Learning Connection
Turnitin is an electronic tool used to promote academic integrity at the University of South Australia. The tool enables you and your lecturers to submit work to check for originality.
At UniSA, Turnitin may be used for:
Note: Links to the Turnitin website open in a new window. You will need to use your UniSA log in when you open the self-serve page
In keeping with section 9 of UniSA's academic integrity policy, a random sample of assignments will be submitted to Turnitin each year for checking originality in work. The auditing process is automatic and random. Turnitin provides an account of the instances of apparent plagiarism in student work. Students are required to authorise the use of Turnitin at enrolment. If unoriginality (or plagiarism) is identified, the course coordinator will be advised and will take appropriate action in accordance with the policy. In some cases, plagiarism may be deemed to be inadvertent (not deliberate, but perhaps based on lack of skill) in other cases, it may be deemed to be deliberate.
Teaching staff may require students to use Turnitin in their course. This may be used:
In such cases, your course coordinator will provide you with a Turnitin class ID and password. In addition, your course coordinator will have access to the originality report on your paper.
Turnitin overview provides instructions for the use of Turnitin in these circumstances.
The Turnitin self-serve class details page provides access to login instructions for students at UniSA. Checking your own work in this way is particularly suitable for reports, essays and other work which uses lots of academic writing. It is a way in which you can submit and check your own work for originality. Referencing technique takes time to acquire and Turnitin is a valuable tool to help students learn how to use sources in academic writing. Turnitin is particularly useful if used in companion with referencing tools such as the Harvard Referencing Guide (PDF, 145KB download Adobe Acrobat). Is a useful tool to help students avoid plagiarism, although it does rely on your own interpretation of the result to determine the extent of origniality.
The Turnitin 'originality report' provides a rating of the work's originality and gives a colour-coded response. The image below shows how Turnitin uses colour to highlight originality where the 'copied' text is linked to its original source. In this instance, the phrases highlighted are not likely to be plagiarism because they are short and non-specific. If they were longer and without attribution (say a paragraph in length) they may be deemed to be copied.
