Turnitin: Basics

What Turnitin Does 
When students submit assignments, they go through a similarity checking software called Turnitin. The role of Turnitin is to look for patterns in a student assignment and to compare it with other assignments, websites or scholarship. Examples of the type of academic misconduct Turnitin can indicate are: 

• Copying a large chunk of text from a book and then pasting in your assignment. This includes the strategic rearranging of words.
• Borrowing’ large sections of a student assignment from a different academic institution
• Passing off website content as your own

Top tip 
Please note that a high similarity score when using Turnitin does not always mean academic misconduct has occurred. There needs to be some investigation to get a better sense of what has gone on. A colleague in Learning Innovation has created a video with some advice.