Turnitin.com is a website used by 26 million students and instructors globally to easily identify plagiarism and its source. Students utilize Turnitin by turning in electronic copies of their assignments through the website. Once turned in, teachers can also make electronic comments and give feedback online while saving paper. Although this website might seem extremely useful, it can be frustrating at times.

“Turnitin sometimes isn’t useful because assignments can be counted late if they are turned in literally seconds after the time that the assignment is due,” sophomore Madilyn Schindler said.

For instance, Turnitin enables teachers to set a due date and time on an assignment, and after that due date and time, no submissions are allowed. This is different from when a teacher collects physical copies of assignments in class. For example, assignments do not count as late or missing when it is handed in a few seconds after the teacher finishes collecting everything.

“Sometimes [Turnitin] is really slow and takes forever to upload,” Schindler said.

There is a disadvantage of turning in assignments online because in person, you can hand a piece of paper to your teacher instead of relying on technology and waiting until it uploads. Even when it is done loading, it is very easy to choose the wrong document and end up submitting the wrong document, with no way of re-submitting if the teacher does not allow it.

“It’s challenging to add classes for students, and sometimes confusing with the passwords, so it’s a learning curve for students,” English teacher Cassandra Stephens said. “The ease to which you add a class, I wish it was easier.”

Adding classes can be confusing sometimes, especially for first-time users because Turnitin.com requires a class ID and password in order to add a class. It is a website and tool that is unique, so students are usually unfamiliar with the process until they are exposed to it. The time limit puts a lot of unnecessary pressure onto students to finish the assignment before the time the teacher wants or

Due to these downsides of Turnitin.com, it is ultimately not worth the trouble to use this tool in our classrooms today.