TURN IT IN http://www.turnitin.com/ 1
plagiarism TURN IT IN PLAGIARISM PREVENTION 1. a piece of writing that has been copied from someone else and is presented as being your own work 2. the act of plagiarizing; taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own Used in thousands of institutions in over fifty countries, TurnItIn is recognized around the world as the standard in online plagiarism prevention. Developed initially to complement Internet-based peer reviews in large seminar classes at UC Berkeley, TurnItIn s plagiarism prevention system now helps ensure a level academic playing field for millions of students worldwide. Most educators today know that plagiarism and peer to peer collusion especially in their Internet forms are significant problems in schools around the world. How often have you received suspiciously well-written essays or writing assignments but lacked the means to confirm they had been plagiarized? confirms instances of suspected plagiarism, and more importantly, acts as a powerful deterrent to stop cheating before it starts. 80% of college-bound students admit to cheating on schoolwork, yet 95% of them never get caught... Who s Who Among American High School Students 44% of students considered minor cut -and-paste Internet plagiarism as trivial cheating or not cheating at all. Congressional Researcher, September 19, 2003 Real Results Originality Reports TurnItIn s plagiarism prevention system makes it easy to determine if students are writing original work. For every paper submitted to TurnItIn, we generate two versions of a unique, customized Originality Report. Each report details the results of our comprehensive Internet, commercial database, and submitted student paper database searches in a concise and unambiguous format. Our system is the most widely used, user-friendly, and technologically sophisticated plagiarism prevention tool available. It Educators using TurnItIn observe a significant reduction in the incidence of plagiarism in their classrooms and an increase in the quality of written work. Furthermore, institutions using TurnItIn on a large scale have seen measurable rates of plagiarism drop to almost zero. Efficient and effective plagiarism prevention is one of the easiest and cost effective ways to make sure students are getting the most out of your teaching and ensure they are building the reading, writing, and research skills they will need for a lifetime of learning. 2
CREATE AN INSTRUCTOR ACCOUNT 1. Open your favorite web browser and go to http://www.turnitin.com/. 2. On the upper left corner of the page that opens, click New User. 3. Click Create a user profile. item #3 on the New instructors start here list. 4. Click instructor on the right side under Create a New Account. 5. Fill out the Create a New Instructor Account form. When asked for the following items, use the information supplied below... class ID: 37888 join password: sjsd1234 6. Enter your own first and last name, email address, and choose a password. Note: Your password must be at least 6-12 letters long and contain a combination of letters and numbers. Passwords are case sensitive, so capitals will need to be capitalized later. 7. Choose one of the 13 secret questions and type your answer in the question answer box. 8. Click I agree -- create profile. Click Log in to Turnitin to proceed. 3
CREATE A CLASS 1. Open your favorite web browser and go to http://www.turnitin.com/. 2. On the upper left corner of the page that opens, enter your email address and the password you chose when creating your account in the boxes provided. Then click Sign in. Make sure you turn off the pop-up blocker for your browser, or throttle back the settings so it will allow pop-up windows from Turn It In to open. 3. Click on the add a class link on the control panel of your main instructor page. 4. Choose standard class from the dropdown menu. Type a name for the class which will allow you to differentiate the section and hour (e.g. LA 10 Block 1). Choose a simple password that your students will type in to join this particular class (e.g. la10isfun). Choose an end date for the class, using the dropdown menus offered (e.g. May 21, 2010). Then click submit on the lower left. You have now created your first class on TurnItIn! Take note of the information on the pop-up screen that will appear after you submit the new class; you may also want to print a hard copy for your records, though the information is available elsewhere in your account. You may repeat the steps above as often as needed to create all your 4
ADD AN ASSIGNMENT TO A CLASS 1. Open your favorite web browser and go to http://www.turnitin.com/. 2. On the upper left corner of the page that opens, enter your email address and the password you chose when creating your account in the boxes provided. Then click Sign in. 3. Click on the name of the class to which you would like to add a new assignment. 4. Click on create a new assignment. 5. Choose an assignment type in the dropdown menu. Since students may only submit one paper per assignment, there are two types of assignment: paper assignment and revision assignment. If you would like your students to submit another draft of their paper, you can create a revision assignment which is a duplicate of an existing assignment. I. Paper Assignment: A. Give your new assignment a title (e.g. Plagiarism Essay). B. Choose start and due dates for the assignment (note: you can also click on the calendar icon). Additional options may be explored by clicking more options : (Continued on page 6) 5
C. Advanced Options: You may include a description or instructions to the students in the Enter special instructions box. Generate Originality Reports for student submissions? Check Yes to open up options to generate reports for each student. If students may only submit their paper once, choose immediately (first report is final). To allow students to submit more than one version of a paper, select immediately (can overwrite reports until due date). To postpone generating reports until after students have submitted their papers, choose on due date. If you would like to allow students to make late submissions, choose yes on the dropdown menu beside Allow submissions after the due date?. D. Once you have chosen all the settings to your liking, click submit. II. Revision Assignment (You must have already created the assignment you want to duplicate): A. Choose the assignment to duplicate from the dropdown menu beside based on paper assignment. B. Choose a start and end date for the revision. C. Type in any special instructions in the description box provided. D. If students may only submit their paper once, choose immediately (first report is final). To allow students to submit more than one version of a paper, select immediately (can overwrite reports until due date). To postpone generating reports until after students have submitted their papers, choose on due date. E. Click submit on the lower right side when finished. 6
SUBMIT A STUDENT S PAPER Before you can submit a student s paper to the TurnItIn website 1, you must first create an account tied to the SJSD subscription, then create one or more classes, and then create one or more assignments through which the paper(s) will be compared to the database. To make the most of the TurnItIn site s capabilities, it s best to create a real class for each of your sections, add real assignments related to your lesson plans, and have all of your students submit their own papers to the site. This allows the SJSD to contribute to the database of information stored in the TurnItIn system which makes it much easier to detect it when students borrow one another s work locally, and not just from the Internet. However, if you only want to use the TurnItIn website as an occasional tool to check for a potential plagiarist, you can easily create a catch-all class and accompanying assignment, which will allow you to submit individual papers. Simply follow the instructions offered on pages 5 through 8 to create your account, create a class with a generic name (e.g. All Classes), and add a generic assignment (e.g. All Assignments). Once you have created an assignment (generic or otherwise), proceed as directed below: 1. Open your favorite web browser and go to http://www.turnitin.com/. 2. On the upper left corner of the page that opens, enter your email address and the password you chose when creating your account in the boxes provided. Then click Sign in. 3. Click on the name of the class to which you want to submit a paper. 4. Click on the name of the assignment to which to submit a paper. (Continued on page 8) 1: Files can only be submitted if they are in a digital format whether from a saved file, email, website or other medium. 7
5. Click submit paper on the control panel for that assignment. There are several methods by which you can submit assignments to the site. For the purposes of this manual, we will only be outlining file upload and cut and paste. The multiple file upload and zip file methods are best left to more advanced users. If you would like to copy and paste the student s assignment, choose cut and paste from the dropdown menu beside choose a paper submission method, and proceed with the instructions on the next page. If you would like to submit a document saved as a file, choose file upload from the dropdown menu beside choose a paper submission method, and continue with the instructions on page 10. 8
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: CUT AND PASTE 6. Before proceeding on the TurnItIn site, you must first open the document file, email message, or website containing the paper you wish to cut and paste. Once open, highlight the relevant portions of the paper and click Edit and Copy (or hit CTRL+C on the keyboard). Next, on the TurnItIn window, choose the name of a student from the dropdown menu below author if the student has previously enrolled in your class or choose unenrolled student if they have not previously created an account with TurnItIn or enrolled in your class. The first name and last name fields will be automatically filled in if you choose a student s name, otherwise type in the information in the appropriate boxes. Next, type in a name for the paper in the box beside the submission title field. Click inside the box below cut & paste your paper and then click Edit and Paste (or hit CTRL+V on the keyboard; you may also right-click in the box and click Paste ). Finally, click submit in the upper right corner of the box. The next screen will be a digital receipt to let you know the paper has been submitted. You can proceed to checking the paper s originality report by clicking on the go to inbox button at the middle left of the receipt. Please read on to the section on using originality reports for information. 9
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: FILE UPLOAD 6. The TurnItIn site accepts: Microsoft Word Documents (*.doc), WordPerfect Documents (*.wbk, *.wkb), Adobe Acrobat PDFs (*.pdf), saved Web Sites (*.html), Rich Text Files (*.rtf) and any plain text documents (*.txt). (Microsoft Works files must be converted beforehand.) In the TurnItIn window, choose the name of a student from the dropdown menu beside author if the student has previously enrolled in your class or choose unenrolled student if they have not previously created an account with TurnItIn. The first name and last name fields will be automatically filled in if you choose a student s name, otherwise type in the information in the appropriate boxes. Next, type in a name for the paper in the box beside the submission title field. Click the browse button near the middle of the control panel, beside the box below browse for the file to upload. A Windows navigational menu box will appear, which you can use to surf to the directory where the file is saved. Once you re in the folder where the paper is saved, left-click once on the file name and then click Open. Once the file name appears in the box, click upload on the lower left. The next screen will be a confirmation dialog, which will allow you to read the file that you are about to submit. If you re submitting the correct file, click submit. If not, click return to upload page and repeat the steps above. 10
The final screen will be a digital receipt to let you know the paper has been submitted. You can print this page for your records. You can also proceed to checking the paper s originality report ; do this by clicking on the go to inbox button on the upper left corner of the receipt. USING ORIGINALITY REPORTS Originality reports are what using TurnItIn is all about. The reports are generated each time you or a student submit an assignment to the TurnItIn website, and contain a plethora of useful information which will guide you through determining if a student has copied someone else s work whether from a website on the Internet, or from a paper in another class. Before you can view originality reports for your classes, or for individual students, you must first create an account on the TurnItIn site, create one or more classes, add one or more assignments, and submit one or more papers to one of those assignments. If you ve accomplished all of the above, proceed as follows to view an originality report. 1. Open your favorite web browser and go to http://www.turnitin.com/. 2. On the upper left corner of the page that opens, enter your email address and the password you chose when creating your account in the boxes provided. Then click Sign in. 11
3. Click on the name of the class containing the assignment you re interested in. 4. Click on the name of the assignment you re interested in. 5. A page will come up displaying a list of all students enrolled in the class. Students who have submitted an assignment (or had their assignment submitted by you) will appear first on the list, in reverse order of percentile of originality (papers with the greatest percentage of potentially plagiarized data will be displayed first). Enrolled students who have not yet submitted a paper will be displayed at the bottom of the screen. For those students who have a paper submitted, information provided will include their name, the title of their paper, a percentage of originality, a file extension (if the paper was uploaded as a file), and identification number of the individual paper, and the date it was submitted. See the next page for a complete breakdown of the contents of the main inbox screen. 12
A. You can use these check boxes to delete papers, download them to your computer, or move them into the viewed papers or marked papers folders (recommended for advanced users only). Note: Deleting papers that have been submitted is sometimes necessary if your students submit the wrong paper, want to submit a revised paper, or any other such circumstances. B. A list of students (authors) attached to this assignment. You can click on the name of any student who has enrolled in this class by getting an account at TurnItIn; this will allow you to read information about only that particular student. C. This column contains the titles of the papers submitted to this assignment, beside the name of the student who authored it. You can click on the title of a paper to open a new screen that will allow you to read the contents of that particular paper. D. This column contains a base summary of the originality data that has been generated by the TurnItIn site. A number from 0 to 100 percent will be displayed. 0% means that the entire paper is presumed to be an original work that has not been copied by the student. 100% means that the entire paper has been copied from another paper or somewhere on the Internet. Clicking on one of these percentage icons will call up the originality report for that particular paper. Read on to page 15 for more information on this feature. E. This column contains the extension of the file that was uploaded to the TurnItIn site, containing each particular paper. Papers submitted to the site through the cut and paste method always have.txt in this column. F. A list of the identification number assigned to each paper that has been submitted. G. The date that each paper on this assignment was submitted. 13
READING THE ORIGINALITY REPORT OF AN INDIVIDUAL PAPER By clicking on the icon displaying the percentage of originality from the inbox of an assignment, you can view an individual originality report for a particular paper. The image below is a sample of a paper that has (self) plagiarized content. What you see is a side-by-side comparison of an assignment (on the left) and the Internet sites or TurnItIndatabase entries (on the right) that have matched said paper. TurnItIn s intuitive programming will match slightly edited sentences/paragraphs as well as entirely copied ones. All original work is displayed on the left side of the screen in black, unadorned text. Plagiarized text is color-coded (with a unique color assigned to each website or database entry) and appears inside an inset box. Words that have been changed from an otherwise copied paragraph will appear as black text inside the inset box of the rest of that paragraph. Use the scrollbar on the left-hand side of the split-screen to scroll down through the student s paper. Use the scrollbar on the right-hand side to scroll down through the list of websites and TurnItIn-database entries that have been matched to this paper. You can click on the number beside each of the entries on the right-hand side of the screen, to take you to the section of the student s paper (on the left) which matches content from that entry. Finally, clicking on the link beneath each entry on the right will open that website. Other views of the originality report are available under the mode dropdown menu, though for the purposes of this manual, we re only discussing the default mode. 14
MISCELLANEOUS TASKS DELETE A STUDENT S PAPER, SO HE or SHE CAN RESUBMIT IT 1. Log on to the TurnItIn website. (See previous pages for assistance logging in.) 2. Click on the name of the class containing the assignment. 3. Click on the name of the assignment containing the paper. 4. Click the check-box next to the paper you want to delete, then click delete. 5. Click OK on the confirmation box that will open. CHANGE THE NAME/PASSWORD/ETC. FOR ONE OF YOUR CLASSES 1. Log on to the TurnItIn website. (See previous pages for assistance logging in.) 2. Click on the icon under edit in the row of the class that s information you want to change. 3. Edit the information on the control panel that comes up, as needed. Then click submit. DELETE A CLASS YOU NO LONGER NEED/WANT 1. Log on to the TurnItIn website. (See previous pages for assistance logging in.) 2. Click on the icon under delete in the row of the class you no longer need/want. 3. Click OK on the confirmation box that will open. 15
DELETE AN ASSIGNMENT YOU NO LONGER NEED/WANT 1. Log on to the TurnItIn website. (See previous pages for assistance logging in.) 2. Click on the name of the class containing the assignment. 3. Click on the icon under delete next to the assignment you no longer need/want. 4. Click OK on the confirmation box that will open. CHANGE THE NAME/ETC. FOR ONE OF YOUR ASSIGNMENTS 1. Log on to the TurnItIn website. (See previous pages for assistance logging in.) 2. Click on the name of the class containing the assignment. 3. Click on the icon under edit next to the assignment you want to edit. 4. Edit the information on the control panel that comes up, as needed. Then click submit. If in doubt about any other feature or function of the TurnItIn website, visit: http://www.turnitin.com/static/training.html Numerous videos, PDF manuals and PDF quickstart guides are available. 16