Learning Systems

September 6, 2011

Important Announcement: Due to Turnitin storing personal information in the United States, the Moodle plug-in will remain disabled as of September 8, 2011 in accordance with the BC Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.  Read more

UPDATE: Information for Faculty Members, posted on October 3, 2011

UPDATE: Turnitin Posted on October 6, 2011

 Although Turnitin integrates three services: OriginalityCheck plagiarism prevention, PeerMark peer reviewing and GradeMark paperless grading, the University is licensed to use only the OriginalityCheck plagiarism prevention services as it has for the last two years.   

 What is Turnitin

The University of Victoria subscribes to Turnitin, a web-based plagiarism prevention and detection service that UVic faculty members and instructors can use to educate their students on the importance of proper citation and heighten awareness about plagiarism issues. Turnitin should be used in addition to following key pedagogical principles regarding assignment design, feedback strategies and the alignment of learning outcomes with assessment activities and criteria.  

Why use Turnitin

• Helps instructors proactively support the University's standards and policy on academic integrity.
• Provides instructors with more time to spend teaching.
• Helps students improve referencing skills.
• Protects students' intellectual property rights.
• Provides a powerful deterrent to stop plagiarism before it starts.

Turnitin analyzes papers submitted by students or instructors for:

• text copied from web pages published on the Internet
• papers purchased from paper mills
• papers previously submitted to Turnitin
• materials published from some journals and online databases

An "originality report" is generated identifying the number of documents located with similar or identical text passages. For similar documents located on Internet pages, the report contains a list of clickable links to those documents, a copy of the located documents colour-coding the similar text, and a copy of the submitted paper containing corresponding, similar, colour-coded text for quick cross-referencing. The instructor must analyze the report and make an academic decision as to whether the similarities between the submitted paper and the identified Internet and database sources are significant.

Instructor and Student Account Setup Process

1. An instructor completes the Turnitin Account Request form.
2. The instructor sets up an instructor Turnitin account on turnitin.com. Please see instructor guidelines for setup instructions.
3. The instructor then creates a class on Turnitin. When creating class, the instructor will be prompted for a class enrolment password.
4. The instructor makes note of the class ID and enrolment password and distributes both to students.
5. Students setup a student Turnitin account on turnitin.com. Please see student guidelines for setup instructions and information on how to protect students' privacy.
6. Student enrols into the instructor's class with the class ID and enrolment password provided by the instructor from step 4.