Faculty Resources

Before using Turnitin in your courses, review the information below. It covers required syllabus language, how APSU faculty and students access Turnitin, and a university policy on student paper requests that affects how you use the tool.

Turnitin and Your Syllabus

When using Turnitin, include a disclosure statement in your course syllabus. Turnitin recommends the following language:

"Students, understand that by taking this course any assignment documents may be subject to submission to Turnitin for the detection of plagiarism and AI generated text, and they may be included as source documents in the Turnitin reference database. Students are encouraged to review the Turnitin End-User License Agreement and the AI Writing Detection FAQ."

If you introduce Turnitin after distributing the syllabus, provide students with equivalent written notice in a timely manner.

Accessing Turnitin

APSU faculty and students access Turnitin through D2L Brightspace—not directly through Turnitin.com. D2L's single sign-on supports identity verification, aligns with APSU's password protocols, and keeps the learning environment consolidated within the online classroom.

For assignment setup instructions, visit the Creating and Managing Turnitin Assignments page. For student guidance, visit the Student Resources page.

Requesting a Full Student Paper

When a student's paper matches content stored in the Turnitin database, the matching sections are highlighted and the sources identified within Feedback Studio. If the matching source is another student's paper, from any institution, only the matching portions are highlighted. Faculty and students cannot see the full text of the source student's paper.

Turnitin allows faculty from any institution to request the full text of a student's paper stored in its database. A review by the Office of the Registrar, Information Technology Security, University Attorney, and Distance Education has identified this feature as a potential student privacy, FERPA, and intellectual property concern. Austin Peay State University has opted not to fulfill these requests. The highlighted matching sections visible in Feedback Studio provide sufficient information to determine whether plagiarism concerns are founded. Sharing full papers beyond this creates FERPA compliance risks, violates student privacy rights, raises intellectual property concerns, and may expose personal information protected under federal law.

To pursue academic misconduct charges, you need only a copy of your student's paper and the Turnitin report showing the similarity highlights. The full text of the matched source paper is not required to leverage Turnitin for academic integrity. For more information about academic misconduct procedures at APSU, visit Academic Honesty and Integrity.

Please note that a match between student papers does not automatically indicate collusion or student-to-student plagiarism. It is also possible that both students plagiarized or poorly cited the same third-party source. Turnitin's tools can help you investigate and distinguish between these possibilities.