Why provide automatic referencing feedback with Turnitin?

Turnitin is an online text-matching service that is integrated with Blackboard and can generate automatic feedback on student writing and referencing. It can be used as a tool to teach students about good referencing and to discourage plagiarism, and therefore many tutors use it formatively to enable students to check drafts of their work before they submit a final version for marking. See best practice guidelines for formative use of Turnitin for more information.

Other staff use it to generate reports after the final work has been submitted as a deterrent to cheat, as well as to check for, and evidence, plagiarism. See best practice guidelines for summative use of Turnitin for more information.

Advantages of using Turnitin with students include:

• Raising awareness of plagiarism and surrounding topics.
• Encouraging students to reference correctly. Students may not have intentionally plagiarised, but may have failed to use the correct referencing method. Turnitin can help students see where text has been matched and check they have referenced it appropriately.
• Deterrence. Some students who may have considered plagiarising may be deterred by knowing that Turnitin is in use.
• Equitable source of feedback on academic writing and referencing.

Advantages of Turnitin for staff include:

• Early detection. The use of automatic referencing feedback on students' draft work before they submit their final version can help them to detect problems early and prevent the need for punitive action to be taken.
• Teaching tool. Turnitin Originality Reports can be used as a teaching tool to highlight plagiarism. For example, you can illustrate what may be detected, how to reference matched text and so on.

You can get started with formative use of Turnitin by setting up a Turnitin Assignment submission point for students to submit their work to.