Overview

TurnItIn is an online tool that helps faculty determine the originality of written materials presented by students in course assignments. All UWF faculty have access to the TurnItIn service and each faculty can make the service available to students in their classes.

Every paper submitted to TurnItIn.com is returned in the form of a customized Originality Report. Results are based on exhaustive searches of billions of pages from both current and archived instances of the internet, millions of student papers previously submitted to Turnitin, and commercial databases of journal articles and periodicals.

NOTE: It should be understood that the value reflected in the "Originality Report," a number reflecting TurnItIn.com's assessment of the originality of the document, is NOT the final deciding factor in the determination of plagiarism.

Many factors go into the "Originality Report" that should be understood and considered by faculty before allegations of plagiarism can or even should be pursued.

The TurnItIn service has implications for copyright of student work, student privacy, and other related issues; therefore, it is critical that all university faculty, instructors, and teaching assistants use TurnItIn appropriately.

Please note:

• Faculty can obtain a TurnItIn account by contacting the Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (CUTLA):
• Phone: 850-473-7435
• CUTLA TurnItIn web site: UWF's guidelines for faculty using TurnItIn

Using Turnitin within eLearning Dropboxes to Check Originality

Turnitin is now integrated with eLearning to offer Originality Check for class dropbox submissions.You do not need an account to use the integrated version of TurnItIn within the eLearning Dropbox tool.

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Creating a dropbox folder that uses OriginalityCheck

The OriginalityCheck check box appears in the properties tab of the New/Edit Dropbox page.

Important: Once a dropbox folder is created with OriginalityCheck enabled, assignments are created in Turnitin. If you disable OriginalityCheck, the assignment in Turnitin continues to exist unless you go to Turnitin to delete it, or you delete the assignment after its availability dates have passed.

Enable OriginalityCheck

1. While creating or editing a dropbox folder, select the Enable for this folder check box in the OriginalityCheck section of the Properties tab.
2. Click the Restrictions tab and update the start date and end dates to your desired date range.

Setting up Originality Reports and other advanced features

Once you enable OriginalityCheck, an options area appears at the bottom of the New/Edit Dropbox page. Here you can enable detailed Originality Reports for dropbox submissions, control end user visibility, set the Originality Reports frequency, select which sources to check the submission against, and decide whether the current submission you are running the report against is added to the file index for new submissions to be checked against.

Enable Originality Reports

Select the Generate Originality Reports check box in the Originality Checking Options section of the Properties tab.

Allow submitters to see Originality Reports

1. Click Image Added Show Advanced Originality Checking Options to open the advanced options area.
2. Select Allow submitters to see Originality Reports.
3. Click Save.

Change the frequency of your Originality Reports

1. Click Image Added Show Advanced Originality Checking Options to open the advanced options area.
2. Choose one of the following options:
   • Automatic originality checking on all submissions
   • Identify individual submissions for originality checking
3. Click Save.

Select which sources to check a submission against

1. Click Image Added Show Advanced Originality Checking Options to open the advanced options area.
2. Choose any combination of the following options:
   • Use paper database
   • Current and archived internet
   • Periodicals, journals, and publications
3. Click Save.

Allow submissions to be added to the index (used in future searches)

1. Click Image Added Show Advanced Originality Checking Options to open the advanced options area.
2. Select Allow other files to be checked against submission.
3. Click Save.

Manually submitting files for originality checking

If your dropbox folder has Identify individual submissions for originality checking enabled, you will need to manually submit file submissions for originality checking. This is useful if you don’t want to check every file submission for plagiarism, but still want the ability to do so on a case-by-case basis.

Manually submit files for originality checking

1. Ensure that Identify individual submissions for originality checking is enabled in the properties tab on the New/Edit Dropbox page.
2. On the Folder Submissions page, click the Image Added Submit file for originality checking icon. A message displays indicating the file has been submitted for review.

Viewing Originality Reports

View Originality Reports from the Folder Submissions page. When a report is available, the status changes from In-Progress to a percentage rating, which indicates the level of matching content.

Image AddedViewing a file submission summary

Viewing a file submission summary

A lower percentage rating indicates that the content is likely original and has not been copied; a higher percentage rating indicates the content is likely not original and has been copied from another source.

The percentage ranges are associated with colors:

• Blue >= 0 and < 20%
• Green >= 20 and < 40%
• Yellow >= 40 and < 60%
• Orange >= 60 and < 80%
• Red >= 80 and <= 100%

View an Originality Report for a submission

Click the colored section beside the percentage rating to view the associated Originality Report.

Image AddedOpening Originality Reports

Opening Originality Reports

The Originality Report is comprised of two panes. The right pane lists all of the matching sources, including the percentage of text that matches and a link to the online content. The left pane displays the submission text using colored highlights to draw attention to the matching content.

Tip For more detailed help with Originality Reports, click the help link in the top-right corner of the report page.

Files compatible with OriginalityCheck

The following file types are compatible with OriginalityCheck:

• MS Word (DOC, DOCX)
• WordPerfect (WPD)
• PostScript (EPS)
• Acrobat PDF
• HTML (HTM, HTML)
• Rich text (RTF)
• Plain text (TXT)

Note If a file type is incompatible with OriginalityCheck, the Image Added Information icon displays instead of the percentage rating.

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Training manuals in PDF format (Adobe Acrobat Reader required):

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• TurnItIn.Com Instructor Training Page
• Instructor Quickstart Guide (PDF - 8 pages)
• Please pay close attention to "Set Up" and "Originality Check."

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• Here is the URL for this page (http://turnitin.com/en_us/training/student-training), you are encouraged to provide it to your students.

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FAQs