1. A brief tour of Turnitin.com

2. Welcome to our tour of Turnitin.com! This tour is designed to provide some history and facts on the growing problem of Internet plagiarism, as well as to give potential users a basic idea how our system works. The slides included in this tour include screenshots from actual Turnitin.com accounts, and show a how students, faculty, and administrators use Turnitin.com on a regular basis. We hope the tour will be informative and educational, and welcome administrators, faculty, and academic officials giving presentations on our service to make use of this tour.

3. Internet plagiarism is on the rise. At Turnitin.com, we have been tracking the growth of this problem for over five years, and we know it is only getting worse. A recent Gallup poll indicated the quality of our educational system has become one of our most pressing concerns, and we believe Internet plagiarism is partly to blame. Here are some other recent stats and facts: 80% of college-bound students admit to cheating on schoolwork, yet 95% of them never get caught - Who's Who Among American High School Students 90% of students believe cheaters are either never caught or have never been appropriately disciplined - US News and World Report poll Most employers and college professors say in surveys that high school graduates aren't prepared to succeed in jobs or college - from an article by Michael DeCourcy Hinds: Mixed Signals on Education 257 chief student affairs officers across the country believe that colleges and universities have not addressed the cheating problem adequately - from a study by Ronald M. Aaron and Robert T. Georgia: Administrator Perceptions of Student Academic Dishonesty in Collegiate Institutions

4. Plagiarism.org was the world’s first Internet-based plagiarism prevention system. It got it start in 1995, when Dr. John Barrie, then a graduate student at UC Berkeley, decided to create a web portal for students to share and critique each other’s papers. Soon, however, he found that students were not only sharing their papers, but plagiarizing them as well. Dr. Barrie created a rudimentary program to curb this online theft in his own classroom, and soon found there was a strong demand for the program among his peers. The first version of Plagiarism.org was launched a few months later. Plagiarism.org remains online today, and is still a useful source of information for anyone who’d like to learn more about Internet plagiarism and the technologies behind Turnitin.com.

5. Turnitin.com got its start in 1997 as the “paper submission portal” for Plagiarism.org. It has since evolved into the web’s most visited plagiarism- protection website, and now serves thousands of schools and educators all over the world. Visitors to the site can read extensive testimonials from actual users of Turnitin.com, learn about present and upcoming services, find links to articles on our service in the press, give our free trial a spin, and even sign up online. Registered users access their home pages by logging in, by clicking on “user login” from any page in our website.

6. Logging in Every user of Turnitin.com has a personal user profile. When logging in, users are asked to enter their profile information so that we can display their homepage(s). The four possible user types are: Free trial: this is a special user type with limited access to our system. Free trial users have a basic interface for submitting and viewing up to 5 papers. Student: can submit papers, view their class histories, and use Peer Review, an upcoming feature. Faculty: can submit papers, view Originality Reports, create assignments, and manage classes. Administrator: can monitor usage of a school or department’s account, create and change profiles and passwords, and manage billing and renewal issues.

7. Faculty pages This is a faculty homepage. This particular faculty member has created three current classes. Clicking on the name of a given class will enter that class, and enable faculty to view Originality Reports, create assignments, and use other class functions. Pulldown menus on this page allow users to modify class viewing options, based on year and activation status. Other options allow users to archive, unarchive, and delete classes. Important class information, such as enrollment passwords and class names, can also be modified from the faculty home page.

8. Faculty report inbox Faculty users have an inbox for each of their classes at Turnitin.com. Every time a student (or a teacher) submits a paper, an Originality Report is generated and appears, normally within 24 hours, at the appropriate class inbox. From the inbox, users can quickly see any paper’s color-coded “overall similarity index.” Clickable icons allow users to view both the originally submitted document and the Originality Report for any given paper. The faculty inbox functions much like many popular email programs, and allows users to sort, archive, and view papers according to a variety of criteria. Clickable student names also allow faculty to view the to-date submissions of any current student.

9. Submitting a paper There are two ways to submit papers to Turnitin.com: Students can submit papers individually, or faculty can submit papers for their students. In this case, the paper is being submitted by the instructor. As you can see, the student’s name and ID number have been added, the paper has been given a title, and “assignment 1” has been selected. The main text is then pasted into the text box by copying it from a digital source, such as MS Word, and pasting it into the box. Additional information, such as an abstract or bibliography, can also be pasted in at this time. Clicking on “submit” uploads the paper into our systems. We then send off a digital receipt of the submission, and the Originality Report can be viewed at the faculty inbox within 24 hours.

10. Submission receipts Students and instructors receive a digital receipt for every paper uploaded to Turnitin.com. These pages can be printed to serve as confirmation of a successful upload, if desired. Users receive a second copy of the receipt sent to their email address.

11. Originality Reports Originality Reports are accessed by clicking on the Originality Report icon from any paper in the faculty inbox. This particular paper received a high “overall similarity index,” which means we found matching online sources for a very high percentage (over 75%) of the paper. The red text corresponds with material that can be found at the website at the displayed link. Often, a paper has matches to more than one online source; in such cases all relevant addresses are displayed and linked to their online location. Users also have the option of clicking on “dsc,” or “direct source comparison.” This function not only opens up a new window to the suspect source, but also underlines specific matching passages, making comparison easy.

12. Direct Source Comparison This page shows two overlapping browser windows. The second window has been opened using the “direct source comparison” function, and links to a site on the Internet, in this case from Germany. The top window is opened to the Originality Report from the preceding page. Note how Direct Source Comparison not only indicates the suspect source, but also underlines any matching text. Every source uncovered by our searches is linked and can be easily viewed in this manner.

13. Database links This is an Originality Report showing links to several sources. The last link, “Database link 1,” leads to a paper located in our database of previously submitted student papers. Because the paper in question is the intellectual property of its author, we do not have permission to share its contents without his or her expressed consent. Clicking on this link opens up a special “permission request” window, as shown on the following page.

14. Permission requests When you click on a link to a paper in our database, this window is displayed. This form allows us to send a request to view the paper in question directly to its author. Note: Although we will indicate the sources of any suspected plagiarism within our database, are never at liberty to distribute or in any way disclose their contents. When permission to view a paper is granted through this form, a copy of the paper in question must be personally sent by the paper’s author.

15. Student roster Every registered faculty member also has access to a complete roster of students signed up for his or her class at Turnitin.com. This roster is a dynamic list that contains linkable email addresses, a “send password” function, and a click-through link to any student’s personal Turnitin.com history for a given class. Student lists are sortable using a variety of criteria, including name, email address, and date enrolled.

16. Class statistics The faculty “stats” page allows users to view vital statistics about their Turnitin.com classes, such a total submissions, enrollment, and a summary of “Originality Report” results. Users also can set their preferences at the stats page. These preferences include: 1) Allowing students to anonymously read peer papers 2) Allowing students to anonymously review peer papers (coming soon) 3) Giving students access to their own Originality Report results 4) Enabling “fast track turnaround,” which posts reports as soon as they are generated, and closes the 24- hour “re-submission window” for students.

17. Student pages This is a student homepage. This student is enrolled in three classes, one of which (in black) has been de-activated by his or her instructor. Students enter classes just like faculty, by clicking on the name of the class they want to enter. Students also have the option of deleting classes to which they have not yet submitted any papers.

18. Class history Student class history pages display a list of the submissions by any student for a given class. Depending on the preferences set by the faculty member who created the class, students can also see Originality Report results and linkable icons for the upcoming Peer Review function. Items in the class history page are sortable by a variety of criteria, including date submitted, assignment number, and title.

19. Assignments This page shows the assignments created for this class. Clicking on the name of any assignment allows students to view details on a given assignment, such as paper length or teacher comments.

20. Peer review This is a look at a beta version of our upcoming peer review feature. By clicking on “peer papers”, students will be able to view and anonymously evaluate papers submitted by their peers. In addition to being able to read the posted reviews, students will also be able to post their own reviews and see cumulative results for both their own papers and those of others in their class. Reviews will be organized according to topics and grading rubrics set by the teacher. These settings will be totally customizable and will allow faculty to select from pre-existing settings or to create their own.

21. Administrator pages This is an administrator homepage. As you can see, this particular administrator is managing two separate accounts. The second account, “The Queen of the Valley Academy High School”, has a sub-account, called the “English Department”. Administrators have the option of breaking down their accounts however they like, depending on the size and type of account they are managing.

22. Instructors Administrators can monitor the instructors using their accounts by visiting the “instructors” page of the site. This page allows administrators to activate and deactivate instructors, as well as send passwords to faculty members.

23. View instructor Clicking on the name of any instructor on the previous page opens up the “view instructor” page, which allows administrators to view the classes and usage statistics for that instructor. Administrators have the power to turn individual classes on and off by using the green and red toggle switch on the far left. Note: Although administrators have access to the usage statistics and results summaries for faculty and their classes, at no time are administrators given access to Originality Reports or Peer Reviews; these remain the private property of individual faculty and their students.

24. Preferences The preferences page of the account administrator section allows administrators to assign and remove administrators for any existing sub-accounts, as well as to modify account names and enrollment passwords. If a given institution has school- wide policies regarding the distribution of student property such as Originality Reports or Peer Reviews, administrators can elect to lock the preferences at given settings for faculty using the account.

25. Help pages Most pages found within the user sections of Turnitin.com have corresponding online help pages. These pages offer detailed explanations of the functions of any given page, and explain, where applicable, points of possible confusion. Additional help is always available by downloading our user manuals or, especially for new users, viewing our new user tutorial. user manualsnew user tutorial. Additionally, our helpdesk (helpdesk@turnitin.com) is available 24 hours to help with any other problems.helpdesk@turnitin.com

26. Thanks for taking the time to learn more about Turnitin.com. The goal of this tour was to give you a basic idea what you might expect as a user of our service; there are many other pages and advanced functions not touched upon here that are explained in greater depth online and in our user manuals. Thanks for supporting us in the ongoing fight against digital plagiarism. Good luck!