Recognized worldwide as the standard in online plagiarism prevention, Turn It In helps educators and students take full advantage of the Internet’s educational potential.It is an online service that scans any paper that is submitted against three sources, which are online Web sites, databases and every other paper that has ever been submitted.

Turn It In is used by thousands of institutions in more than 80 countries, and its Internet database exceeds 4.5 billion pages.

Turn It In has five product highlights: plagiarism prevention, peer review, grade mark, grade book and digital portfolio.

Plagiarism prevention identifies papers containing unoriginal material.

Peer review is a system that gives students the tools to review and respond to their classmates’ work online using criteria customized by the instructor.

Grade mark gives instructors the ability to mark student work online in a paperless environment.

Grade book enables instructors to manage grades and assignments online using a computer-based grading interface.

Digital portfolio is an archiving system for works submitted from a given school, class or student.

“It is a way for teachers, as well as students who use the program, to detect where students are not being completely ethical in the use of their sources,” Windy Rachal, assistant professor of English, said.

Nicholls started using the system in the spring semester of 2005, but Rachal has not yet received the exact number of students who were caught plagiarizing by the system. “I have heard that a couple people have been caught, but I don’t have that specific information yet,” Rachal said.

“Turn It In helps save time for teachers who otherwise would have to search for plagiarism information manually. It is impossible for many teachers to catch the type of plagiarism where students copy papers from one another,” Rachal said.

Rachal said that Turn It In helps professors to be more aware of the design of their assignments. They are denying assignments that are repeats from previous semesters, which lends itself to cheating and plagiarism.

“One of the major benefits of using a service like this is that students are aware that we take plagiarism seriously,” Rachal said.

Nicholls has a blanket statement that the most serious consequence of plagiarism is expulsion. Every college and department has the ability to develop their own approach to handling plagiarism, whether it be a zero on an assignment or failing of the course.

Turnitin is available for use in all departments. A statement explaining whether a professor uses the service should be on the class syllabus.