Here is the student section of the anti-plagiarism guide and advice for Lancaster University. The University takes the issue of plagiarism very seriously, but as described in link 1. of the list below, the emphasis is very much on academic excellence, and so the anti-plagiarism software is seen as a guide to achieving that excellence.
Some students in the university are asked to provide an on-line version of their work as well as a paper version for marking, and the on-line version is then put through the anti-plagiarism software by their department. Many now submit their essays only on-line, and part of that process is having the essay checked for originality. However, a small number are asked to submit their work themselves, and the instructions below show how to do this:
2. Enrolling onto the anti-plagiarism software
3. Logging on to the anti-plagiarism software
4. Submitting work to the anti-plagiarism software
5. Example anti-plagiarism reports.
Recently, a number of students have contacted Learning Technology asking for usernames and passwords to the Turnitin anti-plagiarism service. If you would like to be able to check the standard of your work before handing it in, you should go to your course tutor and ask them whether they might be willing to make student submission of work for this purpose part of their course. This is the only way that you can access this product, because supervision is important, and it's a fairly big decision for the tutor, and so it will probably have to be debated upon within the department too, and might take some time.
6. Link for staff to the section of the website that shows how to run the anti-plagiarism software.