Turnitin is an online text-matching software program that works by comparing electronically submitted papers to billions of pages of content located on the Internet as well as the work of other students whose papers have also been submitted into the system.
When student papers are submitted into Turnitin, sections of the papers that match other sources are highlighted and identified. The student paper with the highlighted matched text forms an Originality Report and this must be made available to the lecturer who requested it.
The UOW Turnitin (Students) website provides practical advice about Turnitin, including about how to submit an assessment task to Turnitin, how to generate an Originality Report and how to interpret the Originality Report when you get it back.