Turnitin.com is an anti-plagiarism service used by many colleges and universities. When students submit a written assignment for class, Turnitin automatically checks their paper against their database to create an “Originality Report”. This report lets you know how much of each student’s paper is original material, and how much is pulled from other sources. Turnitin is integrated with QuestromTools; you can activate this feature on the Questrom Tools Assignments tab and the paper will be uploaded to Turnitin.
Add Turnitin to your Assignments
Activate the Turnitin feature when you’re creating a new Assignment in QuestromTools. Click the “Use Turnitin” box to easily add Turnitin to your assignment. Let students know that you’ll be using Turnitin, and to submit only the appropriate file types.
Turnitin Creates an Originality Report
When students submit a paper, Turnitin will run it through their database of papers, and conduct a public internet search to identify any unoriginal material in the student’s paper. In the Questrom Tools Assignment, instructors can see if papers have been identified as having a low originality score (in the image below, green indicates a high originality score, and red is a low originality score). Keep in mind that a low originality score does not necessarily mean that the paper is plagiarized – you’ll have to check out the originality report before you can make that determination.
Reading the Originality Report
If the instructor has concerns about a paper, they can simply click on the red, yellow, or green badge and look at the Originality Report. The report shows the written assignment with the questionable material highlighted, and identifies the source of that material, according to Turnitin’s search. At this point, it is up to the instructor to determine whether the student has plagiarized. For example, did the student cite the sources identified by Turnitin? In the example here, the text highlighted in red is the text from the case assigned and class notes, so although this student has an originality score of 44% (meaning 44% of the paper is identified as coming from another source), the material used is from class and therefore appropriately used in this submission.
