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Turnitin is a third-party service used at LSE to identify similarities between student submissions and other sources. For answers to common questions, see below. For help enabling Turnitin, see: How to enable Turnitin similarity reports within Moodle assignment activities. For guidance on reading reports, see: How to use and interpret Turnitin similarity reports.
FAQs
This FAQs gathers together all of our advice on setting up Turnitin for assignments at LSE, managing submissions, and working with similarity reports. If you have any Turnitin queries not covered here, please contact eden.digital@lse.ac.uk.
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Due to disciplinary differences, and the fact that Turnitin only matches text, academic departments use Turnitin differently, or not at all. According to the LSE policy on the use of Turnitin, all academic departments, in which students engage with essay-based assessments, are required to have a local policy detailing how they use Turnitin.
Turnitin is used by most academic departments at LSE to check the whether work that is submitted by students contains text matches with other sources.
The LSE policy on the use of Turnitin requires that departments, in which students engage with essay-based assessments, allow students to view their similarity report for at least one formative assessment in every year of their studies. This is so students can use the report as a development tool to improve their academic writing. How frequently students are given such access is determined at department level and should be contained with the departmental policy on the use of Turnitin. For information on how to allow students access to their similarity reports, see the How to enable Turnitin similarity reports within Moodle assignment activities guide.
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Turnitin similarity reports can be used pedagogically to improve student’s understanding of best citational practice, and can also be a helpful tool for supporting academic integrity. It is up to individual departments and instructors how they use the reports. For more detail on what these reports do and do not show, please see: How to use and interpret Turnitin similarity reports.
4. How do I enable/disable similarity reports for Moodle assignments?
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Yes. We are currently developing guidance to support this. These will soon be available in the Turnitin as a marking and feedback tool /wiki/spaces/TUR/pages/1980170244 section of these guides. In the interim, please email eden.digital@lse.ac.uk and we will arrange a meeting to discuss your requirements.
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It is possible to make similarity reports visible to students and this can be enabled when setting up Turnitin within a Moodle assignment.
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The ‘LSE Policy on the use of Turnitin’ requires that departments, in which students engage with essay-based assessments, allow students to view the similarity report for at least one formative assessment in every year of their studies. |
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Yes, Turnitin can be set up to allow students to see their similarity report for drafts submitted before the due date.
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The LSE policy on the use of Turnitin requires that departments, in which students engage with essay-based assessments, allow students to view their similarity report for at least one formative assessment in every year of their studies. |
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Full details on how Turnitin detects and displays similarities between submitted work and other sources can be found here: How to use and interpret Turnitin similarity reports.
11. What if my student's similarity report shows extensive text matching?
Firstly, check through the report using the interpretation guidance: How to use and interpret Turnitin similarity reports. This will help you to understand exactly which parts of a high similarity score might indicate intended plagiarism.
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You can also filter out small matches when you are viewing a student’s report even if you have not done it when setting up an assignment. See: How to use and interpret Turnitin similarity reports.
12. How can I exclude matches from quotations and bibliographies?
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You can also filter out quoted material and/or a bibliography when you are viewing a student’s similarity report, even if you have not so when setting up an assignment. See: How to use and interpret Turnitin similarity reports.
13. I have noticed that in some cases the overall report score (%) changes over time. What has happened?
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Turnitin accepts a wide range of file types but can only create a similarity report if the file contains text. Files must also be under 100MB in size, or under 2MB if they only contain text. They must contain at least 20 words and be under 800 pages long. To check which file types are currently accepted, please refer to Turnitin’s File requirements page.
16. What happens if a student submits an unsupported file type?
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If a student submits an unsupported file type before the due date, the student should re-submit the file in a supported format. For support in instances where the deadline has already passed, please contact eden.digital@lse.ac.uk.
You can read more about Turnitin’s file requirements on their site. We advise limiting uploads to file types allowed by Turnitin to avoid this issue. See: How to enable Turnitin similarity reports within Moodle assignment activities.
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If your assignment requires that students submit multiple files as part of their assessment, Turnitin will generate a report for all files uploaded - provided they are acceptable file types.
Where a student replaces a draft with a new document, Turnitin will generate a similarity report according the ‘Report Generation Speed’ settings for the assignment. For more information on this, please see How to enable Turnitin similarity reports within Moodle assignment activities.
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There are several reasons why a similarity report might fail to appear. For more information on this, please see What to do when Turnitin doesn’t generate a similarity report?
19. Why can I do if a student submitted the wrong file or submitted their file to the wrong assignment portal?
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Files submitted to the ‘standard repository’ will stay there as long as Turnitin are operating their service. However, teachers are able to request that submissions are removed. For more information on this, please see How to request the removal of a submission from Turnitin’s repository.
24. How are LSE students informed of the use of Turnitin in the School?
Section 21 of LSE’s conditions of registration (22/23 entry) states “all assessed coursework
(essays, projects, field reports, literature reviews, dissertations etc.) […] may be analysed by text matching software”.
In addition, the LSE policy on the use of Turnitin states, “it should be made clear to all students within each Department how Turnitin is used within the Department. This should include a rationale for the way in which it is used within the Department.” How departments communicate this with students may vary.
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Both services are run by the same company, but Turnitin is designed to support and check the work of taught students, and to enable teachers to grade these submission in class groups. iThenticate is designed to support professional academic writers and checks against a different database of resources when feeding back areas for improvement in a document.