IRM has licensed turnitin.com for use at FAU. Turnitin is the world's most widely recognized and trusted resource for preventing Internet plagiarism. Turnitin is an easy-to-use service that prevents and detects plagiarism by comparing papers to billions of pages on the Internet and to Turnitin's own database of submitted papers.
How does it work?
Students or faculty log into their Turnitin.com account, find the appropriate class, and then either: a) "copy-and-paste" their paper into a text box and click "submit," or b) browse for a file (just like an email attachment) and submit it. Files can be uploaded in a number of formats, including MS Word, plain text, RTF, PDF and Postscript. If the paper does not already exist in digital format, it can be scanned with OCR software and then uploaded by either of the two above methods. It is also integrated with Blackboard.
What does it do?
Once a paper is submitted, Turnitin's web-based program ferrets out matching and even partly altered phrases from web content and databases. The software notifies the instructor if it finds similarities in submitted text. The comprehensive software will discover similarities from content justified with proper footnotes to instances of outright dishonesty.
Turnitin Technology
Document Source Analysis uses a set of powerful algorithms to create a digital fingerprint of any text document. Here's how it works:
- First, they make a 'digital fingerprint' of any submitted document using a specially developed set of algorithms.
- The document's 'fingerprint' is cross-referenced against our local database containing hundreds of thousands of papers.
- At the same time, they release automated web crawlers to scour the rest of the Internet for possible matches.
- Finally, they create a custom, color coded 'originality report', complete with source links, for each paper.
Protection of student privacy is a high priority.
Turnitin.com will not release any student information or paper to any third party without specific consent.
No additional work for faculty!
Faculty can have students submit their papers directly to turnitin by distributing the class id and class enrollment password to their class. Faculty members may also choose to submit papers themselves. The results of a submitted paper are compiled into one report and sent to the faculty member's turnitin inbox.
Please note that if you are using Turnitin as a plagiarism detection tool you should put the following note in your syllabus.
Students agree that by taking this course all required papers may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to Turnitin.com for the detection of plagiarism. All submitted papers will be included as source documents in the Turnitin.com reference database solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of such papers.
Research Resources are available to educate students about planning, organizing and proper citation skills for quality writing and research.
TurnItIn Instructor Guide
Adding TurnItIn assignments in Blackboard
TurnItIn Student Guide
To request a TurnItIn account, please fill out a service request at the Online Computing Support Center.
