Best Practices for Using Plagiarism Prevention Tools at Boise State

Turnitin is Boise State’s plagiarism prevention tool. It is integrated with Canvas so that plagiarism review can be run on student submissions to Canvas assignments.

Turnitin accepts files in a wide variety of file formats including .doc, .docx, .txt, .ppt, and .pdf.

The text from a student submission is analyzed and the system begins to check for possible text similarities or matches from their database containing sources from the wider internet, academically published material (licensed documents, reference works, etc.), and previously submitted student material.

When the system finds similarities in the text, it not only records the degree of the matches but also considers any paraphrasing and usage of synonyms as well as any evidence of ghost writing and contract cheating. The algorithms can detect similarities across most widely used languages.

A similarity report is generated at the end providing insights into textual matches in a reliable and easy-to-understand format. The percentage of matching text shown at the top of the report is in no way an absolute indication of plagiarism. The final decision rests on the evaluation and interpretation of the reviewer.

1. Longer/ more formal/ final writing pieces: If you scaffold a paper into pieces (an annotated bibliography, rough drafts), then you might let students know that the final draft might be subject to plagiarism review. This may be because the expectation is that everything will be correctly cited, and there was time and feedback to check on source usage during the writing process. 

   1. What about earlier drafts?: We do not recommend ‘reviewing’ or at least taking action on reviews for rough drafts - since they are simply that. Perhaps a student has not yet taken time to add their source attributions to a rough draft, but they’ll be present in the final draft. Consider what you and your class are expecting from rubrics and assignment descriptions, and proceed from there. 

2. In response to pervasive citation misuse in a course: If you notice your class is having trouble properly attributing, you might simultaneously offer them a) supports on how and why to cite properly and b) a notice that more work might be subjected to Plagiarism review. One study shows that when students or writers know a plagiarism-review tool will be used, they are less likely to engage in plagiarism intentionally. (This can also be useful in discerning who truly needs support in citation-practice, since they have not yet mastered it).

3. If something reads strangely: As instructors who handle writing assignments a lot, we often times develop a keen sense of voice and sometimes notice something seems ‘odd,’ even if we can’t say why. If something reads strangely to you (voice is changing in different sections, the voice is consistent but not with other products from that student, etc), you could put run it through similarity detection for peace of mind. While Turnitin is not a ‘solving oracle’ on whether something is or is not plagiarism - it simply assists your critical thinking in consideration - it is a helpful tool for considerations stages. 

   • Often times, things that ‘read strangely’ might simply be a developmental writing student trying out a new register of formality for their disciplinary writing, or an experienced graduate student tackling a new, harder style of academic writing as they advance their studies. Turnitin can often reassure us that that is the case by providing minimal matches. 

Please see this article for how to enable Turnitin for assignments in Canvas.

See this article for how to access Turnitin reports from Canvas Speedgrader.

Consider your prompts:

• If students are asked to respond to a relatively factual or structured prompt, their answers simply can’t deviate from one another too much and still be correct. This can increase originality scores.

  • Example: If a prompt asks students to summarize one specific reading’s main ideas, this might increase similarity scores since the answers are rather narrow.

  • This is not a reason to avoid questions like that - it’s simply something to stay aware of as the instructor, if you have plagiarism review on. 

Consider your discipline’s specialty levels:

• Are you teaching a highly-specific subject matter? (Example: students write a narrative about the presence and responses to different heart arrhythmias in nursing.) Students’ repeated and correct usage of these discipline-specific terms in their writing can increase similarity scores. It doesn’t necessarily mean plagiarism is afoot - sometimes it just means that everyone is tracking the discipline-specific concepts and terms well. This might be a type of writing you wouldn't use plagiarism review for. 

Consider students’ experience with citations, and their need for reminders and support:

• Are students citing incorrectly? Are they using quotes that are significantly too long because they don’t yet know how/ why/ where to cut them into useful bits for their writing, and take the rest out?

  • This is not plagiarism. It is misuse of sources, often based on a developmental phase of writing. We recommend using our Writing Center’s resources, or teaching students about writing conventions from your discipline by considering and offering the ways you learned how to do it yourself. 

• No matter how ‘experienced,’ ‘advanced’ and ‘intelligent/ talented/ hard-working’ a student is, and no matter how much you may feel it isn’t your job to teach ‘basic elements of writing’ - sometimes it is. 

  • It is your job to provide supports if your students demonstrate that they do not understand citation practices.

Turnitin has a secure database and has gone through a review for FERPA compliance. It is safe to save student submissions to the database; this means that future submissions will be analyzed against past student submissions.

However, if desired you can choose not to save student submissions to the database when you set up Turnitin for your Canvas assignments. Simply uncheck the box that says “Index All Submissions.”