TurnitIn - Text Matching Tool

Turnitin is a service that matches text from student assignments against its extensive databases of previously submitted student coursework, websites and academic papers and other online resources.  

Turnitin’s similarity check produces a similarity report and a score (%), which can be used as part of a process to monitor for potential plagiarism. Using Turnitin in Moodle enables students and teachers to view similarity reports and scores directly from within Moodle. In your Moodle course (virtual classroom) you can create an Assignment for individual student submissions and set up Turnitin within an assignment.  

Similarity reports will be produced for all student submissions to this assignment, and will be shown in Moodle next to the submissions. 

Why Turnitin? 

Eden Digital recommend that you allow students to check their own drafts for citing and referencing mistakes and omissions, eg accidental uncredited passages of text. The LSE policy on the use of Turnitin requires that Departments (in which students engage with essay-based assessments) allow students access to their Turnitin similarity report and score (%) for at least one of their formative essay-based assessments for every year of their studies. 

This can help students recognise and prevent plagiarism and increase their understanding of academic integrity. 

Turnitin reports can prompt students to reconsider rephrasing arguments which are too close to the original, i.e. help them to write "using their own words".  

Guides, Advice and Training 

• For a hands-on practice using Turnitin assignments visit our Turnitin Sandbox. 

• Feel free to contribute to our current list of support topics/FAQs for TurnItIn (Moodle course).  

• For teachers and administrators we have created a comprehensive ‘How to use and interpret Turnitin similarity reports’ .

• For teachers and administrators we have created guidance on ‘How to deal with requests to view student papers‘ .

• For students, LSE LIFE have  created an Academic Integrity unit, which includes a section on 'Understanding your Turnitin report and using it to improve your writing'.

• If you have any questions about setting up Turnitin with Moodle please contact eden.digital@lse.ac.uk.

• Please check the Eden Atlas programme page for workshops related to academic integrity and Turnitin.  

• We can offer bespoke departmental workshops for departments - please contact your departmental learning technology adviser.

Please note: submissions to Moodle-Turnitin assignments are independent of TurnItIn service outages (submissions only rely on LSE Moodle service availability). In case of Turnitin service outages similarity reports via LSE Moodle will be delayed. You can check on Turnitin status externally.  

Further Reading  

• Cumming, Alister & Lai, Conttia & Cho, Hyeyoon. (2016). Students' writing from sources for academic purposes: A synthesis of recent research. Journal of English for Academic Purposes. 23. 47–58. 10.1016/j.jeap.2016.06.002.  

• Graham-Matheson, L., & Starr, S. (2013). Is it cheating – or learning the craft of writing? Using Turnitin to help students avoid plagiarism. Research in Learning Technology, 21. https://doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v21i0.17218 

• Reddy, Mike & Jones, V (2014) Towards a Social Model of Plagiarism, Conference Paper. Plagiarism.org URL: https://www.plagiarism.org/paper/towards-a-social-model-of-plagiarism 

• Rolfe, V. (2011) ‘Can Turnitin be used to provide instant formative feedback?’. British Journal of Educational Technology vol. 42, no. 4