Dear Ms Roe,

I refer to your email of 17 November 2019 2:12 PM. The Turnitin Plagiarism Detection Service (Turnitin) is an online technology system owned and operated by iParadigms Ltd. I understand that Turnitin does have the capability to support blind marking.

Turnitin is provided for use at the discretion of academic staff. Course convenors decide whether or not to use Turnitin for particular assignments in their course. Accordingly to answer your question about how many courses require students to submit assignments to Turnitin we would need to survey every course offered by the University of Auckland. As the University offers a very large number of courses to its students (see www.auckland.ac.nz/sso-courseadvice), this would require an excessive amount of staff time to do. This request is refused under section 18(f) of the Official Information Act, as the information requested cannot be made available without substantial collation or research. Neither extending the time limit nor imposing a charge would allow this request to be granted.

You have the right to make a complaint to an Ombudsman about this response.

Yours sincerely,
Rebecca Ewert
General Counsel
University of Auckland