STAFF FAQ

It depends. If a student’s paper matches a paper in another instructor’s class you will not initially be able to see the other student’s paper unless you are in the same department as the other instructor. However, whether or not the instructor is a member of our University, you will be able to make a request to them to see the other student’s paper but this access will be governed by the institution’s approach to data protection.

No. You may allow colleagues in our University to see one of your students’ papers, but may not allow instructors from external institutions to see our students’ papers.

Yes, anonymity will be removed from students’ names on the expiry of the assignment. For formative assignments there is no need for student submissions to be anonymous.

In the future, if summative assignments are to be submitted online through Turnitin, the instructor should enable the anonymous marking feature in assignment setup. In this case, instructors should also include ‘Special Instructions’ on the assignment, reminding students not to include anything in the assignment which might identify them.

However, the student names will be revealed to the tutor when the assignment due date is reached. OR reports always identify the student, whether or not the anonymous marking feature is enabled.

No. Work submitted to Turnitin, for the purpose of receiving an Originality Report, is automatically added to the database. However, an instructor can choose to hide submissions to an assignment from public view by selecting ‘no repository’ in the assignment options.

Yes. However, in this case Turnitin does not generate an Originality Report.

Yes. Originality Reports always identify the student, whether or not the anonymous marking feature is enabled.

In 1 of 2 ways. Either:

1. Students are given a class ID and password, and create their own Turnitin account with this using their Anglia email address.
2. Accounts for groups of students can be added by an administrator who uploads a spreadsheet with their names and email details. This is the process we are using to create student accounts for e-submission to Turnitin GradeMark.

If a student has already created their own account, the GradeMark account will merge with it, so long as the email address and name of the student are identical.

No. Students need one account with Turnitin.

Yes, but students should use their University email address to ensure that they are enrolled only once.

No. However, Turnitin recognises you by your name and email address. If you have enrolled as a student with your student email address, your administrator will need to enrol you as an instructor with the same email address so that both accounts merge.

Once enrolled as an instructor, you will be able to toggle between your student and instructor accounts as preferred.

No. If the instructor has allowed multiple submissions, and the student submits from the same account and email address, each submission will overwrite the previous submission, and will not match against it.

No. So long as you submit the paper with exactly the same spelling of the name that the student used when s/he submitted the paper.

No. Files submitted to Turnitin have to be in text format. Scanned documents have to be sent through OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software before they can be submitted to Turnitin. PDF files must contain text. Some work is currently being undertaken to develop software to match figures, diagrams and images, using image identification technology at TinEye.

Yes. So long as it is text, and not a ‘picture’ of text.

It depends entirely on the nature of the assignment. So long as the assignment is properly referenced, even a very high percentage of match may not indicate plagiarised work. See our ‘Interpreting an Originality Report’ video.

Often students across the world are using the same books, and therefore may be including the same quotes. If these are properly referenced you are demonstrating good academic practice and there is no evidence of plagiarism.  Students can work through the exercise 'Interpreting an Originality Report' which gives examples of plagiarised and non-plagiarised matched text.

For short pieces of work it can take a few minutes. However, for longer pieces of work, such as dissertations, it could take a few hours or even days to receive an Originality Report (OR). There is always a 24-hour delay between ORs if the student has made multiple submissions to the same assignment.

An Originality Report is at least the same length as the original assignment, and usually longer.

No. For formative purposes, students should ideally use the online originality report in discussion with their tutor, so links to matched text can be followed and reviewed.   Students submitting an Originality Report with their summative assignments can restrict the number of pages they print in the print options menu.

Yes. Once they have enrolled, they need to be given the class ID and password to access additional classes and assignments (or classes and assignments can be automatically added to their account if an administrator has uploaded their details).

Yes. If this option has been specified by the instructor who has created the assignment, students will be able to make multiple submissions up to the expiry date of the assignment. There is always a 24-hour delay between Originality Reports if the student has made multiple submissions to the same assignment.

Yes. Files must be longer than 100 words. Accepted file types must not be larger than 20 MB. (However there are options for instructors to submit multiple, larger files of up to 200 MB.)