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National College of Ireland

NCI LIBRARY

Faculty & Staff Guide: Turnitin for Faculty and Staff

A Sharepoint faculty and staff support site can be found here and also see instructional videos on How to set up a Turnitin assignment and Using Turnitin Feedback studio for plagiarism detection 

Other issues and questions facing instructors are dealt with on the Turnitin Feedback Studio

Turnitin Academy for Staff

 

 

Note: Below is a brief overview, for full information and to complete your training, visit the Turnitin Academy

 

  • Turnitin Academy, launched in 2018, aims to provide teachers, lecturers, and other teaching staff with the knowledge and skills to start using Turnitin products.    
  • This training has been segmented into 10 bespoke online e-learning modules, (NCI Faculty/Staff only need to use 7 of these modules) each covering a different Turnitin feature. This will allow you to visit or revisit each module anytime and anywhere.  
  • We encourage you to complete the modules in their numbered order; however, not all modules are relevant to all users. Instructors accessing Turnitin via a Learning Management System (such as Moodle) do not need to complete modules M2, M3, and M4.

  • Whilst the modules will only take approximately 60 minutes to complete, we ask that you take advantage of the full training course, by completing some or all of the post-module activities, found at the end of each module. ​

  • At the start of each module, you will be prompted to input your email address. We can use this to provide you with confirmation that you've completed the training, as well as provide actions that you have decided to take at the end of the modules. ​

Similarity Report Colour Indicators

The colour of the report icon indicates the similarity score of the paper, based on the amount of matching or similar text that was uncovered. The percentage range is 0% to 100%. The possible similarity ranges are: 

  • Blue: No matching text
  • Green: One word to 24% matching text
  • Yellow: 25-49% matching text
  • Orange: 50-74% matching text
  • Red: 75-100% matching text

Turnitin for Staff

Turnitin is a plagiarism detection software used by the National College of Ireland.

Lecturers and other staff members can use Turnitin to check student papers for potential plagiarism (see Plagiarism Referral form below). They can view the same similarity report that students see and make judgements on any action required. They can also use the report to help them give feedback to students on their academic writing.

Note: The Turnitin software can only compare the submitted text for matched text found in its database and on the internet. Any judgement in relation to plagiarism is made by the lecturer/staff member themselves and should not be based solely on a similarity percentage. See here for some reasons why you shouldn't take a student's similarity percentage at face value.

    NCI's Multiple Drafts Policy:

The default setting for NCI is to allow multiple draft submissions to Turnitin (via Moodle plugin) for the student.

This default setting will allow up to 3 draft submissions in a 24 hour period - prior to final submission.

The first four submissions (your first submission and then 3 resubmissions) will generate a new similarity report instantly. Any subsequent submissions will incur a 24-hour delay between reports generating. 

One key misunderstanding occurs when students view their similarity score, which gives a percentage in terms of how much of their paper is similar to other sources.

This is not a 'plagiarism percentage' and there is no acceptable percentage of plagiarism: the only acceptable amount of plagiarism in a piece of academic writing is zero!

There are legitimate reasons why a piece of writing would have similarities to other texts, including, most obviously, where a passage has been directly quoted (but done so legitimately, i.e. using quotation marks and appropriate in-text citation).

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