Office of General Counsel News!

Use of Originality Checking Software by Faculty under Federal Law

The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) controls the University’s disclosure of students’ education records. These records include student work product, such as term papers.

UMBC has a campus-wide license to use iParadigm’s Turnitin.com plagiarism detection software through which student work product may be checked for originality. The campus also has a similar license to use SafeAssign through the BlackBoard Learning System. However, use of these services must comport with FERPA regulations and Family Policy Compliance Office (FPCO) guidance.

Should faculty have any questions regarding the use of these services, please contact the Office of the General Counsel.

Specific Requirements to comply with FERPA

Specifically, to be compliant with FERPA in the use of Turnitin.com or SafeAssign:

1. Faculty cannot require their students to submit the papers directly to Turnitin.com or to any similar "originality evaluation" service. Faculty may require students to submit their own work, but the submission must be completely voluntary prior to the Faculty coming into possessiin of the work.
2. Faculty, also, can legally submit student work product. Permission from the student is not required. However, submission of the work product can occur only after first removing all personally identifiable information (defined as information that is easily traceable to a particular student, such as including the name or a description that could lead others to identify the student).



Faculty may utilize any reasonable coding system they develop to be able to identify the student author of the paper, so long as the coding system does not convey the identity of the student (such as student’s initials) or contain established identifiers such as Social Security Numbers or Campus issued Student ID numbers.

3. If a highly similar work is identified by the software/service and the referred instructor is not affiliated with UMBC, UMBC faculty cannot use personally identifiable information about the UMBC student when discussing any student work product with the referred instructor not appointed/employed by UMBC.
4. We advise that Facultyinform their students if the Turnitin.com or SafeAssign software is going to be utilized. This notice should be in writing, preferably in the course syllabus.

Additional Information

The U.S. Department of Education’s Family Policy Compliance Office's specific postion on use of Turnitin.com under FERPA can be found in the Letter to: Parker, November 13, 2007 guidance letter issued by the U.S. Family Policy Compliance Office.

Use of the Turnitin.com service was determined not to infringe U.S. copyright laws by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in the March 2008 decision A.V., et al v. iParadigms, LLC.

The guidance issued by the FPCO and U.S. District Court ruling are both applicable in principle to the use of SafeAssign.

More information on FERPA in general can be found on the U.S. Department of Education website :http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html