Turnitin Feedback Studio

Faculty, please consider Turnitin's strong recommendation that the course syllabus of each course using the service carry a notice to the effect of the following:

“Students agree that by taking this course all required papers may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to Turnitin.com for the detection of plagiarism. All submitted papers will be included as source documents in the Turnitin.com reference database solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of such papers. Use of the Turnitin.com service is subject to the Usage Policy posted on the Turnitin.com site.”

If use of the service is instituted after distribution of the syllabus, then consider timely and equivalent written notice to students.  

Portions of student's papers that are found to be the same as other sources stored in the Turnitin database will be highlighted and the sources identified in Turnitin.  When the source is another student's paper, from any institution, only the portions of the paper that are the same are highlighted.  Faculty and students cannot see the full text of the source student's paper. 

A feature within Turnitin allows faculty from any institution to request copies of the full text of student’s papers from any institution.  A review by the Office of the Registrar, Information Technology Security, University Attorney, and Distance Education has identified this feature as a potential student privacy, FERPA, and intellectual property concern. 

Austin Peay State University has opted not to provide papers in response to these requests.  The portion of the paper in question that may be plagiarized is highlighted on the student's paper and visible in the Turnitin Feedback Studio.  This information will assist faculty in determining whether concerns about plagiarism are founded.  Sharing additional information could be a risk with regard to FERPA and the student’s right to privacy, right to determine what happens to their assignments and could create intellectual property concerns.  In addition, the paper content may be of a personal nature and result in the sharing of the student’s personal information such as their identity or other covered information in violation of the student’s FERPA rights.

Faculty do not need the other student's paper to leverage Turnitin for academic integrity.  The paper section(s) that match content from the Turnitin database are automatically identified within the tool.  Additionally, to file charges of academic misconduct, faculty only need to provide a copy of their student's paper and the Turnitin report showing the similarities highlighted.  For more information about academic misconduct at APSU, please visit the Associate VP for Student Affairs and Dean of Students website on Academic Honesty and Integrity.

Important: matches between student papers does not necessarily indicate collusion or student-student plagiarism, but instead, it could be that both students plagiarized or poorly cited the same resource.  The features within Turnitin can help faculty determine this possibility.