Turnitin is used at ECA-HE to assist with the management of plagiarism. From your perspective as a student, Turnitin is a formative and educative tool that helps you maintain your academic integrity.
You are required to submit your assignments through Turnitin. Turnitin compares the content of your assignment with a range of sources including the internet, electronic journals, books and other student assignments that have been submitted previously through Turnitin. If there are instances where your writing is similar to, or matches against, one of the sources, it will be flagged in the originality report (Similarity Report). This report shows the matches and produces a similarity score indicating the percentage of the assignment that is found in other sources for your educator (and yourself) to review.
There is no single percentage which indicates an acceptable level of matching in a Turnitin Similarity Report. Different assessment tasks require different amounts of matching text, and some types of text are legitimate matches such as:
Check with your lecturer or tutor on the 'acceptable' percentage of similarity for your assignment.
You are allowed to submit the draft of your assessment to Turnitin for feedback multiple times before final submission. After every submission, you will receive a Similarity Report, which you can use to see if there is any problem with your writing and use of information. For example, you may find that you would need to paraphrase more or that you have forgotten to reference a quotation. You could thus improve your work as well as your academic writing skills.
It is important to note that Turnitin does not check for referencing in a submission. Proper paraphrasing and correct referencing are your responsibility as a student and is assessed by your educator.