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Using "Turnitin™"

 

ENMU requires us to use "Turnitin™" as a means of combatting plagiarism.

Dr. Shirley will be using "Turnitin™" to do spot-checks on everyone's work. This is not intended to catch students out and fail them, but to be able to warn students of potential plagiarism, and suggest remedial action.

1. Students who cite their sources and show clearly what is quoted and what is original work should have no problems.
2. Students who forget to cite their sources, or who inadvertantly include non-original work, will be warned by "Turnitin™", and will be able to correct their work before sending it to the instructor.
3. Students who copy work without citing their sources, and who do not use "Turnitin™" to check, but merely send the work to the instructor as "their" work, will not have the benefit of the advance warning system, and will probably earn a grade of "F" for the Course.

Using "Turnitin™"

• Create your User Profile
  1. Go to The "Turnitin™" Main Page
  2. From the Main Page, follow links to Training, and User Guides, and print out the .pdf file called the "Student User Guide" and the Web Page called "Student QuickStart". Keep these for future reference.
  3. Go back to the Main Page, click on "Create User Profile" in the top right corner.
  4. A dialog box should appear - enter your email addy, and a password of your choice. The password must have at least one number and one letter; it is also case-sensitive. Note : "Turnitin™" will use the email addy you give, to send confirmation of receipt of your work - this inculdes the whole of the file you sent, so I recommend that you use an email box which is fairly large - Yahoo is now giving 100MB.
  5. "Turnitin™" will then ask you for your name and some other information, and ask what type of user you are - choose "student", and agree to their Terms of Service.
  6. You are given a "Turnitin™" account which you can use for any courses which use "Turnitin™". ENMU will be introducing "Turnitin™" to more courses in future - you will be able to use the same account for all of them. Your ID is the email addy you gave initially.
• Enroll in the "Turnitin™" section for your course.
  1. Go to The "Turnitin™" Main Page
  2. Using the box in the top right corner of the Main Page, Log In, using the email addy you used for your User Profile, and the password you chose - remember, it is case-sensitive
  3. "Enroll" for the class. This is not the same as enrolling at ENMU - it merely allows you to send your work to a section of "Turnitin™" reserved for my students, eg. for rel101, rel103, rel107, rel433, or rel464. Follow the steps of the "Enrollment Wizard" - the Class ID and the Password will be sent to you by email before the start of the semester. For reasons of security I can't publicize it on the Web.
  4. When enrollment is completed, you are shown a page which lists the courses for which you are enrolled at "Turnitin™". Click on the Course area you wish to enter
• Submitting your work
  1. Log on to your account with "Turnitin™", and click on your Course, with the ID and Password to enter the course area.
  2. You will be taken to the Class Homepage, which lists all the assignments, essays 2-6, the exams, and a couple of lines called "practice-original" and "practice-cheat", with their due dates. You may submit work at any time, either before or after the due dates. The "practice" sections are for you to send up a piece of your original writing, and a piece which you copy from a WebPage, encyclopedia, or other source - as if you were cheating.
  3. I recommend that you prepare your work and save it as an MSWord.doc file on a diskette in the A drive. Name it something like "essay1.doc", and use "File Upload" to submit it to "Turnitin™" - Click on the "Submit" button in line with the assignment or essay you are checking, and a "Browse" box will appear - browse to your A drive, choose the relevant file, then click on it to submit it.
  4. You will be shown the file you submitted, and asked if it is the correct file. When you choose "yes, submit it ", a "Receipt Screen" will appear, with a small icon on the left, with an arrow to the portfolio - this will take you back to the class area, where you should see the name of the file you submitted in the line for that assignment.
     It takes "Turnitin™" several minutes to generate an Originality Report - there is a small square icon in the "contents" column - initially it is grey. Wait a few minutes, and if it does not change color, click the "Refresh" button for your browser - the icon should change to a color which indicates the proportion of non-original material in the file. You can choose to print an Originality Report, or to view a Webpage which will show which parts are identical to other sources. Use the Originality Report to identify any parts of your work which need to have their sources cited.
     Note - "Turnitin™" does not distinguish between work which is properly cited, and work which is not - it will highlight all non-original work. It is then up to the student to make sure that sources are correctly cited.
  5. When you are satisfied that your work is properly cited, you should send it to the instructor at the Course email boxes. "Turnitin™" will not do this for you, you have to do it for yourself
  6. I have made Originality Reports available for the whole class - you will be able to see your own Originality Reports, but not those of other students. I have not enabled "Peer Reviews" - no student will be able to see or review another student's work. I will not be posting any grades on "Turnitin™" or on "Blackboard™" or "WebCT™" - grades during the semester will be sent by email, and Mid-Term and Final Course Grades will be posted on "Banner™".
  7. To see the difference between original and copied work, submit any piece of your own original writing to the box for "practice-original", and any piece of work which you have copied from some other source, to the box for "practice-cheat" - "Turnitin™" should flag the original with blue, and the copied with red.

Go here for examples of Academic Dishonesty.

Go here for precautions to take against dishonest students stealing your work.

Copyright © 1999 Shirley J. Rollinson, all Rights Reserved

Dr. Rollinson

PO Box 70
Clovis
NM 88102

Last Updated: January 1, 2007

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