

Turnitin users and non-users: Google to the rescue

Plagiarism sleuths: don’t throw Google out with the bathwater just yet.

I’ve gotten feedback from instructors about their use of Google to detect student paper plagiarism (pasting in some parts of a student paper into Google may identify the Web pages the text came from).

My stance about Google for plagiarism detection has been, Well, now that we’ve got Turnitin, the proprietary Web-based plagiarism detection service, we won’t need Google anymore (and that’s how instructors probably view this modern marvel called Turnitin).

Wrong.

Several instructors have told me they used Google to catch plagiarism that Turnitin missed.

Wow, is that an eye opener. Turnitin is not perfect? Turnitin is not everything it’s cracked up to be?

Well, yes.

Why? What gives? Well, let’s cut to the chase. Here’s an excerpt from an economics professor’s blog that I found, yes, by googling: …teachers might think, “I’m using Turnitin, so I don’t have to watch out for plagiarists.” The instructor quoted on Turnitin’s website certainly thinks so, implicitly argu-ing that Turnitin is a perfect substitute for her own inves-tigations using Google. Not surprisingly, Turnitin encour-ages this belief. On its website—right next to her quote—Turnitin advertises that it has crawled and in-dexed “14+ billion web pages.” Choosing between Turnitin and instructor investigations seems like a no-brainer.

But wait, how many web pages are there on the Inter-net?

A few years ago, Google announced that it had crawled and indexed a trillion web pages. That makes TurnItIn’s crawlers look puny, having searched and indexed only 1.4 percent as much of the Internet as Google’s.

I’m not here to debunk Turnitin—I’m one of its strongest supporters. But we have to be realistic that no single tool is perfect or infallible. I teach this to students about

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information literacy—trust, but verify the information you find. Take everything, no matter how authoritative, with a grain of salt.

Instructors who use Turnitin should consider it just one gadget in their toolbox.

Google is a good supplement to Turnitin, or, for those who don’t use Turnitin, a useful tool by itself. Remem-ber, though, that Google will identify lots of text from Web pages, but little or nothing from periodical articles and books. Thus Google is incomplete without Turnitin. And vice versa.

And even Google is not all-encompassing. No single search engine can index the entire vastness of the Inter-net. That’s why, along with Google, the savvy plagiarism sleuth will use other search engines—such as Bing, Ya-hoo!, and Yippy.

I might also mention some free “plagiarism checkers” that can be useful: Dustball and Plagium.

These free tools are useful not just for teachers, but also for students who wish to check their work before they turn it in.

Pointers for “quickie” plagiarism detection:

> Be on the lookout for shifts in writing style and quality (does a suspicious paper suddenly deviate in certain stylistic ways from the student’s usual

output?). Sometimes it could be just a sentence or paragraph that is “different,” a direct quote or poor paraphrase that is not credited.

> If you decide to google for a quickie check, find an odd or distinctive phrase in the paper to throw in the search engine and see what results come up. Beginning sentences from papers sometimes yield good hits. Place phrases within quotes for best results. Additionally, use Yahoo! and other search engines if Google comes up with nothing. (See the discussion of Google as a detection tool on the next page.)

> If Turnitin fails to find the elusive text, even search-

ing through its designated library database, like ProQuest, try a keyword search of the paper’s passages in other library databases.

What if, after trying the above tools, your plagiarism check is unsuccessful?

You feel certain the paper or sections of the paper are not the student’s work. The search engines and even Turnitin have not located elsewhere the text in question. Keep in mind that no search engine or even Turnitin is 100 percent effective in detecting plagiarism in the vast-ness of the publishing world.

Interrogating a student can be effective in eliciting an-swers. Here are some ways one can question a student, as suggested by Montgomery College Libraries:

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Give the student a chance to prove that the paper is

not plagiarized.

Quiz the student and see if he or she can define

some of the words in the paper. A question such as:

“Why did you use ‘egregious' here?” can be enlighten-

ing.

Copy some sentences from the paper and leave

blanks for some important words. If the student cannot

fill in the blanks with the word used in the paper itself or

a synonym, the student did not write the paper.

Ask questions about one of the sources used in the

paper. “This article by X looks fascinating, why did you

choose it? Can I see a copy?”

Ask the student how he or she searched for the infor-mation. Ask what database they used.

Plagiarism prevention

Remember also, it’s best to prevent plagiarism than try-ing to detect it.

A lot of plagiarism can be achieved by simply educating the student about plagiarism and the power of Turnitin. Turnitin’s site plagiarism.org is a good place to start for students to learn about plagiarism.

Another deterrent: require students to keep a “portfolio” that logs and records research. Keeping such

a portfolio can completely prevent plagiarism, according to this site: bedfordstmartins.com/technotes/workshops/avoidplagiarism.htm.

Still yet another way to help prevent plagiarism is to al-low a student to use a plagiarism detection service such as Turnitin or free websites to run a preliminary check; seeing that there are plagiarism problems in the paper, whether intentionally-created or inadvertent, will per-suade the student to use more care in the preparation of papers. A student can be allowed to submit a draft to Turnitin to identify “originality” problems. Turnitin also has an inexpensive service for students to use before it is submitted to Turnitin, called “WriteCheck,” on their plagiarism.org site. A couple of free plagiarism checking sites are available for the same kind of preliminary check by students: plagium.com and The Plagiarism Checker.

In addition, a Turnitin blog on “plagiarism proofing” suggests the following to help prevent plagiarism:

Emphasize the recursiveness of writing. • Require significantly revised multiple drafts. • Break an assignment into parts that are to be turned in at different stages of the creation process: pre-writing, drafting, revising, reflecting. (The above three pointers are from Colorado State Uni-versity’s Writing@CSU.) “This idea of plagiarism proofing assignments makes sense, suggesting that students are less likely to leave the work to the last minute—when research and writing skills may deteriorate or students might be tempted to

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Websites with information and tutorials

> turnitin.com/static/training/student.php (includes video, articles, student manual about using Turnitin and Originality Reports) > umuc.edu/library/tutorials/turnitin/originalityreports.shtml video: Reading and Under-standing Turnitin Originality Reports > Plagiarism.org (Turnitin’s portal for plagiarism infor-mation)

What does my Turnitin™ Originality Report mean? A checklist for self-evaluation Adapted from Edinburgh Napier University

use writing that is not their own—if they are engaged in writing as a process,” according to the Turnitin blog.

Student submissions of drafts as a plagiarism teach-ing tool

Turnitin allows multiple submissions of papers by stu-dents, from draft to final revision. Students can upload their own papers to Turnitin for Originality Reports and see their own Originality Reports. Originality Reports are useful for editing papers that include too many quotes and paraphrases and not enough original analysis and comment. Thus the Originality Reports are useful to fac-ulty as a tool to teach students to use proper citation, highlighting the need for more student originality.

An instructor can, for instance, facilitate two submis-sions, setting up two separate assignments for the same paper. The two submissions could be named as follows: Paper 1—First Draft; and Paper 2—Final Revision. (Note: do not use the pound sign (#) or any other special char-acters—only letters and numbers—as an error message will be created when attempting to download a student paper.)

Resources to help the student with Turnitin

Student guide to a plagiarism checkup

The following guide (available on the ACC Library Re-search Assistance page is designed for students, but also

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helpful for instructors to add to their understanding of plagiarism and Turnitin. Why a plagiarism check? The savvy student does a “spell check” before turning in a paper to catch errors. It’s educational too, helping to teach you how to spell better. So why not do a plagiarism check on your paper also? A plagiarism check will help you see where you didn’t properly give credit to the sources of your information. Did you leave out quotation marks to identify direct quotes? Did you fail to properly paraphrase (put in your own words) the information you are using? Did you ac-curately identify (cite) the sources of the information and ideas you are using?

Plagiarism tutorials: First, are you clear about what pla-giarism is? Plagiarism can cause you to fail your course and even more—deliberate plagiarism is a serious aca-demic offense. These tutorials will make it clear what plagiarism is all about: > You Quote It, You Note It! library.acadiau.ca/tutorials/plagiarism > USM Plagiarism Tutorial: lib.usm.edu/legacy/plag/plagiarismtutorial.php > iParadigms plagiarism information site: Plagiarism.org. > A plagiarism portal: bit.ly/plagiarism2

Free plagiarism checks: If you don’t have access to Turnitin, use these sites to do a plagiarism check: the free Plagiarism Checker (dustball.com/cs/plagiarism.checker) and Plagium.com, or the inexpen-sive WriteCheck.com

Checklist for understanding the Orig-inality Report Use this to evaluate and to get an understanding of what the Originality Report means. Doing this at the “draft” stage gives you a chance to take further action to revise your work in response to the Report. Check the following, as appropriate: STEP ONE The Similarity Index is below 5%___ above 5%___ If your Similarity Index is below 5%, you need to take no further action—your Report is acceptable. If your Similarity Index is above 5%, there may be is-sues with your work. Proceed to Step 2. STEP TWO You have nothing to worry about if the colored text in the Report is mostly made up of the title of your paper. ___

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Excluding the title should bring the Similarity Index to below 5%. If this doesn’t explain the Report, proceed to Step Three. STEP THREE You probably have nothing to worry about if the colored text in the Report is made up of any combination of the following: references___ short sentences or fragments from a va-riety of sources___ cited quotes___ However, if this is not the case, you may need help with correct referencing or paraphrasing. Proceed to Step Four if Steps Two/Three do not explain the majority of colored text in your Report. STEP FOUR Your Report is probably borderline if the majority of the colored text is in paragraphs with a few words changed from the original___ and from a variety of sources___ If you have checked off any of these, it is likely you have trouble with paraphrasing. If Steps 2-4 do not account for your report, proceed to Step Five. STEP FIVE Your Report shows your work was probably plagiarized if any of the following apply:

The colored text, excluding titles, cited quotes and refer-ences, makes up a significant portion of your paper.___ There are more than three paragraphs in any one col-or.___ The majority of the text in any one color is un-changed.___

Some frequently asked questions:

What percentages in the Originality Report are “safe”? There are no clear-cut rules, with some variation of per-centages to be expected within an acceptable range. Turnitin only identifies and tabulates matches, many of which are normal and legitimate, and the instructor has to interpret these matches to determine which ones in-dicate problems that should not occur. Approximate rules of thumb are as follows. Zero percent would indi-cate the student has not done enough reading or refer-encing of other sources. Excluding cited quotes and ref-erences, matches under five percent is a safe level. Un-der 15 percent is probably acceptable, or borderline. Continuous blocks of uncited matching text indicate problems. Over 25 percent is probably too high (yellow,

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orange, red indices). Isn’t it normal to have matches that are not really pla-giarism, and what kinds of matches are considered ac-ceptable? Yes, matching of text in itself is not an indica-tion of plagiarism, as legitimate matches are normal, and requires interpretation. The following are “normal” and therefore acceptable matches. The title of the sub-mitted paper, or parts of the title. Cited quotations and student-generated references (bibliography). (Quotations and references can be automatically exclud-ed in the Originality Report operation.) Proper nouns (names of people, places, things). Commonly used jar-gon and terminology. Common phrases, causing match-es of parts of sentences. What kinds of matches are considered “red flags”? Matches consisting of sentences, or large parts of sen-tences, within paragraphs, or entire paragraphs, that are not within quotations are problematic. Even when this text is cited, it means the student is inadequately para-phrasing the source (the information is not properly ren-dered in the student’s own words).

Here are some guides to proper paraphrasing: > Plagiarism.org >>> > FindingDulcinea.com >>>

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