Turnitin

Turnitin is Montclair State University’s plagiarism detection system. It is seamlessly integrated directly within Canvas. Turnitin is the world’s leading cloud-based software for evaluating student work. Its features include an Originality Report that determines plagiarism, Grademark for providing feedback, and peer review resources.

Turnitin assignment submission page showing a document preview with submission details and percentage similarity information on the right.

 

Enabling Turnitin in a Canvas Assignment

  1. Log in to Canvas at https://montclair.instructure.com/
  2. Select your course
  3. Click Assignments in the Course Navigation menu
  4. Click Add assignment
  5. Enter the assignment title, point value, and other relevant information
  6. In the Submission Type menu, select Online. (Select Text Entry and/or File Upload)
cropped image for turnitin
turnitin settings
  1. Under Plagiarism Review, select Turnitin
  2. Choose your desired settings based on the Turnitin options provided. Click Save as default settings to preserve your settings for future Turnitin assignments.

NOTE: If you copy a Turnitin assignment prior to December 27, 2021, faculty will need to edit the assignment to enable the new configuration of Turnitin by following the steps above.

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ETS e-rater (Grammar Feedback)

ETS e-rater is a form of grammar feedback technology that automatically checks submitted work for grammar, usage, mechanics, style and spelling errors.

  1. To enable, select Enable grammar checking using ETS e-rater technology
  2. Choose your desired settings based on the options provided

 Understanding e-rater feedback, please check out this article.

turnitin e-rater settings

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How Students Submit a Turnitin Assignment

Students will follow the same assignment upload process but will be prompted with the message below. Students are required to click the checkbox before submitting.

End-User agreement popup

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How Instructors Access Turnitin Reports

  1. Click on the assignment.
  2. Click on "Speedgrader."
Instructor view of  a Canvas assignment submission page

To view your Similarity Report in Turnitin, select the similarity percentage from the right-hand side of SpeedGrader.

Turnitin assignment submission page showing a document preview with submission details and percentage similarity information on the right.

What do the similarity score colors indicate?

The percentage range is 0% to 100% with the possible similarity groupings being:

A vertical color gradient chart with five sections: light blue (0% matching text), dark blue (1-24% matching text), yellow (25-49% matching text), orange (50-74% matching text), and red (75-100% matching text).

Turnitin will open the Similarity Report in a new window.

Assignment with highlighted sections for similarity report

NOTE: You may be prompted to agree to the Turnitin User Agreement.

Turnitin license agreement dialog

Interpreting the Similarity Score

Turnitin checks a user’s work against its extensive database. If instances are found where a user’s writing is similar to or matches against a source this will be flagged for your review in the match overview.

The database includes billions of web pages: both current and archived content from the Internet, a repository of works students have submitted to Turnitin in the past, and scholarly publications, which comprises thousands of periodicals, journals, and publications.

Vertical list of Turnitin icons for options, including layers, similarity options, download, e-submission info, and AI writing detection with a completion percentage.

Similarity Layer Options

e-rater Layer Options

Other Options

Students Accessing Similarity Report

When setting up the Turnitin assignment, navigate to the option “Show report to students” and select one of the following options:

  • Immediately
  • After the assignment is graded
  • After the due date
  • Never
Dropdown menu labeled "Show report to students" with the option "Immediately" selected.

Student access the report through the Canvas gradebook by clicking on the originality report icon.

Canvas student gradebook with similarity icon

Students may be prompted to agree to the Turnitin User Agreement.

Turnitin license agreement dialog

The Similarity Report will open.

Turnitin feedback studio displaying assignment with annotations

Please visit the TurnItIn website to find more details of the Similarity Report.

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