Turnitin: Plagiarism-Prevention Service

General Information

Question:

• What is a third party tool used to uphold academic integrity?

Turnitin®:

• Turnitin® is an internet-based plagiarism-prevention service. Instructors and students can submit papers to the website, which is checked against billions of webpages, works previously submitted to Turnitin®, and a repository of journals, and other publications. This tool helps instructors engage students in the writing process by providing feedback that can both assess and help improve students' work. No download, registration, or login is needed.

  For User Guide see, D2L Brightspace V2 Instructor

Features:

• Integration With D2L - Turnitin® is already integrated into Metropolitan State University's learning environment (D2L Brightspace). Instructors do not need to purchase, register, or download anything.

• Ease-of-Use - Enabling Turnitin® within D2L is as easy as checking a box within the course in D2L. Once enabled, students submit their assignments just like any other in D2L for review and assessment.

• Turnitin offers a generative AI detection service. For more on the features, please see Turnitin's AI Writing Detection Capabilities FAQ.

Notes:

1. Turnitin is most effective when used in conjunction with education and instruction around concepts of plagiarism, author voice, source documentation, citation, etc.
2. While Turnitin is often called a "plagiarism detection tool," the software does not actually determine if an assignment has been plagiarized. Rather, it generates a Similarity Report to help an instructor find sources that contain text similar to submitted papers. The decision to deem any work plagiarized must be made carefully.
3. Any "matches" Turnitin detects need to be considered within the context of the submitted assignment. For example, Turnitin flags content that is properly quoted and cited as unoriginal, since the student did not write the original words.
4. Turnitin does NOT detect all possible copied passages, nor can it detect violations of academic integrity. For example, Turnitin cannot determine if a student paid another person to write his or her paper.
5. When students submit their works to Turnitin, they retain their copyrights. For further details see, Turnitin Privacy, Security and Copyright Protection.

Additional Resources

D2L Brightspace:

• D2L Brightspace: Creating Assignments
• D2L Brightspace: Turnitin® Setup within Assignments

Library Resouces:

• Turnitin® for Faculty
• Academic Integrity

Metropolitan State University’s Academic Integrity policy and procedure

• Academic integrity policies and procedures

Turnitin®:

• Instructor Quick Start Guide