G. Allen Fleece Library
Monday: 8:00 am - 12:00 am
EDT

Turnitin for Faculty

Why use Turnitin?

Prevent Plagiarism

Encourage original work, investigate authorship, and deter students from submitting assignments that have been copied from another source.

Save Time

Save your time while building students’ critical thinking skills.

Safeguard Institutional Research

Ensure the originality of written work before publication.

Direct login Instructions

  1. Go to https://turnitin.com/login_page.asp?lang=en_us
  2. Login – username is your ciu email ; Password – whatever you created (if you do not know your password – select “forgot password”)
  3. Click on “Add Class” – you can set up a course for this class
  4. Click on the course name just added
  5. Click the “Add Assignment” button
  6. The assignment will appear, then select the more actions dropdown and select “Submit” from that dropdown menu
  7. You can then submit each assignment you need to.

When trying to login, if you receive a message that you do not have an account - please email cynthia.snell@ciu.edu, so an account can be set-up for you.

Introduction

We have a new tool in which we can use to "investigate" possible cases of plagiarism. For this tools to work properly, it is REQUIRED that you use the Turnitin assignment module in Canvas. 

This guide shares:

  1. the advantages of using the module in canvas
  2. how to create the assignment module in canvas
  3. how to read the similarity reports
  4. when and how to ask for an "investigation" report
  5. what is included in that report
  6. what to do from there

the advantages of using the module in canvas

The advantages of using the Canvas Assignment Module rather than going to the Turnitin.com site:

  1. Everything is in Canvas
  2. Students can see when they may have a potential issue
  3. Papers are added to a repository which can be used to evaluate "self-plagiarism" and student sharing of work
  4. An investigative report will be flagged automatically if contract cheating or hidden characters are found
  5. Detailed author information can be examined, including:
    • author information
    • font style, size, and color
    • word count
    • language evaluation

how to create the assignment module in canvas

Creating a Turnitin Assignment in Canvas

  1. Create your assignment 
  2. When selecting a "Submission Type" use the dropdown and select "External Tool"
  3. The pop-up window will have two scroll bars to the right, scroll the outer scroll bar down to the bottom, then scroll the inner scroll bar all the way down. The last item on the list will be "Turnitin". 
  4. Click on the "Turnitin" option
  5. Click the "Select" button 

Now that you have set-up the Turnitin assignment, you can change the settings of Turnitin to be specifically what you want Turnitin to do:

  1. Select the "setting Icon 
     
  2. Click "Optional Settings"
     
     
  3. Here you will select whether you want the papers submitted to:
    1. the "Standard paper repository" (FOR GRADED PAPERS ONLY)
    2. or you can select "Do not store the submitted papers" (USED FOR DRAFT SUBMISSIONS) which will still evaluate the paper, but it will not store the paper.
      This way, when the Graded Papers are submitted - they will be stored bot WILL NOT evaluate them against previous drafts.
       
  4. Finish scrolling down the setting, which as focused on grammar checks and what you would like evaluated in the similarity reports. 
     
  5. Click "Submit"
     
  6. You can then go back to the assignment - if the following appears, everything is set-up correctly

If you have ANY problems setting this up - please contact Cindy Snell (cynthia.snell@ciu.edu) and provide the course number and assignment. She will go in and check the assignment and configuration. 

how to read the similarity reports

Layers - clicking on it will provide you the option to only look at grading, similarity, or e-rater. Checking all the boxes activates the full report.

This is the Grading layer

Quick marks provides you with tags you can drag and drop into the paper: ex. SP for spelling errors, incomplete citations, word usage, even margin and indent tags are available.

Feed back summary - allows you to write or speak any feedback you have for the student 

If you have attached a rubric - this is where you would access that

This is the Similarity layer (we will look at this layer in more detail below)

This shows there are no red flags for hidden content or contract writing that have been found in the initial turnitin scan


This is the similarity percentage of the paper: 53%


The line graph - Clicking on this button allows you to see all the sources the percentage has used

The funnel is Filters and setting  - allows you to exclude anything in quotes, the bibliography, and/or sources that have been picked up with a small word count which the default is set at 5. 

The circle with the line through it - shows If any sources were excluded for some reason or another  - clicking on this would show you those sources and why they were excluded

The button with the magnifying glass shows you the document details.

This is the Grammar layer

Clicking the ETS button will show you all the grammar issues that Turnitin has identified. WORD OF CAUTION - do not rely solely on this to correct the grammar and spelling of the student paper. It only helps to "DETECT" areas that COULD be an issue.

The down pointing arrow allows you to download the current view, original, or simply the receipt of the document. Current view includes all the comment tags you have added and the similarity report at the end of the document. This is good for when a dishonesty report is needed. 

The (i) symbol is general information about the submission

A detailed look at the similarity layer

Starting at the top and working our way down:

 FLAGS

So red flags could look like this when there are no issues

Or like this when it has picked up something unusual 

The second case was from a student who used a template and her name and the title of the paper was create in white on a blue background. How ever, students actually can put a white letter in-between words to make it seem like one long string - thus never picked up as a plagiarize sentence or paragraph, because it seems like one long word. 

For Example:

TheAHousingAAssistanceAProgramAisAintendedAtoAencourageAhomeAownershipAwithinAaAspecifiedA“buyAzone”AnearACIU.

Would appear like this if the sentence was not highlight:

TheAHousingAAssistanceAProgramAisAintendedAtoAencourageAhomeAownershipAwithinAaAspecifiedA“buyAzone”AnearACIU.

This would not be picked as a plagiarized sentence from the CIU website. 

A "Replaced Character" has characters that resemble letters, but are not. Maybe an 1 in a different font is used for an lower case "L". 

PERCENTAGE

The percentage shows the amount of the paper is similar to other web-based resources or papers in the repository.

Internet sources show up like this: 

Clicking on the source in which you want to see the similarity will show you the paper and the source overlap:

Now in this case the student is referring to a title of an article that was also mentioned on the Emerald website - no plagiarism here.

The next example shows what a plagiarized internet source would look like:

As you can see this is a direct statement - word for word, from the ccl.org website without quotes or an intext citation.

A students paper can also notate information that has been written and is stored in the repository 

You cannot get the information directly from Turnitin, but you can click the "Submitted to..." and request access to the student's paper from this school: 

However, in this case, the information in the student's paper was taken directly from the powerpoint presentation for that week's assignment. SO it could be assumed that both courses, our's and Broward, used the same presentation. 

 ALL SOURCES

This area works like the about area. The difference it shows ALL the sources that the similarity report includes. There is sometime overlap with many source. The percentage discussed above, shows the main overlap. (You'd be surprised at how many website include the same information).

This is also where you can "exclude" sources. So, if you forgot and added a draft to the repository, you could exclude the CIU source and it would remove the draft from the percentage. 

FILTERS AND SETTINGS

This area allows you to change your filters and setting for the way it looks for similarity.

If you want to include quotes - just deselect the checkbox. 

If you want to increase or decrease the word count within a sentence, you can do that here as well.

Maybe instead of the sentence word count you only want to know if 75% of a sentence is similar. You would select the radio button beside percentage and add a 75.

This gives you flexibility.

EXCLUDES SOURCES

This area will just show the sources you have excluded in the ALL SOURCE area.

DOCUMENT DETAILS

Clicking on this area gives you the following information:

  • Author name
  • Last modified by
  • Page size
  • Assignment
  • Class
  • Document created with
  • Fonts: size and color
  • Language - evaluates the spelling: American versus European

when and how to ask for an "investigation" report

WHEN: you think that a student has not written the paper him/herself.

WHEN: you feel that something is not right. That the Turnitin Similarity report did not give the results you expected.

WHEN: you just want to double check before submitting a dishonesty report.

HOW DO I SUBMIT A REQUEST?

THIS PROCESS MIGHT CHAANGE, but for now:

1. Click on the information button in Turnitin 

2. You will get detailed information about the submission 

3. Send Cindy Snell (cynthia.snell@ciu.edu) an email request with the submission ID number.

4. She will send you back a detailed report.

what is included in an investigative report

what to do next