The University of West Florida (UWF) maintains a license agreement with iParadigms, LLC for the purpose of using their product TurnItIn, an online tool that helps faculty determine the originality of written materials presented by students in course assignments.  The TurnItIn service has the potential to be an important resource for promoting information literacy as well as encouraging academic integrity.   All UWF faculty have access to the TurnItIn service and each faculty can make the service available to students in their classes.

Every paper submitted to TurnItIn.com is returned in the form of a customized Originality Report. Results are based on exhaustive searches of billions of pages from both current and archived instances of the internet, millions of student papers previously submitted to Turnitin, and commercial databases of journal articles and periodicals.

NOTE: It should be understood that the value reflected in the "Originality Report," a number reflecting TurnItIn.com's assessment of the originality of the document, is NOT the final deciding factor in the determination of plagiarism. Many factors go into the "Originality Report" that should be understood and considered by faculty before allegations of plagiarism can or even should be pursued.

The TurnItIn service has implications for copyright of student work, student privacy, and other related issues; therefore, it is critical that all university faculty, instructors, and teaching assistants use TurnItIn appropriately.

Please view UWF's guidelines for faculty who intend to use TurnItIn to determine the originality of written materials presented by students in course assignments. Download these guidelines (pdf)

There are a number of resources available to help you learn to be effective with TurnItIn.

Video resources:

• Instructor Training Video
  
  
• Student Information Video
  • The link to this video (http://turnitin.com/static/videos/student_ppm.html) should be made available to your students, if you intend to use TurnItIn in your course.
    • Doing so will help alleviate any confusion about this product, its purpose, and its many features.
      
      
• Originality Reports

Training manuals in PDF format (Adobe Acrobat Reader required):

• Instructor User Manual (pdf)(162 pages)
  • Instructor QuickStart Guide (pdf) (Only 5 pages)
    
    
• Student User Manual (pdf)
  • Student QuickStart Guide (pdf) (3 pages)
    • This is an excellent resource for your students.
    • The link is: http://turnitin.com/static/pdf/tii_student_qs.pdf

Other TurnItIn resources are available at: http://turnitin.com/static/training.html

Please feel free to contact John Crane (jcrane@uwf.edu, 473-7239).

Have a great day!

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