‘Tricks’ that students may use to fool Turnitin

Have you ever wondered how some students manipulate the plagiarism detection tool Turnitin to reduce the similarity score?

In this recording, Alison Black shares the ‘tricks’ that students may use to fool Turnitin. Turnitin does not detect plagiarism, but instead checks the student’s work against a database for similarity to other students’ work and flags it for the marker to review.

Alison also highlights the need for a culture that sees Turnitin as an educative tool that can help students improve their writing, for example, paraphrasing, rather than a punitive tool, and shares marking criteria and lesson ideas with this approach in mind.

Explore the slides below:

To continue the conversation, contact Learning and Teaching Services, or share your thoughts and ideas about how students are fooling the plagiarism tool via YammerTwitter and/or LinkedIn with the hashtag #turnitin.