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What is Turnitin?
Turnitin is a service that matches text from student assignments -submitted work against its extensive databases of previously submitted student courseworkassessments (submitted to either LSE or other institutions that also subscribe to Turnitin), websites and academic papers. Turnitin’s Originality Check produces an originality Turnitin produces a similarity report and a score (%) of matched text. The report may be used as part of any potential plagiarism investigationsimilarity report contains any matches to sources along with the relevant links.
Turnitin offers staff the ability to investigate any concerns about the originality of a submission. It can also help students identify where their writing requires development, particularly regarding the use of sources, citation, referencing and paraphrasing.
How is Turnitin used at LSE?
Departments have control and responsibility for developing their local policy on the use of Turnitin. The department policy, including a rationale for the use of Turnitin with the department, should be shared with students.
Turnitin as a student academic writing development tool
The LSE policy on the use of Turnitin makes it, “compulsory for all LSE Departments (in which students engage with essay-based assessments) to offer their students the opportunity to use Turnitin to help them develop their writing, referencing, paraphrasing and citation skills.”
This means that, where students engage with essay-based assessments, “students have access to their Turnitin similarity report and score (%) for at least one of their formative essay-based assessments for every year of their studies (the latter is applicable, if students continue to engage with essay-based assessments in their consecutive years of study).”
Where students engage with essay-based assessments, in addition to allowing access to their similarity reports, departments should direct students to support and training in the use of Turnitin. This support and training may be offered by either the department or LSE LIFE.
Turnitin to support academic integrity
Turnitin is used by most academic departments at LSE to originality check the originality of work that is submitted by students taking their courses. The parameters by which any Turnitin originality score is judged will be set by the faculty teaching the course and their programme team.
Turnitin for marking and feedback
In some cases Turnitin is also used as a marking tool by teachers to provide feedback on work submitted by their students via Moodle.Some courses enable students to view the originality scores of their work and use this as a development tool to improve their academic writing.
Will my work be submitted to Turnitin?
The conditions of registration for all students at LSE states, “all [students] assessed coursework
(essays, projects, field reports, literature reviews, dissertations etc.)… may be analysed by plagiarism detection software”.text matching software.”
Teachers and programme staff for individual courses at LSE will frequently should be able to provide more specific details of how Turnitin will be used for the students who are taking that courseon individual courses; and how it will affect their your Moodle use during the submission of when submitting assignments.
What do I do if I submit the wrong file?
On this occasion you must contact Contact your teacher and/or your departmental administrator . Inform to inform them about the mistake and, depending . Depending on where you have submitted the file, they may be able to reset your assignment submission for you to resubmit or they may need to request the deletion of your paper from TurnItIn (through Eden Digital). It is very important for them to know if whether you submitted in a wrong assignment portal within the same Moodle course or in the wrong Moodle course. If you are unsure about anything you can contact eden.digital@lse.ac.uk.
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Please consult Turnitin’s File requirements page for the most up to date information regarding acceptable file formats.
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Can I see my
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similarity reports?
This setting is specific to each individual assignment and so is determined by the course teachers and programme staff. , in accordance with the departmental Turnitin policy. When Turnitin is used within Moodle there are three options regarding students seeing the originality similarity reports:
students can see their originality similarity report prior to the final submission of their work, meaning they have the option to re-submit their work based on improvements;.
students can see their originality similarity report after they have submitted their work with no further submissions allowed;.
students can’t see the report at all.
If you have any questions about how Turnitin originality similarity reports are used on a course you are taking, you should contact both the programme manager and or course convenor in the first instance.
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The similarity percentage is not, in itself, indicative of plagiarism. Therefore, there is no set percentage to indicate academic misconduct. The originality similarity report should be evaluated using academic judgement before any allegation related to academic misconduct (i.e., plagiarism) is communicated to students. If you need more advice about how this, please contact LSE LifeLIFE.
Why can’t I see a Similarity Report after I submitted my assignment?
There are number of reasons why a similarity report can may be delayed or unavailable, such asincluding:
If your similarity report is not available, it may be because the assignment has been set up to not show the similarity reports to students. Please check with your teacher, if you wish to find out why the assignment has been set up in that way.
The file format is not accepted by Turnitin. For instance, if you are working on a Mac computer, please ensure that you convert the file correctly to a format accepted by Turnitin (check accepted Turnitin file formats)Please consult Turnitin’s File requirements page for the most up to date information regarding acceptable file formats.
The length of the paper. Long papers (e.g., several hundred pages) can take up to 24 hours to generate a report.
The level of demand on Turnitin. If lots of papers are being submitted to the system, the generation of the reports can take up to 24 hours.
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If you have waited a full 24 hours and do not see a Turnitin ID number and see an alternative message such as ‘pending’ or ‘queueing’, please speak to your department. They may need to email eden.digital@lse.ac.uk to check on the status of your submission. |
I re-submitted my assignment and I haven’t got a similarity score yet
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Where re-submissions are allowed onto the same Assignmentresubmissions to an assignment are allowed, you will be able able to view the score immediately. However, if you have made more than three resubmissions, you will need to wait 24 hours , before you can view the score and report.
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If you have waited a full 24 hours and do not see a Turnitin ID number and see an alternative message such as ‘pending’ or ‘queueing’, please speak to your department. They may need to email eden.digital@lse.ac.uk to check on the status of your submission. |
How can I interpret my
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similarity report
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Please see the video ‘How to interpret the Turnitin originality report - Guidance for students’. Although this video references a slightly older Turnitin interface and is due to be updated, the information contained within it is still relevantUndergraduate students: The Academic Integrity module of LSE LIFE’s Prepare to Learn Moodle course contains a section on Understanding your Turnitin report and using it to improve your writing.
Postgraduate students: The Academic Integrity module of LSE LIFE’s Prepare to Learn Moodle course contains a section on Understanding your Turnitin report and using it to improve your writing.
LSE LIFE also deliver interactive, task-based workshops on understanding Turnitin reports and using them to improve academic writing skills.
Where should I go if I have questions about my
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similarity report?
If you need further guidance on how Turnitin originality scores similarity reports relate to your submitted work, or on any other aspect of your academic work, then support is available from the LSE LIFE team in the LSE Library.
If you have specific questions about how Turnitin originality similarity reports are used on a specific course you are taking, you should contact both the programme manager and or course convenor in the first instance.
I can see
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similarity reports for some but not all my assignments. What does that mean?
It is the choice of the teaching staff of each course whether to let students see their Turnitin originality reports. Therefore, if you are unable to access originality reports from a specific Moodle assignment when you can for others, this will be a choice made by the teachers of that assignmentDepartmental Turnitin policies, in line with the LSE policy on the use of Turnitin, should specify how frequently similarity reports will be shared with students. Some departments may only allow students to see similarity reports for one formative assessment a year, while others may allow students to see similarity reports for all formative and all summative assessments. The LSE policy on the use of Turnitin contains more detail on this (see the ‘Models for using Turnitin as a student academic writing development tool’ section).
If you have specific questions about how Turnitin originality similarity reports are used on a specific course you are taking, you should contact both the programme manager and or course convenor in the first instance.