About Turnitin

Turnitin provides a web-based plagiarism detection service, which can be used as a deterrent and as a tool to teach students how to work with sources. Turnitin Feedback Studio also includes tools for peer review, automated spelling and grammar review, document annotation and feedback, and grading of student submissions.

If you are an instructor, and you wish to submit student papers to Turnitin yourself (that is, students have not submitted their papers with the Turnitin option enabled in Assignments), it's best to submit the papers directly through Turnitin.com, not through Canvas.

What Can I Do With It?

Instructors can read a report on the matching sources of a student's submission; this is called a "similarity report." Turnitin helps prevent plagiarism by highlighting material that may have been poorly paraphrased, improperly cited, or copied from other sources. To help students learn and improve their citation, instructors can allow students to see their initial similarity report and make corrections. Both rough drafts and final versions of papers can be submitted and checked. Turnitin accepts submissions in over 30 languages and multiple file types, including PDF, docx, and pptx.

About Similarity Reports

A Turnitin Similarity Report indicates overlap between the text of the submitted paper and other materials in the Turnitin database. The report indicates the percentage of overlapping material in the paper, as well as specific matching passages. Reports will usually be available within 15-60 minutes of the submission or the due date, depending on the assignment settings.

Note the following limitations:

• Turnitin compares submissions against a wide database of internet sources (as well as previously submitted student work and commercial databases); however, it may not scan every site on the internet. A clean similarity report does not necessarily guarantee that the submission is the student's own work.
• Turnitin does not flag essays that include plagiarized ideas or concepts, nor can it detect paraphrasing that dramatically changes the wording of an original source while maintaining that source's organization.
• Students who are quoting correctly might have reports that indicate a high level of overlap with these sources.

For more, see Navigating the Similarity Report.

Canvas Integrations

Turnitin offers two integrations for Canvas:

• Canvas Plagiarism Framework: For instructors who use Turnitin solely for plagiarism detection and prefer to conduct all feedback and grading activities in Canvas. This integration is considerably easier to use than the Turnitin LTI tool. The Turnitin Feedback Studio is not available via the Plagiarism Framework.
  • For more, see Canvas Plagiarism Framework FAQ for Instructors.
• Turnitin external LTI tool: Includes full access to the Turnitin Feedback Studio, which is integrated with the Canvas Gradebook and includes tools for quick mark up of student papers, written feedback, spelling and grammar check, building and grading with rubrics, conducting peer reviews, etc.
  • For more, see Assignment Management.