What is Turnitin?

Turnitin® is a tool that students and instructors can use to identify potential instances of plagiarism. When you submit your paper to Turnitin®, you will get a similarity report that should be reviewed carefully so you can make any needed revisions to your paper.

What Does Turnitin Do?

Turnitin® highlights sentences or phrases that are similar to works or papers that have already been published, submitted, or found online. Similarity is not always the same as plagiarism. You might have something similar in your paper to what has been published, such as a direct quote, but this does not always mean that you have plagiarized. If you have put quotation marks around that direct quote, and you’ve cited it, you have not plagiarized. Items on your references list are also going to show up as similar, but because these are citations, these similarities do not equal plagiarism.

If the highlighted area in your similarity report contains information or wording that you have obtained from a source, be sure you have properly summarized, paraphrased, or quoted that material and you have cited the source. If you do not cite outside sources, it is considered plagiarizing.

To see examples and get more details view the following video:

Understanding Turnitin Reports Video Tutorial.

 

 

 

 

 

How Do I Run an Originality Check?

You can access Turnitin in Waypoint within your Canvas course.

If you are a doctoral student and your course is a non-Waypoint course, please see the instructions found at: Non-Waypoint Course TII Instructions

To check your assignment for similarity before turning it in for grading, follow the instructions below if you have Waypoint in your course :

1. Click on the WayPoint submission link for the assignment you would like to check--just like you would do if you were turning in the assignment. 

Sample assignment submission button.

2. Upload your assignment by clicking on "Choose File."

Choose File.

3. Change the Submission Type to "Originality Check Only."

Originality Check Only

4. Click "Upload." 

Upload

5. Review your submission by clicking on the "Click here to View Report" link.

Click here to View Report

6. Review your assignment for instances of similarity.