Turnitin at UNM
Stephen Burd (burd@unm.edu)
Associate Professor, ASM
Provost’s Academic Technology Liaison
Presentation copies available online http://averia.unm.edu
Last revised: 4/9/2020 9:35 PM

Brief History
 2010/2011 - College of Education and School of
Management acquire separate licenses for Turnitin
 2013 - Faculty technology survey identified antiplagiarism software as a high acquisition priority
 2013
 Provost forms working group to select and implement a campus-wide anti-plagiarism tool(s)
 iParadigms was selected and 2 tools were licensed through August 2015:
 Turnitin – for instructional/classroom use
 iThenticate – for research/publication use

License and Cost Details
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 iThenticate
 Purchased by UNM Research Office ($30K)
 Free use by UNM users
 Authorized users – all faculty, staff, and students
 http://iThenticate.unm.edu
Turnitin
 Purchased jointly by UNM Research Office and VP for Health
Sciences ($50K each)
 Free use by health sciences instructors
 Chargeback for use by other instructors - $100 per instructor per year
 Authorized users – all instructors (including TAs) and up to 16,500 students
 http://Turnitin.unm.edu
Both licenses to be renegotiated for Fall 2015.

Common University Use Cases
 Instructional Turnitin
 Students check works such as term papers prior to submission
 Faculty members check works submitted by students
 Research-oriented iThenticate
 Faculty members check their own articles prior to submission to a conference or journal
 Faculty members serving as reviewers or editors check conference or journal submissions
 Faculty members and/or institutions check grant proposals
 Institutional iThenticate
 Institutions check Masters theses and PhD dissertations
 Institutions check their own publicly-accessible web sites and document repositories

What is Plagiarism Detection?
 Modern plagiarism detection software/services perform the following functions:
 Search for similar or identical text on the web, in some publication databases, and in document repositories
 Annotate the document to identify matched text
 Add clickable links or provide a side-by-side view of the online matched material
 Optionally report an originality or plagiarism “score”

Sample Originality Report

Plagiarism Detection
Capabilities and Limitations
 Anti-plagiarism tools:
 Work well with text
 Search documents in multiple languages
 Can detect some but not all text matches of documents in one language with sources in different languages
 Tool limitations include:
 Misses some text matches and can generate false positives
 Images and sounds aren’t matched
 Aren’t easily applied to larger bodies of work including document collections, web sites, and blogs
 As with any tool, automated plagiarism detection can be well-used or misused and training is essential to achieving the best outcomes

Additional Turnitin Functions
 Using different tools for different assignment-related purposes can be confusing and inefficient for instructors an students
 Combining anti-plagiarism with additional assignmentrelated functions lessens the “pain” of learning/using a new tool
 Turnitin additional functions include:
 Online submission and resubmission - well-implemented
 Draft and final submission commenting – well-implemented
 Grammar/style checking – still a few bugs in the system
 Peer review – looks good but I haven’t used it
 Grading/Rubrics – looks good but I haven’t used it

Accessing the Services
 iThenticate
 Accessed as an online application (i.e., a Web application or software as a service)
 http://www.ithenticate.com
 Turnitin
 Accessed as an online application (i.e., a Web application or software as a service)
 http://www.Turnitin.com
 Accessed as a tool/service embedded within UNM
Learn or other learning management systems (e.g.,
Canvas, Moodle, and Desire2Learn)
 http://learn.unm.edu

Getting Help
 http://www.turnitin.com/en_us/training/instructor-training

Getting Help - Continued

Getting Help - Continued

Login
 http://www.turnitin.com/en_us/login

Instructor Home – All Classes

Instructor Home – Dashboard

About Turnitin Classes
 Class es are the basic unit of organization for assignments and students
 Turnitin classes should actually be thought of as
UNM course sections – having:
 A fixed start and end date
 A roster of enrolled students
 A name that identifies the course and semester
 For courses taught over multiple semesters:
 Create a new class each semester (or copy an old class and give it a new name)
 Copy assignments from previous/other classes as needed

About Turnitin Class Types
 Standard class
 Single section taught by a single instructor without TA or grader assistance
 Master class
 Multiple sections with identical assignments but different rosters
 Enables grading and management functions to be delegated to another instructor, TA, or grader

Adding A Class

Adding A Class - Continued

Adding A Class - Confirmation

Navigate to Class Home Page

Class Home Page for Newly Created Class

About Turnitin Assignments
 Basic assignment features:
 Title - Should be obvious to instructors and students
 Start/stop date/times – Submissions are only allowed between these date/times
 Post date
 Date after which students can view comments and grades
 Set before due date if you want to comment drafts and allow resubmission
 Allowed file types
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Only those that can be checked for originality
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Microsoft Word® (DOC and DOCX)
Corel WordPerfect ® (WPD)
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HTML
Adobe PostScript®,
Plain text (TXT) and Rich Text Format (RTF)
Adobe Acrobat - Portable Document Format (PDF)
Hangul (HWP)
 Powerpoint (PPT, PPTS, and PPS)
All – You can still provide general (but not embedded) comments

Adding An Assignment

Adding An Assignment - Continued

Turnitin Assignments – Optional Settings
 Click the Optional settings button to set features in the following categories:
 Late submission – enables submission after due date but not if an on-time submission already exists
 Originality reports – see following slides
 Grammar/style checking – various settings
 Rubric use
 Save settings as defaults for future assignments – very handy once you’ve tuned settings to your liking

Adding An Assignment
Defining Optional Settings

About Originality Reports
 Originality reports contain information about matches between submission content and various source databases including:
 Internet-accessible content
 Publisher databases
 Student paper repositories
 Originality reports contain a similarity index
 A percentage of “unoriginal content”
 Lower score is “better”?

Sample Originality Report and Overview Video
 Overview video
 http://www.turnitin.com/en_us/training/instructortraining/viewing-originality-reports

Interpreting the Similarity Score
 Does a high similarity index equal plagiarism or a poor grade?
 Is “unoriginal material” cited properly?
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Turnitin can’t tell you
 Do your students know how to properly cite?
 How much properly cited material is allowed in an
A/B/C/F paper?
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That’s your choice - should be clearly communicated in the assignment instructions
 Do you have a specific honesty or plagiarism policy for your school, department, or course?
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See sample – http://averia.unm.edu/MGMT337/Current/General/HonestyPolicy.html
 Is it linked to your course home page and all relevant assignments?

Using Originality Reports - Advice
 Consider Turnitin to be a tool for identifying some instances of potential plagiarism
 The tool will generate false positives and negatives
 The instructor/TA/grader needs to:
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Examine the evidence and decide whether it constitutes plagiarism
Determine how similarity (proper or improper) impacts grade
Watch for missed matches (e.g., passages that sound too sophisticated/polished, style mismatches, …)
 The tool streamlines the processes of identifying suspect submissions and follow-up investigation
 Similarity indices can be used to identify targets for investigation (e.g., above a certain percentage or the top few percentage values)
 Matches are visually summarized and paired to sources
 Source material can be viewed with a single click in most cases
 Summary – the tool is simply that – a tool – not a substitute for your own judgment or follow-up effort

Originality Report Settings – Key Issues
Student Access
 Can students see them (and when)?
 Yes, ASAP – students can see and “correct” their own mistakes – Multiple schools of thought:
 Teaching tool for students to learn what is plagiarism and how to avoid it
 Teaching tool for student to improve their plagiarism skills
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A way of keeping trouble out of the instructor’s inbox
 No, or yes but not until it’s too late for correction and resubmission
 Gotcha !?
 Now what?
 Which approach should you adopt?

Originality Report Settings – Key Issues
Reporting Content
 What is included/excluded from “matches”?
 Most significant issue is whether the global student repository is searched
 Best way to catch reused and purchased papers
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Exclude bibliographic material from Similarity Index for all papers in this assignment?
 Are bibliographic similarities originality/plagiarism issues?
 Exclude quoted material from Similarity Index for all papers in this assignment?
 Note that quotation doesn’t imply proper citation
 Exclude small matches
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Word count – match must equal/exceed this size (default is 5)
Percentage – useless in most cases, avoid!

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Originality Report Settings – Key Issues
Adding Student Submissions to Repository
Repository options – Store student papers in:
 The standard paper repository
 The institution paper repository – disabled at UNM
 No repository
 Allow students to choose between the standard paper repository or the institution paper repository – disabled at UNM
Arguments against
 You’re enabling iParadigms to “make money off of student papers” without compensating the students
 License terms limit iParadigms use to generating originality reports
 You and/or your students may not consider this fair use
Arguments for
 UNM does its part to detect intra- and inter-institution plagiarism
 The most recent (and highest) court ruling considers this fair use
 UNM policy currently being updated to specifically allow this use
 Your thoughts?

Enrolling Students - Options
 Self-registration
 Simplest method
 Instructor sends an email message to students with the class ID number and the enrollment password
 Student creates their own account (or uses an existing one) and registers for the course
 Instructor registration
 One-at-a-time
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Instructor inputs name and email address
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Student email notification is automatically generated
To see what students see – enroll yourself using your primary or an alternate email address
 Bulk upload
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Word, text, or Excel
Same info as one-at-a-time
Specific formatting requirements

Registration Confirmation Email

Switch to Student View
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Only if you’re registered as a student

Student Class Home Page

Setup For Demonstration
 Switch back to instructor view
 Edit assignment settings
 Change start and post dates to yesterday
 Turn on submission to student repository
 Download/save sample paper
 http://averia.unm.edu/MGMT337/Archive/2005AndEarlier/ResearchProject/SamplePapers/GigabitEthernet.pdf
 Switch back to student view

Submission Process – Step 1a

Submission Process – Step 1b

Submission Process – Step 2a

Submission Process – Step 2b

Submission Process – Step 3 - Confirmation

Submission Process –Confirmation Email

Student View After Assignment Submission

Instructor View After Assignment Submission

Viewing Assignment Submissions

About Grading & Reviewing Submissions
 There are three possible views of a submission (see upper left corner of screen):
 Originality – Display/manipulate originality report
 GradeMark – Used for commenting and grading with or without a rubric
 PeerMark
– Used for reviewing peer comments

GradeMark Key Features
 Embedded comments – 2 types
 Write your own – click anywhere (or select text) and start typing
 Drag-and-drop (QuickMarks)
 Drag comments from right frame to anywhere in the paper
 Choose from different libraries of comments
 Save your own
 General comments – Text, voice, or both
 Rubric – if attached
 Grade (top right corner)

Turnitin With UNM Learn

Turnitin With UNM Learn