Turnitin (Canvas Instructors) - Using the Assignment Similarity Checker

How-To Resources for Using Turnitin in Canvas

Things to Keep in Mind

  • When Turnitin checks student work, it stores that work in its database indefinitely to check other student submissions against. There are two points of interest this creates.
    • If a student submits a rough draft and its stored in the Turnitin database, future versions will have a high similarity score because they're being compared to the original submission.
    • This leads to an ethical conundrum for some, since student work is being turned over to a company that in turn profits from it through having a more robust database to check submissions against.
    • If you would like to NOT have student work stored in the Turnitin database, set the Store submissions in: option to "Do not store the submitted papers" when you create your Turnitin-enabled assignment.
  • Students are savvy to Turnitin and may try to work around its features. The most common attempt to do this is to enclose the entire paper in very small, white-colored quotation marks. If an instructor sets Turnitin to Exclude quoted materials, the entire paper will come back as 100% original. To avoid this, either do not elect to exclude quoted text, or pay attention to 100% original submissions.
  • Make it a teaching opportunity.
    • Allow students to see their Turnitin scores
    • Provide students the opportunity to re-submit their Assignment as many times as needed before the deadline (so long as you also "Do not store the submitted papers" in Turnitin's repository)
    • Go over interpreting Turnitin with students, or provide them resources for doing so
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