What would you do if you received an email from Turnitin with a request to view a student’s work?
The University has now approved guidelines on how to handle a request, made by a member of staff on another course or from another institution, to view a University of Reading student’s work held in the Turnitin paper repository. The guidelines are intended to:
- Provide a consistent approach to the handling of these requests,
- Meet UK copyright and data protection law,
- Allow module conveners to make the decision on accepting or declining these requests.
The University and many other UK institutions use Turnitin to check the similarity of students’ work against various web sources and the work of other students. Papers submitted by students are added to a national repository and this enables academics to find matches to student papers submitted at other institutions which subscribe to Turnitin.
You might receive one of these email requests if you are enrolled on the course as an Instructor where the student’s work was submitted in Blackboard.
The University considers it beneficial to permit such requests, where appropriate, in order to maintain academic integrity and to encourage reciprocal arrangements with other institutions.
If you receive an email entitled ‘TurnitinUK Paper View Request’ from ‘TurnitinUK No Reply (noreply@turnitin.com)‘ please refer to the guidelines.
How do I make a request?
It is also possible for you to make requests when viewing a Turnitin Similarity Report where you see ‘Submitted to University…’ in the list of matches. Find out how you can make a request.