Turnitin Assignments

When setting up an Assignment on Canvas for student to turn in paper electronically, teachers have the option of using the Turnitin tool for plagiarism detection.

What is Turnitin?

The Turnitin Feedback Studio is an external tool which instructors can use for providing detailed feedback on students' written work. The tool also checks for originality (plagiarism detection). Turnitin is separate from Canvas, but can be integrated into Canvas Assignments.

Setting up a Turnitin Assignment on Canvas

Here is a summary of the basic steps:

  1. Create the assignment,
  2. Add the rubric (if you're using one)
  3. Change the submission type to External Tool (see images below)
  4. Publish the assignment.

More Details: First, create the assignment and add a rubric to the assignment. If you're going to use a rubric: it's important to add the rubric before setting the submission type. After you've changed the assignment type (step 3), you will no longer be able to add a rubric or edit the one you have there. For details, see Canvas documentation on how to Add a Rubric to an Assignment.

Here's how to create the assignment:

Submission type external

After setting the submission type, click Find to find the Turnitin tool:

Find Turnitin tool

Scroll down in the pop-up list to Turnitin, click it, then click the red Select button:

Select Turnitin tool

Then check the box to load in a new tab:

Screen shot - Open in New Tab

The due date on Turnitin will automatically be set to the Canvas due date. (You no longer have to set that separately.) You can still set the Start Date and Feedback Release Date if you want. (Most teachers just leave those as-is.)

Click "Load" button:

screen shot - load assignment
screen shot - click settings

There are three dates related to the assignment on Turnitin:

screen shot - turnitin dates

Grading

When using Turnitin for an assignments, teachers have two ways of viewing the assignment:

(1) Teachers can view the assignment submissions in the Canvas SpeedGrader, with Canvas rubrics. They will see a link to the Turnitin Originality report (plagiarism percentage) there.

(2) Teachers can view the assignment submissions within the Turnitin Feedback Studio system, (which includes some extra features like the Quickmarks system and Turnitin rubrics). Turnitin rubrics have the advantage that they can easily be copied from one assignment to another (even in a different class - which is hard to do in Canvas). Once a grade is entered, it is sent back to the Canvas Gradebook. The Feedback Studio also allows teachers to see if students have read their feedback.

Students Can't Access? Copied Courses

In order for students to be able to submit an assignment on Turnitin, there has to be a connection between that specific Canvas assignment and Turnitin. This connection is made the first time you as the teacher access the assignment. If you're creating a new assignment, this happens automatically.

However, for copied courses - where you copy a course from a previous semester, it's possible that students might try to access that copy of the assignment before that connection has been made.

Solution: A teacher needs to click on the assignment at some point in the semester before students do. All you have to do is click on it (and the "Load in new window" button if it's set up that way) once, and the connection will be made and students will be able to access. Click "Settings" to view the "Start Date" to verify that it's available.

Using the Turnitin Site

Normally, you would set up Assignments as desribed above before students start turning in homework, and have students' paper automatically get checked. However, if you have some papers that didn't get checked, you can use the Turnitin.com website to check.

First, download the papers to your computer (from email or from Canvas, however you received them). Next, log in to your Turnitin.com account at https://turnitin.com - Canvas automatically creates an account for you on that site the first time you create a Turnitin assignment. However, if you've never logged in to the site directly (vs through Canvas), you will need to use the "Forgot your password" link to get direct access to your account.

Once you've logged in, you can go to your class (or create one), and create an assignment, then upload papers to that assignment to be checked. See the Turnitin Instructor QuickStart Guide for more details.