Turnitin: How Students Submit Assignments At Ashford University

how do students use turnitin ashford university

Turnitin is a tool used by instructors at Ashford University to check the originality of students' written work. It compares students' submissions to texts in internal databases and internet searches. This helps to protect against plagiarism and other forms of academic misconduct. Students at Ashford University can use Turnitin to their advantage by ensuring their work is original and following guidelines for quoting, summarizing, and paraphrasing sources.

Characteristics Values
Purpose To determine the originality of written work
Method Compares students' work with texts in internal databases and the internet
Benefits Protects against student misconduct, relieves faculty workload, guides students' learning, reduces bias, delivers timely feedback, fosters writing excellence and academic integrity

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Understanding how Turnitin checks for originality

Turnitin is a tool used by instructors at Ashford University to determine the originality of submitted written work. It compares students' work with texts available in internal databases and through internet searches. This helps identify potential plagiarism or academic misconduct, such as AI writing, contract cheating, or AI paraphrasing.

Turnitin provides a Similarity Report, which includes a similarity score indicating the percentage of a student's work that matches other sources. This score helps instructors assess the originality of the submitted work. For example, if a student submits a qualitative study with a significant number of quotes and an extensive bibliography, the similarity score may be higher due to the inclusion of quoted material.

Instructors can also identify collusion through Turnitin. Collusion occurs when a student's work matches another student's submission or previous submissions. Turnitin can detect collusion by running a final similarity check against all submitted assignments after the due date. This allows instructors to identify cases where one student submits another student's work as their own.

To ensure the integrity of academic work, Turnitin offers real-time formative feedback to students as they draft their documents. This feedback provides insights on text similarity, grammar, and citations, enabling students to make corrections before final submission. Additionally, Turnitin's AI writing detection indicator helps identify content generated or modified by AI tools, promoting academic honesty and original thinking.

By utilising Turnitin, Ashford University maintains academic integrity and encourages students to develop their own ideas and writing skills. It provides a fair and consistent method for evaluating the originality of submitted work, fostering an environment that values authenticity and academic ethics.

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Avoiding last-minute work to prevent plagiarism

At Ashford University, instructors use Turnitin to check the originality of submitted written work. The tool compares students' work with texts available in internal databases and through internet searches. To avoid last-minute work that may increase the risk of plagiarism, it is important to start the writing process early and make time for your paper. Here are some strategies to avoid last-minute work and prevent plagiarism:

Start Early and Plan Ahead:

Give yourself ample time to work on your paper. Understand the assignment requirements, and if needed, clarify with your instructor. Starting early allows you to conduct thorough research, carefully select and analyse sources, and develop your own ideas in relation to the topic.

Organise Your Research:

As you gather information, keep detailed notes and record all sources. Use a separate document or folder for each source, ensuring that you include full citation information, URLs, and dates. Organise your notes systematically, so you can easily identify which ideas and language belong to you and which belong to a source.

Summarise and Paraphrase:

When incorporating information from sources, practise summarising and paraphrasing. Rewriting the key points or ideas in your own words helps you understand and process the information better. However, even when paraphrasing, always remember to cite the source to give proper credit.

Cite Your Sources:

In-text citations and a list of references are essential to avoid plagiarism. Each time you quote, paraphrase, or summarise a source, include an in-text citation with the author's name and the date of publication. At the end of your paper, provide a full reference list or bibliography, following a specific citation style (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago).

Use Plagiarism Checker Tools:

Before submitting your work, consider using a plagiarism checker tool. These tools compare your text with existing texts in databases and help identify any unintentional plagiarism. Running your work through such a tool can give you confidence that your paper is original and properly cited.

By following these steps and avoiding last-minute work, you can reduce the risk of plagiarism and improve the overall quality of your paper. Remember, taking the time to understand, analyse, and properly cite your sources is crucial for academic integrity and will reflect positively on your written work.

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Using sources: quoting, summarising, paraphrasing

Quoting, paraphrasing, and summarising are all different ways of including evidence and the ideas of others in your assignments. Using evidence from credible sources to support your thesis is an important part of academic writing.

Quoting

Quotations must be identical to the original, using a narrow segment of the source. They must match the source document word for word and be attributed to the original author. Quotes should be used sparingly and only when paraphrasing will not justify the meaning of the original author. Direct quotes should be reserved for when it is important for your reader to see the actual language used by the author. For example, if you plan to analyse the language of a passage to support your thesis about a book.

Summarising

A summary provides your readers with a condensed overview of a source or part of a source. It includes the main points and ideas but leaves out the smaller details. Summaries are significantly shorter than the original text and take a broad overview of the source material. When summarising, do not simply repeat each point in the same order as the original source. Focus on giving your reader the most important parts.

Paraphrasing

When you paraphrase, you restate the source's ideas in your own words. A paraphrased passage will be about the same length as the original but will use different words and sentence structure. Paraphrasing should be the primary way of presenting information from a source. It is important to understand the text fully before attempting to paraphrase it. Do not simply replace every third or fourth word of the original passage, as this is a form of plagiarism.

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Viewing Turnitin tutorials and sharing with students

To help students use Turnitin at Ashford University, it is important to familiarise yourself with the platform and its various tutorials and resources, which you can then share with your students.

Turnitin has a comprehensive library of guidance on its website, guides.turnitin.com, which offers a wide range of resources to help students navigate the platform effectively. This includes tutorials on submitting work, downloading and sharing similarity reports, and understanding the different sections of the report, such as the Integrity Overview.

The website also provides guidance for students who access Turnitin through a Learning Management System (LMS) or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), with a subsection dedicated to submitting work via these platforms. Additionally, Turnitin has improved the search functionality on its website, making it easier for students to find the guidance they need.

As an instructor, you can direct students to these online resources, which can help them understand how to use Turnitin effectively and avoid plagiarism in their written submissions. You can also share specific tutorials and guides with your students, depending on their needs and the features of Turnitin that they need to utilise.

By familiarising yourself with the Turnitin platform and its tutorials, you can better support your students in submitting their work and ensuring academic integrity.

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Instructors delivering personalised feedback

Instructors at Ashford University use Turnitin to determine the originality of submitted written work. Turnitin's Feedback Studio provides a robust set of grading and feedback tools that give instructors flexibility in how they grade and deliver personalised, actionable feedback to students. This includes grading forms to provide free-form feedback and scores to evaluate student work based on defined criteria.

Instructors can use the Feedback Studio to save time with custom or pre-defined drag-and-drop comment libraries, video comments, and AI summary comments. They can also use the suite of commenting tools to establish a dialogue with students, providing detailed feedback that enhances student performance over time.

The feedback that instructors provide through Turnitin appears in multiple areas across the student's submission. It can be found annotated on the submission itself, with specific comments in the margin on the right side of the screen. Instructors can also strike out pieces of text to indicate that they are unnecessary and can be removed or revised.

Bubble comments allow instructors to provide more detailed feedback. These comments may be highlighted and linked to a specific piece of text or placed alongside a line or paragraph for more general comments about the paper. Instructors can also attach rubrics or grading forms to assignments, linking them to the theme or topic of the bubble comments.

Frequently asked questions

Turnitin is a tool used by instructors at Ashford University to check the originality of submitted written work.

Turnitin compares students' work with texts available in internal databases and through internet searches.

Students can use Turnitin to help them avoid plagiarism in their papers.

Students should make time for their paper, take notes when reading, and refer to the AWC's guidelines for quoting, summarizing, and paraphrasing sources.

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