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- to support students in developing their academic writing, including how to use and reference sources;
- to help detect poor academic writing practice, including plagiarism, when it does occur;
- to manage all stages of the assessment process, including submission, marking and returning work (n.b. one of several Moodle alternatives);
- to provide closely contextualised feedback as 'bubble comments' and an optional recorded spoken-word message, which students can then refer to in future work;
- for record keeping (both for students and staff).
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The Similarity Score, expressed as a percentage match, simply indicates the proportion of text in a submission which matches text elsewhere. Turnitin detects similarityDetecting similarity is what Turnitin does, but similarity isn't the same thing as plagiarism - similarity can be entirely legitimate. It can reside in quotations, or in the language of a discipline. Work may have a high score because its author lacks confidence or knowledge and has over-quoted as a consequence. For this reason we can't definitively point to a threshhold. The principle Work may have a low score but have used somebody else's idea or phrase without attribution - this becomes an even more significant concern if that idea is central to the work. For these reasons it's impossible to point to a definitive threshold.
That said, a very high score mean that the student's own words and original ideas are proportionally less. The principle of essay writing is that students need to evidence or illustrate the point they're making their points with well-chosen quotations, but the more of their own ideas, expressed in theirown their own words, they get into their work, the more chance they have to earn credit. The important thing is to ensure that ideas and quotations used are properly referenced in an appropriate academic style, not to aim for a particular similarity score.
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