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Turnitin Plagiarism Detection
The University licenses plagiarism detection services from Turnitin.com. This on-line service scans student papers for content from a large and continually increasing database of on-line sources including websites and search results, reference materials, student papers and homework assignments available on-line, Cliff/Spark Notes, and essays available for purchase. Fordham currently licenses only the plagiarism detection tool. For online collaboration, discussion boards, and peer review tools, please continue to use Blackboard .
Obtaining a faculty account:
To receive a turnitin.com account, please visit the Faculty Technology Center on your campus to create your login and get a quick walk through of the service.
Using Turnitin.com:
Most commonly, instructors will submit papers for review that they suspect of plagiarism. It is possible, though, to have students submit papers directly to the Turnitin service themselves.
To get started with Turnitin, including setting up student submissions, there are Quick Start Guides available on Turnitin's website. For in-depth help, there are also more detailed User Manuals and Training Videos.
If you intend to have your students submit papers themselves, they can download Student QuickStarts and detailed Student Manuals, specifically designed for student use.
Things to keep in mind:
You know your students best. Turnitin reports are based solely on similarities to on-line sources. The service cannot compare writing styles, detect variations in performance across assignments, notice suspicious transitions, or otherwise analyze student writing for tell-tale signs of plagiarism.
Turnitin Originality Reports are just that. They show parts of assignments that are not a student's original writing. The service has no awareness of different documentation styles and does not make any attempt to distinguish quotes, notes, and references. The simple appearance of unoriginal passages in student work is not itself cause for concern. It is up to the instructor to decide if unoriginal work has been properly quoted and cited or otherwise well used, or if a particular inclusion is a case of plagiarism.
Turnitin checks student work almost exclusively against on-line sources. A clean report from Turnitin is not proof that plagiarism has not occurred. Again, you know your students best, and Turnitin.com is not a substitute for experience and common sense.
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