What options do I have to check for plagiarism in a paper?
Answer
If you are working with students, UME or GME, you can have access to D2L. You will need to submit your person number and username to set up an account with Martha Buckbee (Martha.Buckbee@utsouthwestern.edu).
There is an alternative do D2L. Turn-it-in is available via “Draft Coach” in Word 365. Everyone with a @utsouthwestern.edu email address has access to this version. The similarity report available in the two systems is the same. The main difference is that the D2L version is designed to provide a method for submitting a paper for a grade and for the paper to be graded. If you are just looking for a similarity score (plagiarism checker) Draft Coach may be easier for you to use.
Below is a brief statement on each of the tools and how to use them.
D2L – You will need to submit your trainee’s Word or PDF document to the self-check assignment in the e-Teaching 101 course. After the document is submitted you can go back into the submission and look at your similarity score. Clicking on the score will bring up a Feedback Studio tab. In Feedback Studio you can see all the text Turnitin flagged as a potential similarity problem. Each flagged section will include information on where the match was found.
Word 365 – Open Word 365 (Word Online) and paste the content of the trainee’s work into a blank document. If they wrote it in Word 365 then you can probably just open directly if they have shared it with you. In the menu click on Turnitin. This menu option will appear at the far right after the Help menu and takes a minute or so after starting Word to appear. A new panel will open on the right side of the screen. You first time you use it you will be prompted to log in and accept the license terms. In later use you may be prompted to log into Word 365 or get a notice that authentication failed. In the later case click on re-try. This process took longer for me to type than it will for you to go through. There are four tabs in the Draft Coach panel, one of which is Similarity. Click on it then click to run a similarity check. Once you confirm you will be asked to wait while the report is run. Then you can open the full report. A similarity report will open showing the information Turnitin flagged potential similarity problems. Each flagged section will include information on where the match was found. You can only run 3 reports per document. If you need to immediately check another paper simply open a new Word document, paste the content and run the check.