What best practices should I consider for using Turnitin in my classroom?

Using Turnitin.com most effectively requires some preparation and planning. Turnitin is least successful when used covertly for monitoring students' work. Follow these guidelines:

• Before the semester begins: Reacquaint yourself with the sections of the IU Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct on student academic misconduct and plagiarism.
  
  
• Familiarize yourself with your department's plagiarism policy: Determine beforehand what you will do if you suspect a student of plagiarism. Know how your department handles plagiarism and what directions or guidelines you may need to follow.

  For more about standards of academic integrity at IU, including disciplinary procedures for academic misconduct, see the Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct.

  Instructors at IUB may submit academic misconduct reports online.

• Learn how to use Turnitin: Contact your campus teaching and learning center for availability.
  
  
• Test the tool: Test materials from your discipline; see how Turnitin handles sample work from classes, a paragraph of yours, or text from a common web resource.
  
  
• Submitting work: Decide whether you will submit student work or whether students will submit their own.
  
  
• Interpreting reports: Decide whether students will be able to view originality reports. Contact your campus teaching and learning center if you or your students need help in interpreting these reports.
  
  
• Incorporate it into your syllabus: If Turnitin is included in your point structure or assignment parameters, using it will become part of the routine of submitting written work. Determine policies about late submissions, and include these in the syllabus as well (e.g., a paper handed in during class but not uploaded to Turnitin may be considered late).
  
  
• Introduce Turnitin to students: Create trust early by discussing Turnitin with your students. Explain your rationale for using it, and set their expectations for its use in class.
  
  
• Obtain orientation training for your students: Contact your campus teaching and learning center for availability.
  
  
• Download student directions for Turnitin access and registration: Students will need directions on how to register with Turnitin and submit assignments. Your campus teaching and learning center can provide copyright-free instructions that you can link to from a course web site or that you can turn into a handout for print distribution.

  Note: If you are using Turnitin through Oncourse Assignments 2, students will not need to register or submit assignments separately. See Oncourse Turnitin integration: Overview.

• Practice assignment: Conduct a practice assignment in conjunction with introducing Turnitin.com. Doing so allows students to practice without being concerned about this assignment having a significant impact on their grades. For the practice assignment, ask students to produce and submit something original, rather than having all students submit writing based on a common text. Asking students to work with the same source material may result in similarities between their reports, which means you will have to spend time analyzing these reports.
  
  
• In-class discussion: Lead students in a brief in-class discussion about Turnitin's results, so that they have a chance to ask questions. Your campus teaching and learning center can provide samples of Turnitin originality reports for use in a classroom discussion.

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