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Turnitin

Turnitin supports these learning types (see definitions):

 
 

Turnitin helps detect plagiarism in written work. Turnitin integrates with Canvas, enabling students’ written work to be compared to existing online content, including the work of other students. A Similarity Report highlights text that is flagged for review.

Plagiarism Review

Enable Turnitin is by selecting Plagiarism Review within Canvas Assignment settings. Students upload their documents to Canvas and Turnitin does the rest. Similarity Reports can be accessed through Canvas’ SpeedGrader.

In Canvas, create an Online Assignment – File Uploads

screenshot of Canvas' online assignment option

Canvas assignment setting showing the online option in the drop-down box and file uploads setting is ticked.

From the ‘Plagiarism Review’ dropdown menu, choose Turnitin.

Canvas assignment setting for Plagiarism Review

Canvas screenshot showing the Assignment setting’s Plagiarism Review drop-down option is set to Turnitin.

 When you have selected Turnitin, more options will appear on screen. We recommend the following settings: Select ‘Store submissions in’ as Standard paper repository. Make you ‘Compare submissions against’: Student repository, Website content, Periodicals, journals and publications. The ‘Similarity Report’ should: Exclude bibliographic materials and quoted materials.

Canvas Turnitin assignment submissions.

Canvas’ Plagiarism Review option has the following settings enabled: Store submissions in standard paper repository; compare submissions against student repository, website content, periodicals, journals and publications; Similarity report excludes bibliographic materials and quoted materials.

Finally, you can choose whether you want students to be able to see their ‘Similarity report’ immediately, delayed, or never. It is worth considering whether you want your students to be able to receive this feedback so they have the opportunity to correct the issues and resubmit during the assessment period, or if you do not want them to receive such feedback at all.

Canvas Turnitin Similarity Report options

The Plagiarism Review settings shows the drop-down box for showing the report to students is set to ‘never’.

The Turnitin Similarity Report can be accessed through Canvas’ SpeedGrader when marking assignments.

How-to guides

From Turnitin

Turnitin Plagiarism Review guide (for teachers)

Turnitin guides (for students)

Plagiarism Review vs Turnitin External Tool (LTI) (a comparison chart)

Frequently asked questions

What happened to the instructions for using Turnitin as an External Tool (LTI)?

Due to integration issues with the Turnitin LTI, we have moved away from this option. Instead we only recommend using the Turnitin CPF (Plagiarism Review) method.

Therefore, when creating a Canvas Assignment, where you see Turnitin as a drop-down option under the three dots (vertical ellipsis) button, don’t use it. Use the Plagiarism Review option instead.

Canvas Turnitin assignment - external tool

Don’t use the Turnitin option from the drop-down menu (vertical ellipses button) under the Canvas Assignment page.

What is a similarity report?

This helps markers determine whether work submitted by a student is original. It identifies matches to written content from Turnitin databases, which also include other student submissions.

Students upload their document to a Canvas Assignment with Turnitin enabled. This is matched against the repository to generate a similarity ‘score’. Settings chosen at the time the assignment was created influence the type of report generated.

Instructors can choose whether or not students may view their similarity report. Reports generated can be downloaded and may form part of the process of investigation into academic misconduct.

Can I use Turnitin with Canvas SpeedGrader?

It depends. Creating a Turnitin assignment via the Plagiarism Review method will allow you to use SpeedGrader for marking. Creating a Turnitin assignment vias the LTI External Tool method does not integrate with SpeedGrader; you will need to mark these assignments using Turnitin’s Feedback Studio, which will pass the marks back to Canvas Gradebook.

Can I use Turnitin outside of Canvas?

Yes, you can use www.turnitin.com directly, however, please note that you are asked to ensure that your Turnitin account uses your University of Auckland staff email address. The reason is described in this .

We recommend staff to use Canvas Plagiarism Framework as it doesn’t have the limitations of the External Tool LTI (e.g., Canvas Rubrics and Groups Assignments).

What if I don't have access to Turnitin as an instructor?

This FAQ relates to those using Turnitin outside of canvas, i.e., www.turnitin.com.

Please note that staff are asked to ensure that your Turnitin account uses your University of Auckland staff email address. This is because Turnitin will soon use the University’s Single Sign-On to log in; a security requirement for all major University applications. To update your email address in Turnitin, follow the steps in this .

Staff with an academic role or a teaching related role (group services, learning designer, learning technologist) have already been added to www.turnitin.com as an instructor and shouldn’t notice any difference once the tool uses Single Sign-On. Anyone not in these roles, who need to use www.turnitin.com as an instructor, should ask the  to add you to the Turnitin instructor group.

This change does not affect current Turnitin assignment integrations within Canvas, i.e., Plagiarism Review or External Tool LTI.

Can teachers or markers upload an assignment to Turnitin on behalf of a student?

Yes. Use cases might include: submitting a late assignment on a student’s behalf after the deadline, or where a student has encountered technical difficulties in submitting their document. For assignments that were set up using the External Tool (LTI) method, visit: Single-file upload on behalf of a student. For assignments that use the Plagiarism Review in Canvas, visit: uploading an assignment to Canvas.

Can I use Turnitin as a peer review assignment?

Both Canvas and Turnitin offer a peer review functionality. If you wish to use Canvas’ native peer review function, the assignment cannot be set up as an External Tool (LTI) assignment, you will have to use Plagiarism Review.

If you have used Turnitin as an External Tool (LTI) You can select Enable PeerMark (Turnitin’s version of peer review) in the settings within the Turnitin assignment. Note that once you select “Yes” for PeerMark and save your settings, you cannot remove the PeerMark assignments.

Can I add a Canvas rubric to a Turnitin assignment?

Yes, you can add a rubric to both types of Turnitin assignment (Plagiarism Review or External LTI tool) but the rubric can only be used with SpeedGrader if the assignment was created via the Plagiarism Review method. Rubrics added to the External LTI assignment are just for students to understand the marking guidelines.

What about assigning different due dates for various students or groups?

There is no problem when using the Plagiarism Review Tool, however, when using Turnitin as an External Tool (LTI), it cannot support differentiated due dates. If these are required, it is recommended to set the Turnitin due date to correspond with the final due date in Canvas in order to allow everyone to submit via Turnitin.

Page updated 08/02/2024 (removed instructions for External Tool (LTI))

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