MSU has a site license for the plagiarism detection service, Turnitin.com. Turnitin has had a number of upgrades and interface enhancements this summer. Here are some of the latest changes:

Languages: Turnitin now supports 10 different languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, chinese (traditional and simplified), Japanese, Korean, Malay Bahasia, and Thai.

Performance Imrpvodements: recent upgrades to the application web servers should result in improvements to both performance and system reliability.

New Features include:

An option to exclude quoted (and bibliographic) material from papers' Similiarity Index for an entire assignment (not just individual papers);

An option to exclude small matches in Originality Reports to help streamline the process of evaluating your students' papers for unoriginal content. Instructors can choose the size of excluded matches as a number of words (such as 8 or 11) or a percentage of all words in the paper (such as 4%);

An expanded Similiarity Index that shows multiple sources for highlighted matches in the Originality Report---not just a single possible source;

Automatic check of user's system capabilities and compatability with Turnitin system requirements;

Improved handling of document submissions and multiple file uploads. This includes: double the size limit for individual file submissions (from 10 MB to 20 MB) as well as an increase in the size of zip files (batch) uploads (from 100 MB to 200 MB); improved user notification for submissions that exceed the maximum size (and guidance to help fix the issue); and a new status bar indicating the status of uploads.

As always, you can use Turnitin with your classes via the Web service or through your myCourses class site. The Center for Teaching and Learning can set up a Turnitin.com workshop for your department! For additional information about Turnitin.com, please contact Dr. Deborah Lee at 325-0810.