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Turnitin Integration Within Brightspace

Turnitin provides faculty with a web-based similarity checking service and digital grading. Submitted papers are compared for matches or similar text in the repository and results are made available in an easy-to-read Similarity Report. Students can receive grades and comments for all submissions using the GradeMark assessment feature.

This Turnitin Integration works directly into Brightspace, so that assignments submitted by students can be checked against the Turnitin repository and grades shared with students directly through Brightspace Grades. You do not even need the Turnitin app if you are using an iPad!

Important:

The documentation below is about using Turnitin within Brightspace. If you're not using Brightspace and still want to use Turnitin, instead review Turnitin outside of Brightspace.
Check out our documentation if you prefer Turnitin through Existing Activities or want to utilize Peermark.

Create a Turnitin Assignment

In your Brightspace course, create a New Assignment
Go to the Submission & Completion tab and change Allowable File Extensions to Compatible with Turnitin
Go to Evaluation & Feedback and under Turnitin Integration, click on Manage Turnitin
In the Turnitin Integration pop-up,
- Check Enable Similarity Report for this folder
  1. It is also recommended to check Allow learners to see similarity scores in their submission folder
- Check Enable Online Grading for this folder
- Click on More Options if you want to alter more settings (specifics below) then click Submit when done with More Options
- Click Save when done in the Turnitin Integration
Fill out the remaining details of your assignment before clicking Save and Close

Note: You can make this a Group Assignment by changing it under Submission & Completion (make sure you create Groups first). This allows one learner to submit the group's work, while all members can see the group's score/comments and receive the same grade.

Turnitin Integration With check marks for Enable Similarity Report for this folder, Allow leaners to see similarity scores in their submission folder and Enable Online Grading for this Folder. An arrow is pointing to More Options to check out more settings.

Brightspace Assignment with Turnitin Enabled icon

To make sure your Brightspace assignment has the Turnitin Integration, go to Assignments and your assignment will have a paper with bioncolars.

Optional Settings for Turnitin Integration

While you are in the Turnitin Integration, click on More Options to see the following:

Submitting papers to the Standard paper repository should be fine. This is how Turnitin aggregates papers to search against.
If there was a rubric that you wanted to use to grade assignments, you could build a rubric in Turnitin to use under Turnitin Rubric.
- Note: the rubrics in Turnitin are different from rubrics within Brightspace. If you wanted to add a Brightspace rubric, you would do so through the normal method.
Similarity Report speed sets how soon students see their assignment's report. There are three options:
- Generate reports immediately (students cannot resubmit): this is the toughest of the options as it prevents students from making any changes/learning from their report;
- Generate reports immediately (students can resubmit until due date): this is the middle option that allows for some flexibility in resubmitting while still preventing students from making too many changes
- Generate reports immediately (students can resubmit until due date): this option is the laxest of all of the options and allows students the most flexibility with changes.
Exclude Bibliographic Materials, Exclude Quoted Materials, and Exclude Small Sources are usually unchecked as it is helpful to allow the system to do a full sweep of the content and then you can go in and review each potential issue the system flags.
In the Compare against section select the types of things you want your students' papers checked against.
Exclude assignment template will allow you to upload or create a template that will be excluded from the Similarity Report. This might be helpful for projects or assignments where students are working in a specific structure or template set by you.
Click Submit.

Review Turnitin Submissions

Important: The reports do not reflect Turnitin’s assessment of whether a paper has or has not been plagiarized. Similarity Reports are simply tools to help you find sources that contain text similar to submitted papers. The decision to deem any work plagiarized must be made carefully, and only after careful examination of both the submitted paper and the suspect sources.

The image has a gray background. There are five lines of text. Each line starts with a color and the color of the text is the same as the name. The first line is Blue - (no matching text). The second line is Green - (1 word -24% matching text). The third line is Yellow - (25-49% matching text). The fourth line is Orange - (50-74% matching text). The fifth line is Red - (75-100% matching text).

Viewing Similarity Reports

Once the student has submitted their work, go to the Assignments tab
Click on the assignment with the Turnitin Integration
On the Submissions page, you will see a column for Turnitin Similarity Report (review to color-coded chart for guidance), click on a student's Turnitin Similarity Report score to view details in Feedback Studio which opens a new window.

Assignment Submission page with student's similarity score in a red box for emphasis

Changing from Word Doc file to User Submissions

NOTE: Turnitin activities in this method can also appear in QuickEval.

In case you end up in Brightspace annotations:

Click the student's submission next to their name and select User Submissions.

Now you will be able to see their Turnitin Similarity Report.

Providing Feedback With Grademark

- Add a Comment by clicking on any portion of the paper, adding your comment, and clicking Save.
- Add a QuickMark Comment by dragging one from the right panel onto the paper or add additional comments of your own.
- Add General Comments in both text and audio form on the overall paper. Click the icon in the side panel.
- View all the comments added to the paper from the Comments List tool at the bottom of the side panel.
- Add Rubrics to the paper that you can use during the grading process.

Screenshot of Turnitin feedback options. There is a outline blue vertical bar with four sections. The first section has a dark blue background with a stack of white squares overlapping. The second section has a solid blue square with a white checkmark. To the right of it, there is pink text that says Quickmarks. The next section shows the outline of a blue square with a pencil icon. To the right of it, there is pink text that says General text and/or audio feedback. The last section shows eight squares (the first row has two squares and the the second and third rows have three squares). To the right, there is text that says Turnitin Rubric.

Reviewing the Similarity Score and Flags

Below the Feedback box, there is an area for the similarity score and flags.
The first box is for flags. This shows hidden text, replaced characters, or other potential oddities in the file.
The next box down is for matches. This would show sources and content that are the same/similar to the content in the submission.
The next box down shows All Sources that have similar content.
The next box down is Filters and Settings, which allows you to set up exclusions and filters for submissions.
The last box shows Excluded Sources, if you have any.
Below that, there are two additional boxes. The first one is download and will allow you to download the submission, a digital receipt for the submission, and a marked-up version of the submission. The box below that will show additional information about the paper i.e. file names, word counts, page count, etc.

Adding a Grade

Go to the top right of the screen and look for the grade box.
Add the grade.
Close the Feedback Studio window to get back to the Submissions page.
The newly-added grade should show up in the Turnitin Online Grading column (which populates into the gradebook).
If the grade doesn't show up, go to the Refresh button next to the Submission Date. This should make the grade show up.

Publish Feedback

Once you are done grading one or all of your student submissions with Turnitin, make sure you are on the Submissions page of the assignment.
Check the boxes of the students you have evaluated.
Click Publish Feedback.

Now, when your students go to their Submission for the assignment (see picture below), they will be able to see their grade and click on their Turnitin Similarity Report Score to view your comments.

NOTE: If you left ON "Allow learners to see Similarity Scores in their submission folder" Students can view their Turnitin Similarity Report too.

Students should start in the Assignments tab of the course.
The student clicks on the Completion Status of the Turnitin Integration assignment.
On their Submission History for the assignment, they can view their Turnitin Similarity Score and can click on it for a full report.

Student assignment with 1 submission, 1 file in red box

Course Copy and Turnitin

Perform a course copy that includes your Assignments with the Turnitin Integration.
Go to the Assignments tab.
At the top of Assignments, there is a pop-up asking if you want to re-enable Turnitin from previous Turnitin Integrated assignments. Click Re-Enable.

When using educational technology tools, be FERPA aware. To learn more, visit the Registrar's FERPA Guidelines site.

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