Turnitin is an online document submission tool that checks student work for plagiarism. It allows instructors to assign, grade, and check student work for comparisons to previously submitted work. Students use Turnitin to submit assignments, receive grades and instructor feedback, and check their work for plagiarism comparisons. It is available for purchase by educational institutions.

APPROACH

Teacher users begin using Turnitin by registering and creating a profile on the website’s homepage. They select the ‘instructor’ link and follow prompts to enter in their information, along with their ‘account ID’ and ‘account join password’ (which come from the teacher’s account administrator). Instructors then add their class by selecting the ‘Create a New Class’ dashboard from their menu and entering in the class name and enrollment password, and pressing the submit. Teachers then distribute the class ID and enrollment password to students, along with a Turnitin-generated link inviting them to create student profiles.

To create an assignment, teachers select ‘add assignment’ from the class homepage dashboard. They enter in the assignment title, due date, submission type, and originality criteria. Instructors click on their ‘Assignment Inbox’ dashboard to view student submitted papers and their corresponding ‘Originality Reports.’ The ‘Originality Report’ is a Turnitin tool that compares submission content and wording with all other published documents to highlight similarities and plagiarism. To view student submissions and their reports, teachers select the submission from their ‘Assignment Inbox’ and select the ‘report icon.’ The Originality Report will open in a new ‘Document Viewer.’ All similar sources and their percentage will appear in a column to the right of the submitted document in a color corresponding to the highlighted similar text within the document. To leave comments, teachers select the blue pencil icon on their dashboard. Teachers can use their GradeMark dashboard for help in grading student submissions.

Student start using Turnitin by clicking on the create an account link distributed by their instructor and following all prompts to enter in their class ID and enrollment password. From the Student Homepage portal, students view their Class Portfolio, a dashboard which contains all instructor created assignments for that class. To submit a paper, students select the ‘submit’ icon next to the assignment. Students enter in a title for their submission, and upload the file from their computer. They then select ‘upload’ to finalize the uploading of the submission. Students then click ‘Confirm’ to confirm their submission details and submit the paper. Once submitted, students can view their Originality Report by by selecting the ‘Originality Report’ icon to the right of their assignment. From their GradeMark dashboard, students can view instructor feedback and grades.

Turnitin offers free online professional development tools for administrators and instructors.

WHO’S USING IT

As of 2014, over 26 million students and educators are using Turnitin.

PRICING

Inquiries about pricing can be made on the Turnitin website