Turnitin is an online plagiarism detection service that checks student papers and assignments against its database of web content, academic publications, and previously submitted papers to identify similarities and potential plagiarism issues.
Turnitin is an online plagiarism detection service used by educational institutions and companies. It allows educators and administrators to check student papers, essays, and other assignments by comparing the submitted text against its extensive database of web content, academic publications, previously submitted student papers, and commercial databases of content.
When students submit their work through Turnitin, the service generates an originality report highlighting any text that matches or is similar to existing sources. It also provides a percentage indicating the overall similarity. This allows teachers to quickly identify potential plagiarism issues in students' work as well as opportunities for proper source citation.
In addition to plagiarism detection, Turnitin offers other services like peer review workflows to engage students in evaluating each other's writing. There are also instructional tools focused on teaching students proper citation methods and academic integrity practices while writing papers.
Turnitin is used by high schools, colleges, and universities in over 135 countries worldwide. Some of the top educational institutions that utilize Turnitin include Stanford University, New York University, University of Cambridge, University of Toronto, and Imperial College London across a wide variety of disciplines.
While some students are concerned about privacy and intellectual property issues related to submitting their academic work through Turnitin, the company states its primary users are administrators and instructors rather than Turnitin staff. Overall most schools still find the plagiarism detection usefulness outweighs potential drawbacks.
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