Have you ever used Turnitin? Turnitin is NYU’s licensed plagiarism detector, which is fully integrated into Brightspace. The way the tool works is that Turnitin is first enabled on an assignment in the Brightspace Assignments tool. While there are a number of custom settings that can be configured in Turnitin, the general function of the integration is that when students submit their work to this assignment that has Turnitin enabled, their work is compared against other papers that have been submitted. Turnitin can detect text that has been copied and pasted from other papers that have previously been submitted.
Whenever the tool detects similar text, it generates a score that reflects the percentage of a submission that has detected plagiarized materials.
You can read more about getting started with Turnitin if this is a tool you might like to use in your course(s).
Then, as of April 2023, in recognition of rising concerns of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Turnitin released an update that is designed to detect text that has been written by tools like ChatGPT in student submissions. You can read more about TurnitIn’s AI detection capabilities here. While this update is meaningful in that it addresses a very current need with the rise in generative AI tools, we strongly recommend being mindful about viewing and using these scores. Both false positives and negatives are possible. We also recommend taking a look at some strategies for detailing with AI-generated writing. Please feel free to reach out to your A&S Office of EdTech liaison if you have any questions about Turnitin, academic integrity, or generative AI tools.