Turnitin is online plagiarism prevention and detection software licensed for unlimited use for faculty at Stern. Turnitin enables faculty or students to submit assignments online and receive originality reports that compare the content to data on the Internet, commercial databases, and previous papers submitted to the system. For full list of  Turnitin training sessinon and dates click here

Guidelines for Use

Faculty should inform studets that they plan to use the Turnitin software.  We recommend that faculty insert a statement in the courses Syllabus or post a message in the Assignmnets area of the courss. Although Turnitin is primarily designed to detect plagiarism, it can also be used as an instructional tool.

Detection Tool

Using Turnitin as a detection tool can save you time searching for the plagiarism source and can provide the faculty with specific information about the nature and extent of the plagiarism. Once papers have been submitted and analyzed, the originality report presents faculty with a similarity index and the URLs to the source sites. The similarity index alone cannot determine plagiarism. Turnitin cannot detect if a student has included the appropriate references for the text that is identified as similar to some other document. A paper with a high similarity rating needs to be examined to determine if plagiarism has occurred. The similarity rating can help faculty identify suspicious papers and the similar passages but the instructor or grader will need to further analyze the papers to make an informed judgment.

Instructional Tool

Turnitin can provide the instructor with valuable information about students understanding of plagiarism and standards for citing work. Many students, especially freshmen, may have very narrow definitions of plagiarism, believing that re-ordering, paraphrasing, or inserting portions of another text into their own is not plagiarism. By examining the originality reports and comparing the student’s paper to the source documents, an instructor can get a clearer model of the student’s understanding of plagiarism and then provide targeted instruction addressing these shortcomings. The CITL provides further information and articles about academic honesty.

Accessing Turnitin via Blackboard

 Faculty Guides

1. Creating Turnitin Assignments via Blackboard (pdf)

2. Viewing Turnitin Assignments via Blackboard (pdf)

Student Guide

1. Submitting Turnitin Assignments via Blackboard (pdf)

Loging directly to Turnitin 

If you have already created an account, log in to Turnitin. If not, please follow the instructions below:

Note that you will be asked to enter an account ID and password to be affiliated with Stern.

Please note that Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), student papers may be disclosed to such services without the written consent of the student only if the student's name, ID number, or any other personally identifiable information has been removed from the paper.

It is permissible to assign a made-up code known only to the instructor who submits the paper for a plagiarism check as long as that code is not connected to a student's social security number, ID number, or other identifier that can be linked to the student by anyone other than the person submitting the paper.

Turnitin highly recommends that you have students submit papers themselves. Students should follow these instructions to create a user profile, enroll in your class and submit an assignment. Note that in Step 4, they will be asked to enter a class ID and enrollment password to enroll in your class. Remember to distribute this information to your students.

For a quick overview, view the brochure  or, for a more detailed user guide, view the Turnitin Manual. Turnitin also provides further information for instructors to better outline what constitutes plagiarism to their students.