Turnitin

Turnitin is an online text-matching service which can be used to support academic integrity and address plagiarism.

RMIT’s approach to the use of Turnitin is one of promoting academic integrity, rather than policing plagiarism. This is achieved through identifying the service with related practices and attitudes, such as correct referencing/citation styles, copyright management and information literacy. This approach is supported by the University’s Guidelines for using Turnitin.

Lecturers, teachers and students can submit assignments and articles to Turnitin, which are compared for originality against previous text submissions and other database content (webpages, online e-journals, etc).

A report is generated identifying similarities between the submission and previous material, allowing teachers and students to review the citation and paraphrasing used throughout the assignment to see if any improvements are needed.

Getting started

Turnitin runs within a web browser and is available within any Blackboard shell as part of RMIT’s e-Submission process.

To ensure that your use of Turnitin is consistent with teaching and research practices, speak with your course coordinator, program leader or supervisor about your interest in using Turnitin.

Discuss the use of Turnitin with your students in advance, and read the Guidelines to the use of Turnitin at RMIT.

Turnitin in Blackboard

Turnitin is available within any Blackboard shell, and Turnitin assignments may be established by selecting ‘Turnitin Assignment’ under the ‘Create Assignments’ tab.

From this point:

1. Select your assignment type. (For a standard assignment choose paper assignment)
2. On the New Assignment page, under general, enter the assignment title, and assign a point value, if relevant
3. Under dates, select: a start date and a due date beyond which students will be no longer able to submit
4. Select more options, and identify that you would like students to be able to view the originality report(s) for this assignment, by selecting yes under Allow students to see Originality Reports. Choose other options that you require
5. Click submit to establish the Turnitin Assignment

Good practice

• Speak to your course coordinator, program leader, or supervisor about using Turnitin in an effective way to support academic integrity
• Discuss your proposed use of Turnitin with your students in advance
• Read the Guidelines to the use of Turnitin at RMIT

User guides

These guides from the Turnitin website can assist you to use the full functionality of Turnitin.

• Instructor training – tutorials and resources
• Student guides – tutorials and resources
• Enrolling in a class
• Submitting a paper
• Viewing originality reports