Turnitin.com
Turnitin.com is anti-plagiarism software. It compares submitted text to a database of submitted student papers and/or the Internet at large. Because it retains a submitted report in it's database if you use the database comparison, there could be FERPA and/or copyright issues. There are two ways around this. One way is to copy and paste the following information, prepared by Oakland's legal counsel, into Microsoft Word and have your students sign hard copies and keep them for no less than three years.
RELEASE AND AUTHORIZATION
In consideration of action taken by Oakland University to detect plagiarism, I grant to Oakland University a non-exclusive, royalty free license to make a copy of my work submitted for this class and have it checked for plagiarism. Checking for plagiarism may include submitting the work to a plagiarism detection service. I authorize the plagiarism detection service to include my work in its database to facilitate the subsequent detection of plagiarism by other individuals. I understand that my work will be used only to facilitate the detection of plagiarism and will not be used for any other commercial purposes without my further written consent. I, as the author, retain all other rights to my work. I acknowledge that I am not required to provide this Release and Authorization and that if I do not agree to have my work submitted to a plagiarism detection service, I may be given an alternate, equivalent assignment.
I read the above, understood what I read, and agree with the terms of the Release and Authorization.
Student’s Signature:
Student’s Name (please print):
Student’s Identification Number:
Date:
Or a second method is to Opt Out of submitting student work to the Turnitin database and simply use the software to compare student text to whatever is on the Internet (directions are below). However Turnitin's internet search is not as good as Google's.
I. Get into Turnitin
1. Go to www.turnitin.com
2. Create a user profile-- First choose as profile type: instructor. Then you will need an account ID and account join password from e-LIS at Oakland University. Please contact us to get your join user profile information. Your Oakland email will become your login and you will then create a Turnitin password. It's probably easiest to use the same password as your Oakland email. It will need at least one letter and one number.
3. Return to the Login page at: www.turnitin.com and login with your Oakland University email address and password.
II. Instructor's homepage
1. First create a class by clicking on Add a Class.
2. Click on the class title to go inside.
3. Click on Create a New Assignment and fill out the form.
If you are going to Opt Out of submitting your student papers to the Turnitin.com database because of confidentiality and copyright, then
a. Show Advanced Assignment Options: Choose Yes
b. For Compare submissions against these search targets: Uncheck Student Paper Database
c. For Allow other papers to be checked against submissions? Choose No.
d. For Would you like to save these options as your defaults for future assignments? Choose either Yes or No.
III. Submit a Paper and View Report
1. Click on Submit beside the relevant assignment and fill out the form. Choose whether you will upload the entire file or cut and paste part of a report. Put in the student's name, title, and file or cut/paste text and click Submit.
2. After you have a digital receipt for the paper submission, then click on the Inbox for the relevant assignment. Click the icon under Report. If the report text is in red, then it's been copied from the Internet or database.
3. Click or double-click on Report to get a view of the submitted assignment compared to the internet page.
