Using Turnitin on Campus

What is Turnitin?

Turnitin is a web-based system that allows student papers to be submitted and checked for plagiarism (www.turnitin.com). Turnitin’s comprehensive plagiarism prevention system allows you quickly and effectively check all of your students’ work in a fraction of the time necessary to scan a few suspect papers using an Internet search engine. The Turnitin system compares student papers with sources available on the Internet, select commercial article databases, and papers submitted at Whitewater or other institutions using Turnitin. For every paper submitted to Turnitin, a unique customized Originality Report is generated. Each report identifies the matches that the system made, which can then be investigated.

This system can help to eliminate the abuse of the Internet as a research tool and may minimize its potentially negative impact on the development of quality reading, writing, and research skills. This system is the most widely used and user-friendly plagiarism prevention tool available. It confirms instances of suspected plagiarism, and more importantly, acts as a powerful deterrent to stop cheating before it starts. Please feel free to check out the Turnitin web-site for further information (www.turnitin.com).

How to use it?

The campus has a site license for unlimited submission for Turnitin. Papers can be submitted individually or in batches. Instructors can upload electronic versions of their students’ papers to the Turnitin web-site directly or from the drop box created in Desire2Learn in a batch submit. The system accepts common electronic document formats – Word doc, Wordperfect, PDF, postscript, HTML. Turnaround time depends upon the length of each paper and the number of papers being submitted at one time; however, once the papers are submitted, Instructors can leave the web-site and return later to retrieve the Originality Reports.

Please note that any student papers that are checked by Turnitin are added to the Turnitin database. This means that if a student submits material from a paper that was already submitted earlier by the same or a different student, the material will be identified as already submitted. This may help eliminate duplication of student papers among separate class sections.

How to get an account?

1. First, send a message to the Learning Technology Center (LTC) at ltc@uww.edu. You will then be added to the system.
2. After you are added to the system, you will receive an email message from the Turnitin Helpdesk entitled, “You have been added as an instructor.” The message will contain your email address, which will be your username, and an automatically generated password, which can be changed after the initial log-in.
3. Attend a Turnitin training offered by the LTC. View training schedule.
4. Further instructions on how to use Turnitin can be viewed in a PDF format. If you attend training, you will also receive a copy of the instructions. View PDF instructions*

*To use PDF files use the free Adobe Reader

Comments

“This is a very good, easy-to-use and helpful tool. Given the ever-increasing teaching loads, and the increased emphasis on writing, this tool is essential to the educational mission at UW-Whitewater.”

Anthony Gulig, History

“Turnitin is a powerful and invaluable tool for detecting plagiarism, and it was very helpful to have statistics and figures regarding degrees of similarity between student papers and online sources (or even other students papers)…I plan on using printouts of the originality reports in any future disciplinary action against students who plagiarize as evidence of their academic misconduct…”

David Simmons, Philosophy and Religious Studies

“I found Turnitin easy to use and the time it took well spent. In fact, I think that it saved me time in the long run because I didn’t waste hours searching for plagiarism that didn’t exist…Finally, and most importantly, Turnitin restored my trust in students. My attitude toward several students totally changed when I was entirely confident they were doing their own work…”

John McGuigan, Languages and Literature