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Introduction to Literature, spring 2007 This semester, I’ll ask you to submit your short essay and term paper to Turnitin.com, an online plagiarism prevention service. When Turnitin receives your paper, it scans it for matches with other writing in its database: published works, other student papers, and the entire internet. I want everyone to use Turnitin in order to ensure a level playing field for the class; if a few people manage to cheat without getting caught (and even without Turnitin, this is not always a good bet) then they’re also cheating themselves out of learning and cheating their classmates who have put in real effort. The site is also a great resource that includes reference materials on what plagiarism is and how you can avoid it. That information is at http://www.turnitin.com/research_site/e_home.html. To use the site, you first need to create a user profile. To do this, go to www.turnitin.com and click “New Users” (in the top right corner of the screen). Then follow the instructions provided. If you already have a user profile from another class, then log in, click the “enroll in a class” tab on your home page, and enter the ID and password for this class. (If you don't have the ID and password, please contact a classmate for this information.) To submit a paper, click the class name on your home page. Here you will find a list of assignments due. You can submit assignments either by uploading a file (the system will accept Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, RTF, PDF, PostScript, plain text, and HTML) or by cut and paste. I’ve enabled the option of allowing you to view your own Originality Report. The report indicates sections of your text that matches text already in the system’s database. Keep in mind that depending on the assignment, you probably should see some matches – that is, material you have quoted from a novel, a critic, or any other source will turn up matches in the system, and the important issue is just that you have enclosed this material in quotation marks and cited it appropriately. You can also click the “exclude quoted” and “exclude bibliography” options in order to exclude these matches from the report. Be sure to submit both a hard copy (due in class) to me and an electronic copy to Turnitin, which will be due by midnight of the assignment deadline. I will not give you a grade unless you’ve submitted your work to Turnitin. Please plan ahead in case of computer crashes, etc. Full instructions for using Turnitin are available in a .pdf document at http://www.turnitin.com/static/pdf/tii_student_guide.pdf. Turnitin offers a number of features that we won’t be using, so for our purposes, focus on pages 4-11. You may notice that when you enter the site it says Yeshiva University, not Hunter College. Please ignore this; it should not affect your ability to use the site. |