Turnitin Basics

Turnitin provides faculty with a web-based plagiarism prevention service, class management tools, 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 Originality Report. Students can receive grades and comments for all submissions using the GradeMark assessment feature. Turnitin also allows for review and graded assignments in a paperless environment.

Important: Turnitin can be used in two separate ways, either directly through the Turnitin website or through integration within Brightspace. The documentation below will walk you through how to use Turnitin within Brightspace. This page will walk you through how to use Turnitin outside of Brightspace.

if you want to use your iPad with Turnitin, see the instructions below to learn how.

NOTE: Turnitin doesn't go into QuickEval.

Turnitin integrates directly into Brightspace, so that assignments submitted by students can be automatically checked against the Turnitin repository and grades shared with students directly through the Brightspace Grade Center.

In your Brightspace course, click on Content in the navigation
Go to the module where you want the link to live
Go to Existing Activities and scroll down to Turnitin
Enter the Assignment Title and the Max Grade.
Add any instructions that students should see before submitting
Assign a Start Date (the day the assignment is available), the Due Date (the day the assignment is due), and the Feedback Release Date (the day grades are shown to students).
- The feedback release date should be a date that you know you will have the grades completed. You can always go back in and edit this date if you finish grading early. We also recommend that if you use the Feedback Release Date that you hide or use the start date on the grade book item for this assignment so students won't see their grades early. Remember: students won't see any grades unless the feedback release date has passed.
Peermark is a tool that allows students to evaluate each other. If you want to use this, please contact the DePeters Family Center
Click on Optional Settings
Submitting papers to the Standard paper repository should be fine. This is how Turnitin aggregates papers to search against
Allow submission of any file type should be checked as this means submissions will be checked for originality wherever possible in the document. It may mean that the submission won't be able to be previewed if the file type isn't compatible with Turnitin. it's best practice to have your students submit as PDFs to Turnitin.
Allow late submissions would allow students to submit past the due date. Any item submitted past the due date will be highlighted in red.
Leave Enable grammar checking as unchecked. E-rater is a grammar checker, but generally provides an overload of information so it is usually easier to not enable it. You can always review them more closely and adjust based on the individual assignment
If there was a rubric that you wanted to use to grade assignments, you could build a rubric in Turnitin to use under TurnitinRubric. Note: the rubrics in Turnitin are different from rubrics within Brightspace.
In the Compare against section select the types of things you want your students' papers checked against.
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.
Allow students to view Similarity Reports is usually checked to allow students to see potential issues, but unchecking it would prevent them from seeing it.
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.
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

Viewing Originality Reports

Once the student has submitted their work, go to the assignment link in the course and click on it
If it is the first time you're accessing Turnitin, you may have to agree to a user policy
Once it loads, you'll see your Assignment Inbox, which will show student submissions, similarity scores, flags, and other information about the submission. From here, you can also submit on behalf of a student, if a student is having issues submitting
For each student, you'll see the name of their paper, the date it was uploaded, if the student viewed the paper once it was uploaded, a place to enter a grade, the similarity score, any flags, and then options to copy paper ID, Upload, Download, Remove from Inbox, and Request permanent deletion.

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).

Important: The reports do not reflect Turnitin’s assessment of whether a paper has or has not been plagiarized. Originality 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.

Providing Feedback With Grademark

On the submissions inbox, click on the pencil icon
The full assignment will be displayed in a new window. From this window you can:
- 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 Originality Score and Flags

Below the Feedback box, there is an area for the originality 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.

Turnitin's AI-Generated Detection Tool

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.
The newly-added grade should show up in the submissions inbox.
If the grade doesn't show up, go to the Refresh button in the top left and click Refresh Submissions. This should make the grade show up.

A gray box with two thin, black lines in it. To the right, there is a blue slash and the number 100.

The top left is a white, dropdown field. To the right, there is a gray box with an icon that has two circular arrows, text that reads Refresh, and a black triangle pointing down. Below that is a white background with text that says Refresh Submissions and Force Refresh Submissions.

Using Turnitin On Your iPad

Currently, if you open a Turnitin assignment from your Brightspace course in Safari on your iPad, you can't add comments or other items directly to the paper. The following steps will allow you to open your class via the Turnitin app and add comments/grades. Note: you will have to follow these steps for each class that you want to review on your iPad with the Turnitin app.

Download the Turnitin Feedback Studio app
Log into your Brightspace course on Safari on your iPad and go to the assignment
Open a student's submission by clicking on the pencil icon
Once the Feedback Studio opens, scroll down to the gear icon in the bottom right
Select the "i" icon
This will open a Submission Details box. At the bottom of the box, enter your email address and select Email Me
You should then get an email with a link that will open the app with your classes information
You should then be able to add comments, grade, and review the Turnitin assignment
When you're done adding your comments/grading the individual assignment, click close in the top left.

Screenshot of Turnitin Submissions Inbox. There is a table with a header row and then two rows of data below. The header row has eight columns. The first five have icons or text in them, they are Date Submitted, an eye icon, a checkmark icon, a triangular filter icon, and a bar graph icon. The first row of data reads: Sept 28th, 2021 11:29am in the first column; a gray eye icon in the second column; a blue pencil icon in the third column, a dash in the fourth column, a yellow triangle in the fifth column; a thin blue line with an arrow pointing up in the sixth column; a thin blue line and an arrow pointing down in the seventh column; and a garbage can icon in the last column. The second row has Jul 26th, 2021 2:43 ppm in the first column; a gray icon in the second column; a blue pencil in the third column with a pink square around it; the number 30 in the fourth column; a yellow square and the number 45 in the fifth column; a thin blue line with an arrow pointing up in the sixth column; a thin blue line and an arrow pointing down in the seventh column; and a garbage can icon in the last column.

Screenshot of the Turnitin Feedback Studio. There is a horizontal menu that has three boxes. The first box has a gray line with an arrow pointing down. The second box has a circle with an "i" in it. The third box has a gear icon in it. The second and third squares have pink outlines.

Screenshot of Turnitin Feedback Studio. There is a white dialog box on top of a window. The dialog box has bolded text in the top left that says Feedback Studio for iOS (and a registered trademark icon). Below that is body text that says Receive a unique link to access this class in your Feedback Studio for iOS app. In blue text, it says Learn more. Below that is a rectangular box with a pink outline. There are two rectangular boxes inside the pink box. They both have bolded text above them. The text reads Email and Confirm Email. Below this, there is a gray button that says Email me.

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