Turnitin
Turnitin is a text-matching tool used to help detect plagiarism and serve as an academic tool to improve writing skills.
Faculty can add a Turnitin assignment to Moodle courses where students will upload written documents or text for similarity checks, feedback, and grading. Students interact with this service via Moodle, not the Turnitin website.
Turnitin for Students
If your professor has added a Turnitin Assignment to your Moodle course:
- Visit Moodle and access the course
- Find the assignment
- Upload your completed assignment
Submissions will only be open for a period set by the professor. Check the “Start Date” and “Due Date” that your professor has chosen.
Submissions can be limited to certain file types or just copy and pasted text. Contact your professor for the types of files they are accepting. Word documents and PDFs are the standard accepted formats.
Originality reports are typically available a few hours after your assignment has been submitted. Some professors will choose not to display the originality report to students.
Grades will be available after the “Post Date” set by your professor. Some professors will choose to manually grade the assignment and return it via other methods.
Contact your professor if you are having trouble seeing your originality report or grade.
Turnitin for Faculty
Turnitin provides originality checking, online grading and peer review to prevent plagiarism and engage students in the writing process.
It encourages best practices for using and citing other people’s written material and offers instructors ways to save time and improve their feedback on the writing process. The service offers a complete web‐based service to manage the process of submitting and tracking papers electronically, providing better and faster feedback to students.
Sample Syllabus Statements
To foster an atmosphere of integrity, faculty who plan to use Turnitin as a plagiarism detection tool are responsible for informing their students about how it will be used. This can easily be done with a note included in the course syllabus.
These two statements are examples of how the faculty can notify students that they are using Turnitin:
- “Adelphi University has a license agreement with Turnitin.com, a service that helps prevent plagiarism from internet resources. All written assignments in this course will be submitted through and reviewed by Turnitin.com. Please see Adelphi’s tips for students on preventing plagiarism and Student instructions for Turnitin.com for more information.”
- “Adelphi University has a license agreement with Turnitin.com, a service that helps prevent plagiarism from internet resources. I reserve the right to request an electronic copy of any written assignment submitted in this course for review through Turnitin.com. Please see Adelphi’s tips for students on preventing plagiarism and Student instructions for Turnitin.com for more information.”
Using Turnitin
Faculty can determine the most effective use of Turnitin. Faculty can let students see a preview of the originality report. Rather than using this service to catch students plagiarizing, faculty can use it to help students check and correct references and citations before submitting their final versions. Faculty can have all students submit papers via Turnitin or they might choose to submit suspicious documents in the presence of the student.
How to Access the Turnitin Service
For faculty who are using Moodle the easiest way to implement Turnitin is directly through their Moodle courses. Simply add a Turnitin assignment from the Add an Activity drop-down menu.
If you are NOT currently using Moodle, you can still use Turnitin for your courses. The service can be accessed directly via the Turnitin.com homepage.