What is Turnitin?

Turnitin is a remotely hosted service that is provided as a Moodle Activity for use by students and supported by the Learning Technology Unit.  It can also be accessed and used via a direct website.  However, the Learning Technology Unit does not provide support for staff or students who are accessing Turnitin via the direct website.

The Turnitin software, also marketed as 'WriteCycle', has three main functions:

Originality checkoffers a comparison of students work to other information held in the Turnitin databases in order to support essay writing skill development and an understanding of the concepts of plagiarism, citing, quoting and referencing.

Grademarkis an online marking and feedback tool which supports editorial highlighting with the addition of notes, comments and editing marks.

Peer Reviewallows students to anonymously review each others’ work, providing feedback to each other.  This function is not available in Moodle.

For the purposes of this document an essay, dissertation, thesis or any other form of document submitted to the Turnitin software is referred to as an 'assignment'.

Setting up a Turnitin Activity in Moodle