Turnitin is software that the university uses to promote critical thinking, support students in developing their writing skills, and ensuring academic integrity.
This tool is used around the world in both university and secondary school settings, and it works by comparing the content in your assessments to a very large data base of academic and online sources. The program produces a similarity report, which depicts the amount of text-matching (when content matches existing sources) within an assessment. These reports can be used by students to help them see if they have inadvertently plagiarised work by not referencing appropriately, or if they have failed to paraphrase content adequately. The report is also used by markers, course coordinators and the academic integrity unit to monitor assessments for academic misconduct, and to give personalised feedback to students in order to support your learning journey.
In addition to text matching and feedback, Turnitin may also be used to help detect content that was written by artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
It is important for students to be aware of the level of AI involvement in allowed in an assessment submission, which will be outlined in the assessment task sheet. For more information about artificial intelligence and assessment, please see Academic Integrity: Artificial Intelligence and Assessment.
Further information about Turnitin can be found below.