Turnitin

Turnitin is software that supports the detection of plagiarism and collusion by identifying text in student electronic assignment submissions that is not original.

Text submitted to the Turnitin database is checked against about six billion websites, academic journals and previously submitted papers.

Turnitin can be used to educate students about plagiarism as part of the assignment or essay writing process, as well as to check final submissions.

Turnitin is integrated with the Desire2Learn Dropbox tool, so you can easily set up a Turnitin assignment Dropbox in your unit site, grade the submissions online and have the grades appear in the Grade Book. You just need to ensure that you have selected the option to 'Enable Plagiarism Detection for this folder'.

You should make sure students are aware that it can take up to 24 hours for a Turnitin originality report to appear, so they should allow that time when working on their assignments.

Using Turnitin is only one way to manage the problems of plagiarism and collusion in student submissions. The Institute of Teaching and Learning Dealing with plagiarism in assessment website includes teaching and assessment strategies to minimise the temptation for students to plagiaries, strategies for implementing Turnitin in your units, and links to Deakin's plagiarism and collusion policies.

Guides

Plagiarism detection (Quick guide for students)