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Turnitin is a plagiarism detection software that can be accessed through Moodle to check students’ work for plagiarism.

The Turnitin software used at Turnitin.com is already integrated into Moodle.  As a student, you can only access it once your lecturer has set up a Turnitin Assignment Submission within the module area in Moodle.

If you experience any problems with submitting assignments to Turnitin, please contact the CTEL helpdesk via email at moodle@setu.ie or via phone at 051 834114.

All training materials are available at the Turnitin.com website. Please note that the only options available to students are just the Originality report.

If the lecturer selected Use repository when setting up the assignment, then the assignment will be part of the Turnitin database.  This is necessary if you want other assignments to be compared to this assignment.  Please note that the copyright for the assignment still rests with the author.

It takes approximately one hour to check for an assignment when first uploaded.  Please note that results may be returned quicker than one hour depending on the volume of users.

An assignment that receives a high similarity rating indicates that the data contained within the assignment is similar to other sources (books, other assignments submitted worldwide, websites, databases, etc) checked by Turnitin.

If the lecturer selected the option to check against newspaper articles and books when setting up the assignment, then the assignments will be checked against newspaper articles and books that are available online. 

This site provides extensive detail on originality reports and how they can be interpreted by staff and students: https://guides.turnitin.com/01_Manuals_and_Guides/Instructor_Guides/Turnitin_Classic_(Deprecated)/Interpreting_the_Similarity_Report

If you have submitted your assignment to Turnitin within the stipulated timeframe set down by your lecturer but have not received a similarity report within 24 hours you should contact the Moodle office.  This error can occur when students have changed their e-mail details between submissions thus preventing the Turnitin site from providing a similarity report for your work in Moodle.

Similarity reports/scores can take up to 24 hours to be returned from the Turnitin website. Once your score is returned you can resubmit your assignment if necessary having made changes to adjust your similarity score.