Lecture 4: TurnItIn.com Plagiarism Detection Software
IF THE WORDS ARE NOT YOUR OWN, PUT THEM INSIDE QUOTATION MARKS.
As a student in this course, it is critically important that you know about the TurnItIn.com service, for all your work will be processed through TurnItIn.com. Here is a quote from their website:
"Helps Teachers and Students Find and Prevent Plagiarism. Turnitin Originality Checking & Plagiarism Prevention . . . lets educators and their students check written work for improper citation or misappropriated content. Turnitin helps detect potential plagiarism by comparing student work against 3 massive, continuously updated databases of content. Every Originality Report provides instructors with the opportunity to help students learn about proper citation and safeguard their academic integrity."
When work is turned in to the D2L drop box, TurnItIn software checks your work and generates an originality report that both you and I can see. A few minutes after you upload you paper, go to the D2L dropbox and you will see an icon with a percentage next to the file you uploaded. Click the colored part of the icon and you will see the very same originality report that I see.
When viewing the report, you will be able to see the part of your paper that match materials on the Internet, or passages from scholarly articles you may have engaged in your paper. It will help you to improve your skills with regard to what needs to appear inside quotation marks. It will also help you to determine whether you are doing a sufficient job with paraphrasing the words of others, or if you are committing plagiarism.
Immediately review the external links to MLA Style on D2L's content tree, and particularly the links on paraphrasing and summarizing.
Academic Integrity:
Please review the Temple College Scholastic Integrity Policy in the handbook. It is my responsibility to ensure that scholastic integrity is maintained in all my classes; therefore, please note that no form of cheating or plagiarism is tolerated.
Cheating is sometimes a problem because students think it is acceptable to share answers and/or complete each other's homework. Often, siblings, spouses, best friends take this class together. It is NOT acceptable to do another person's assignment, whether a weekly assignment or a research paper. I may ask you to work in small discussion groups, and while I encourage you to collaborate on discussion of assigned readings, your homework answers should not appear too similar.
Of course, using cheat notes on exams and sharing test information with others is cheating! Please do not assume that I am not reading your homework; some students have made that mistake in the past. *Scholastic Dishonestly, cheating of any kind, may result in any and/or all of the following:
A failing grade on the assignment
A failing grade in the course
Removal of the student from the course
Removal of the student from the college
I strongly suggest that you review the consequences of an Academic Integrity Violation in the current
Student Handbook
.
