WIS Policy on Turnitin.

com

Rationale

In order to implement West Island School’s policy on academic integrity, Turnitin.com is used to help prevent plagiarism.

Guidelines

• Members of each faculty who are part of the IT committee will be given a demo of Turnitin.com. These people will be
trained in how to use Turnitin.com and will cascade this knowledge to the rest of their faculties.

• Any member of staff with any questions on how to use Turnitin.com should ask the Librarian for assistance.

• A member of the IT committee will produce instruction manuals on how to use Turnitin.com. All teachers will be
provided with one of these manuals.

• All IB students will be informed during the introduction to IB, Introduction to TOK and Introduction to the Extended
Essay about Turnitin.com and how it is used to detect and prevent plagiarism in line with the WIS policy on academic
integrity.

• Teachers (Instructors) should add their ‘class’ to Turnitin.com.

• Students must add themselves to Turnitin.com

• Students then sign up to their classes by using the class id & password given to them by their subject teacher.

• Subject teachers should inform all students of the class id & password.

• In order for students to upload assignments to Turnitin.com, there must be an assignment listed in the class portfolio.
Teachers must add the assignment details.

• Students should upload all assignments to be submitted to IBO and all drafts of their Extended Essay and TOK
assessed essay to Turnitin.com.

• Students in years 7 to 11 should upload assignments if in accordance with individual faculty guidelines. Faculties can
use Turnitin.com for any assignments they wish.

• Papers submitted to Turnitin.com are compared against billions of internet documents, an archived copy of the
internet, our local databases of submitted student papers, and the ProQuest commercial database containing periodical
and journal articles. Any matching text Turnitin.com finds is detailed in an Originality Report.

• Teachers should give permission for students to read their Originality Reports. Students should print out a copy of
their Originality Report using the format: ‘Quickview (Classic) report’. This report should be attached to the hard
copy assignment before it is handed in to the teacher.

• All Extended Essay tutors will require that students submit they extended essay drafts and final essay through
Turnitin.com and attach a copy of the Originality Report along with the essay.

• All IB coursework including the Extended Essay and The Theory of Knowledge essay should be submitted to
Turnitin.com and an Originality Report handed in along with the assignment.

• All non–IB coursework should be submitted to Turnitin.com and an Originality Report handed in along with the
assignment.

• Teachers can then view the hard copy report and access the report online for further information and follow up. Where
plagiarism is detected the Academic Honesty Policy applies.

• The Originality Report has three main sections:

o Paper information The report header shows information about the submitted paper including paper title,
author, word count, and the date the report was processed.
o Paper text The text of the submitted paper is shown. Matching text is highlighted to correspond with sources
given.
 o Matching sources The sources of matching text are listed. Direct Source Comparison lets you quickly
compare matching text to its source.

• Originality Reports provide a summary of the matching text found in a submitted paper. The colour of the report icon
indicates the overall similarity index of the paper, based on how much matching text is found.
o blue (no matching words)
o green (1 word-24% matching text) (This section and above must be checked)
o yellow (25-49% matching text)
o orange (50-74% matching text)
o red (75-100% matching text)

• Originality reports are just the tool to help the teacher carefully decide whether an assignment has been plagiarized.
These reports are not guaranteed and should just be used as the first step in deciding whether or not a piece of work
has been plagiarized.

• Teachers should not only look at the overall percentage of the assignment that has been plagiarised but the size of the
plagiarised text. All quotations should be correctly laid out and referenced in the bibliography at the end of the work.
Teachers should ensure that students have done this correctly before work is submitted to examination boards.

• Reports classified as green or yellow should be looked at and all referencing and bibliographies checked.

• Reports classified as orange should be looked at closely and all referencing and bibliographies checked. Sources
which may have been plagiarised should be followed up. This work could also be looked at by HOF.

• Reports classified as red will require re-writing in the student’s own words. In line with the WIS policy on academic
integrity all instances of plagiarism and cheating would be directed to HOF and HOS.

• As well as the Originality Report from Turnitin.com, teachers should look for the following clues which may mean a
report has been plagiarized:
o Anomalies of style and diction
o Mixed citation styles
o Unusual formatting
o Off topic
o Datedness