Turnitin Plagiarism Detection

Transcription

1 Turnitin Plagiarism Detection At Imperial College London, I ran staff training sessions on how to use Turnitin. During these sessions I focused exploring all of the options that Turnitin offers. I also talked about how to use Turnitin as a plagiarism prevention tool. The document below is a help guide that was created for the Turnitin training sessions. It explains how to use Turnitin within Blackboard.

2 Last Update: December, 2010 CONTENTS SECTION PAGE Introduction 2 Setting up your Assignment 2 Student s Perspective 9 Administering your assignment 10 1

3 Introduction Turnitin2 is a plagiarism detection service for use by staff at Imperial College. Since September 2008 a Turnitin plugin for Blackboard has been available for all modules within Blackboard. This document will explain how you can use Turnitin2 within Blackboard. How does Turnitin2 work? A student will submit a paper online through a Turnitin2 Assignment. Turnitin2 will scan the paper to see if it can find text matches within the Turnitin2 archives and databases. These databases include websites (online and archived), journals, articles and student submissions from UK Universities. Turnitin2 will then produce an Originality Report, which gives you an indication of possible plagiarism in a student submission(s). Useful Turnitin2 Information Before you create a Turnitin2 assignment on your Blackboard module it is advised that you do the following first: 1. Go to the ICT E-Learning support website lagiarism. This will contain information on support and training (including digital copies of handouts). 2. Go to the Library s website for further information about plagiarism awareness in the College. 3. Go to the Registry s website, and read the College s plagiarism policy. 4. Go to the TurnitinUK website for further details on Turnitin2. Setting up your Assignment In order for you to use Turnitin2 inside Blackboard you must set up a Turnitin2 Assignment. This is completely separate from the normal Assignment feature which you might use in Blackboard. 1. Open up a Blackboard Course. Keep in mind that in order to add a Turnitin2 Assignment you must be an instructor (Teach Tab) and designer (Build Tab) on the Blackboard course. 2. Make sure you are in the BUILD mode/tab 3. Locate an area on the Course Content / Home Page where you would like to place your assignment. This assignment can be placed in a folder, learning module or by itself. 4. Select Add Content Link from the top menu bar. 2

4 5. Choose TurnitinUK Assignment from the drop down menu. 6. Select Create TurnitinUK Assignment. 7. Type in the title of your Assignment and click Create Turnitin Assignment. 3

5 8. Still in the BUILD mode you will be taken directly to the Turnitin2 create assignment page. Select Paper Assignment. Then select Next Step. 9. Type in the Assignment Title. This is normally a copy of the title that you entered for the section entitled Create Turnitin Assignment. You must type in something for the point value even though it will be irrelevant for your assignment. The point value relates to Grademark, a tool not currently recommended for use. 10. Fill in the appropriate start, due and post dates. a. The start date is the date that students can begin submitting their papers. b. The due date should be after the start date. The due date will define when students cannot submit papers anymore. c. The post date should be after the due date. Just put in a random date that is after the due date. This setting will not affect you as it relates to Grademark, a tool not currently recommended for use. 4

6 11. Select more options. 12. Enter any special instructions for the students. Special instructions might specify what your expectations are or what type of file format the students should use. 13. Select No for QuickMark sets. This is only used in conjunction with Grademark, a tool not currently recommended for use. 14. Normally you want to generate an Originality Report so it is recommended that you select Yes. 5

7 15. Under Generate Originality Report for student submissions you have several choices (see below). Generate Originality Reports for student submissions options Immediately the report is final: This is the most common choice. Students will submit their paper and within a few minutes the Originality Report will be visible for you and the student (if you have given permission for the students to see the report see point 19 below for more information). Immediately (can overwrite reports until the due date): If you want students to have the opportunity to resubmit their paper and make changes based on feedback from an originality report choose this option. They will receive the first Originality Report within several minutes. If they make changes to their paper (normally based on the feedback from the originality report) and then they resubmit, this will overwrite the previous submission (even if the name of the file is different) but they will not receive another Originality Report for 24 hours. This feature is in place to force the students to think about their changes and plan ahead. On due date: The students will be able to resubmit many times until the due date. Each submission will overwrite the previous (even if the name has changed). However, on the due date the system will make an Originality Report for the last item that was submitted. This will just generate the report for you and the student (if you have given permission for the students to see the report) on the due date. You can turn off the ability for students to view Originality Reports (see below under Allow students to see Originality Report). Also be aware that the longer the paper the longer it will take to produce the report. 16. You can choose to Exclude bibliographic materials. This is a personal preference question. Normally it is recommended that you choose yes as source matches for bibliography items are likely to found and therefore contribute to the similarity index percentage. Selecting yes means that any text appearing after the heading References or Bibliography will not be submitted for comparison in Turnitin2. 6

8 17. You can choose to Exclude quoted materials. It is recommended that you choose no. If you select yes quotations will only be excluded if enclosed in double quotation marks, not single quotation marks. As UK academic practice is to enclose quotations in single quotation marks, this means you will not see any useful exclusions. 18. Under Exclude small matches you can select your preference. If you choose yes, then you will see a pop up box entitled Exclude matches by. This will allow you to set a word count or percentage. This can help to reduce the amount of matches and therefore reduce the similarity index percentage. 19. Under Allow Students to see Originality Reports you can select your preference. Some lecturers choose yes to allow the students to get feedback on their work. This will aid in their understanding of plagiarism. If you do not want the students to see the report select no. 20. Under Allow Submissions after due date, it is best to choose no. You probably want to make sure that all students submit by the due date. 7

9 21. For Submit papers to, it is recommended that you submit your paper to the standard paper repository. For more information on repositories see below. What are the repositories? When a student submits a paper to Turnitin2, it can be stored in one of the Turnitin2 databases. You can choose which database/repository you would like to store it in. The choice of repository will allow other people at other UK Universities to compare their student submissions with your students submissions. This will enable others to see if collusion (students copying from each other) has taken place. Standard paper repository THIS IS RECOMMENDED. If you allow students to submit to the Standard Turnitin2 Repository, this enables other UK institutions to compare their submissions with these submissions. (Note: they cannot view the Imperial College submissions without permission). Institution paper repository: If you allow students to submit to the Institutional Turnitin2 Repository, this enables Imperial College users (and no one else) to compare their submissions with these submissions. Student s choice of repository: DO NOT USE. This gives students the choice of repository, which is dangerous. Staff should retain control. No repository: If you select No repository then no one will be able to compare their submissions with these submissions. This is useful for PhD theses or sensitive papers; however you would not be able to check for collusion between students. This is a good option when you want to obtain a plagiarism report for a particular paper but you don t want your item to be stored for future collusion checks. Therefore this is recommended when testing Turnitin Tick all boxes under search options. This will mean that Turnitin2 will search in all possible locations. 23. Click submit. 8

10 24. A new Turnitin2 Assignment inbox will be created on your Course content / Home page. What happens from the students perspective (i.e. Student View)? 1. After the start date the students will have the option to submit. They will log into the Blackboard course, select the assignment and submit their coursework using the Turnitin2 Submit button as seen below. Administering your assignment 9

11 1. After you create the assignment you will have the ability to administer it by changing your settings, seeing student submissions and viewing Originality Reports (similarity reports). To administer your assignment switch to TEACH mode in order to open the Assignment inbox. All administration will be done in the TEACH mode. 2. To edit your assignment options click on the name of the assignment in the TEACH mode. 3. Then select Edit assignment settings. You will be able to edit all of your original options. It is best to choose all of your settings before students submit their work. If you change settings after submissions have been sent, not all of the settings will be applied to those submissions. 4. To view students work click on the name of the assignment in the TEACH mode. Click on the assignment inbox to view submissions. 10