Several university departments are now using or have requested access for Turnitin.com. This resource, available through the administrative office, has been available for two years on a pilot basis. In short, Turnitin is a highly powerful, yet user friendly web-based class management tool that aids in the detection of plagiarism, and more.

Currently, over 20,000 student papers a day are submitted to Turnitin from over 51 countries. Rutgers University is one of more than 2,500 institutions worldwide with a license for this product. Our current license is university-wide, providing primarily plagiarism prevention, and is available to all Rutgers faculty.

It is clear that although the number of departments currently using Turnitin is modest, the demand for access is on a constant rise. As you are well aware, there are considerable electronic resources available to students through technology today. Faculty are finding it more challenging to identify electronically derived materials without some level of sophistication in completing complex Web searches.

Although our license is primarily for plagiarism, a more complete list of services provided by Turnitin include:

• Plagiarism Prevention ? identifies papers containing unoriginal material
• Peer Review - giving students the ability to review and respond to classmates work online
• GradeMark - a tool to free the instructor from the pen and paper grading method to a completely paperless environment
• GradeBook - instructors can manage grades and assignments online
• Digital Portfolio - an online archiving system for works submitted by a school, class or individual student

To view these features and full Turnitin product capabilities we suggest that you go to http://www.turnitin.com . This site provides a full demonstration as well as the ability to download a "pdf" user guide. If you care to demo the software, you can do so by entering a demonstration e-mail address. Specifically, when you are at http://www/turnitin.com , you will notice the "login" section at the top right of the page; simply enter demo@turnitin.com as your e-mail address, and then enter the demonstration password: demo123.

In order to make this resource more readily available, we have developed a process that will allow for voluntary use of this resource on a decentralized basis that will not consume disproportionate staff resources. The process is very simple and can be managed at local academic units and departments with only marginal effort. It is decentralized, allows for local determination in the use of the product, and is fairly straightforward.

When requested, the Rutgers-WMHEC administrative office will establish an account for any academic unit desiring access to the software. A unit requesting access to the software will have previously identified an individual to serve as their local "sub-account administrator", i.e. someone available at the local level to be designated to answer questions, assign passwords, and when necessary, work with staff to get the answers to unusual or challenging issues. Once this departmental account is established, and a sub-account administrator assigned and trained (this normally requires less than one hour), faculty can request access to their department's sub-account through their local administrator.

Debra Niece (732-445-1907 x6612) has been assigned to serve as our central point of contact and support person for Turnitin. Any department wishing to secure access to Turnitin is asked to contact her by phone or e-mail ( dbaumlin@rci.rutgers.edu ). If you have forgotten your department's Turnitin account number or password, Debra will be able to assist you in restarting your account. In addition, she will be developing a series of informational and training sessions for each of the three campuses.