Plagiarism Detection (Turnitin)

This video guide covers submitting assignments to a Turnitin Dropbox.

Turnitin is a program that allows you, and/or your teacher, to check whether there is any unoriginal material in your work by comparing it to a database of print and online materials.

Any matching text is detailed in an Originality report.

A Dropbox enabled with Plagiarism Detection can be accessed by clicking on Assessment on the Site Navbar and then clicking the Dropbox link.

Depending on how your unit has been set up a Dropbox enabled with Plagiarism Detection can also be accessed via the Content link/table of contents.
When you click the Dropbox link you can access a list of Dropbox Folders. Dropboxes with Plagiarism Detection enabled are indicated by this icon.

To submit your assignment

1. Click the name of the Dropbox folder that you want to submit an assignment to.
2. Carefully read the instructions relating to the assignment criteria and submission.
3. Once you have read through the instructions Click Add a File.
4. Drag and drop files from your computer into the upload target area. If this function is not available in your browser, click Upload to find the file you want to upload. When you have located your file select it and click Open.
5. When you have finished selecting files Click Done.
6. There is also a Comments field where you can add comments related to your assignment if required.
7. Now Click the Submit button to submit your assignment.
8. You will receive confirmation that your file submission was successful.

It can take a few minutes to greater than 24 hours for an Originality report to appear for the first submission. For subsequent submissions, the report will not appear for at least 24 hours.

When an Originality report is available to view, the status changes from In progress to a percentage rating under the Report column of your Dropbox. The colour of the report icon indicates the overall similarity index of the paper, based on how much matching text was found. To view the Originality report, click on the coloured section next to the percentage rating. Your paper will open in a new window.

Originality reports are tools to help locate potential sources of unoriginal work in submitted papers. The reports do not reflect assessment of whether a paper has or has not been plagiarised. Such a decision can only be made after careful examination of both the submitted paper and the suspected sources.

The Originality report has two main sections:

• Paper text: The left side of the report shows the text of the submitted paper. Matching text is highlighted and numbered to correspond with sources to the right.
• Matching sources: The right side of the report lists the sources of matching text.

Click on the Paper Info located at the bottom left hand corner to view information such as Paper ID, the date the report was processed, word count, number of submissions and matching similarity by source.

Click on the View/edit filters and setting button in the bottom right hand corner to exclude quotes, bibliography, and small matches, and turn off multi-colour highlighting for the Originality report. Don’t forget to click on Apply Changes.