Plagiarism is a fact of life in student academic environments. Regardless of whether the plagiarism is intentional or unintentional, it is still up to the instructor to enforce the concepts of academic honesty for written course assignments.

Del Mar College has made the job of detecting possible plagiarism a lot easier with the use of a detection service called TurnItIn. TurnItIn is a service that allows faculty to submit written works of students to a site that then compares the text with literally billions of other pages of text. The instructor then receives a report that shows the student's paper on one side and the other side containing any possible matches along with the citation of the original work. The TurnItIn service does not make the determination if a passage is plagiarized, only the instructor can make that determination. However, TurnItIn gives the instructor a tool to use to assist in maintaining the academic integrity of student work.

Using TurnItIn is quite simple and requires only a login name and password. If you are an instructor and would like to begin using the TurnItIn service, send an email or memo to the Interim Vice President of Instruction requesting that an account be set up for you.

For additional information on TurnItIn go to:

TurnItIn - Corporate site

Instructor user manual

Instructor quick start guide

Instructor training video

Originality report video