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Turnitin is integrated with Canvas at UCC and is ready to use for all instructors.

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Turnitin is text-matching software used by UCC to uphold Academic Integrity

 

Turnitin is used as part of the assignment submission process at ATU to help students demonstrate academic integrity in their work by demonstrating how to use, create and communicate information in an original, honest, and responsible manner.

Turnitin identifies when texts are similar. Its purpose is to educate students about correct citation and referencing methods.

What's it for?

The purpose of Turnitin is to help students improve their academic writing techniques by highlighting similarities to other sources on the Internet and other students’ work enabling them to make decisions about the quality of their writing.

For example, has the student:

  • Relied too strongly on one source.

  • Paraphrased, summarized or quoted someone else’s work without referencing it.

  • Used no sources at all and thus their work is uncorroborated.

Turnitin should also help in reducing instances of plagiarism and improve overall academic integrity. It is a formative tool intended to help students. Students are encouraged, but not required, to follow up on the analysis it provides.

How it Works

If a lecturer opts to use Turnitin for a course or assignment, the lecturer will create a 'Turnitin Assignment' within Blackboard or Moodle

When a student submits a 'Turnitin Assignment' within Blackboard or Moodle, the assignment will then be submitted to Turnitin for text-matching.

Turnitin matches the text within an assignment by comparing a student's submission against a database of electronic texts from the Internet, published works (such as journal articles and books), and assignments previously submitted to Turnitin by other students.

Turnitin then creates an 'Originality Report' which can be viewed by lecturers and students, which identifies where the text within a student submission has matched another source.

How do I upload my work?

Your lecturer will inform you if Turnitin is used for the course or module you are taking and you will typically summit your work to check it's originality via the LMS (Canvas). 

Please note the library cannot give access to Turnitin.

 

Useful Turnitin guides for uploading your work:

Turnitin supports the following file formats: 

  • Microsoft Word
  • PowerPoint
  • WordPerfect
  • PostScript
  • PDF
  • HTML
  • RTF
  • OpenOffice (ODT)
  • Hangul (HWP)
  • Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets (submitted via the Google Drive submission option),
  • Plain text files

Using Turnitin at UCC

AI Writing Detection

Turnitin's AI writing detection capability is designed to help educators identify text that might be prepared by a generative AI tool. Our AI writing detection model may not always be accurate (it may misidentify both human and AI-generated text) so it should not be used as the sole basis for adverse actions against a student. It takes further scrutiny and human judgment in conjunction with an organization's application of its specific academic policies to determine whether any academic misconduct has occurred.

The AI writing indicator

When you open a Similarity Report, the AI writing indicator is in the side panel. After a short period of processing, the indicator will display one of three potential states:

 

Blue with a percentage between 0 and 100: The submission has processed successfully. The displayed percentage indicates the amount of qualifying text within the submission that Turnitin’s AI writing detection model determines was generated by AI. As noted previously, this percentage is not necessarily the percentage of the entire submission. If text within the submission was not considered long-form prose text, it will not be included.

Our testing has found that there is a higher incidence of false positives when the percentage is between 1 and 20. In order to reduce the likelihood of misinterpretation, the AI indicator will display an asterisk (*) for percentages between 1 and 20 to call attention to the fact that the score is less reliable.

To explore the results of the AI writing detection capabilities, select the indicator to open the AI writing report. The AI writing report opens in a new tab of the window used to launch the Similarity Report. If you have a pop-up blocker installed, ensure it allows Turnitin pop-ups.

 

Gray with no percentage displayed (- -): The AI writing detection indicator is unable to process this submission. This state means that the AI writing report cannot be opened. This can be due to one, or several, of the following reasons:

  • The submission was made before the release of Turnitin’s AI writing detection capabilities. The only way to see the AI writing detection indicator/report on historical submissions is to resubmit them.

  • The submission does not meet the file requirements needed to successfully process it for AI writing detection. In order for a submission to generate an AI writing report and percentage, the submission needs to meet the following requirements:

    • File size must be less than 100 MB

    • File must have at least 300 words of prose text in a long-form writing format

    • File must not exceed 15,000 words

    • File must be written in English

    • Accepted file types: .docx, .pdf, .txt, .rtf

 

Error ( ! ): This error means that Turnitin has failed to process the submission. This state means that the AI writing report cannot be opened. Turnitin is constantly working to improve its service, but unfortunately, events like this can occur. Please try again later. If the file meets all the file requirements stated above, and this error state still shows, please get in touch through our support center so we can investigate for you.

 

The AI writing report

The AI writing report contains the overall percentage of prose sentences contained in a long-form writing format within the submitted document that Turnitin’s AI writing detection model determines was generated by AI. These sentences are highlighted in blue on the submission text in the AI writing report.

 

The above content is from:

Accessing the Similarity Report

The Similarity Report can be accessed from within SpeedGrader.

  1. Select the assignment name and open Speedgrader.
  2. Select the similarity score, indicated by the colored square under "Submitted Files" on the right, to open the Turnitin Viewer
  3. You can also access the report through Gradebook, then Speedgrader.

The above information is from:

How do I read the analysis?

Turnitin checks your submissions against their database to see if there are instances where your writing is similar to, or matches against, one of their sources, and will flag this for your lecturer to review.

It is normal for an assignment to match against some of their database. As long as you have referenced correctly, this is fine. The similarity score simply highlights any matching areas in your paper so your instructor can use this as an investigative tool to determine if the match is or is not acceptable.

The color of the report icon indicates the similarity score of the paper, based on the amount of matching or similar text that was uncovered. The percentage range is 0% to 100%. The possible similarity ranges are:

  • Blue: No matching text
  • Green: One word to 24% matching text
  • Yellow: 25-49% matching text
  • Orange: 50-74% matching text
  • Red: 75-100% matching text

For more information see Turnitin's Interpreting the Similarity Report Guide linked below.

Viewing Similarity Matches

The Match Overview section displays the similarity percentage and a breakdown of all the matches that have been found on a paper, ordered by highest similarity match to lowest.

The similarity percentage ranges from 0 to 100 with 0 representing no matches, and 100 percent meaning everything matches. The matches are numbered and color-coded to make it easier for you to understand.

Turnitin's similarity checker page

Turnitin similarity checker

Turnitin similarity checker


The above information is from:

. Umpqua Community College Library, 1140 Umpqua College Rd., Roseburg, OR 97470, 541-440-4640
Except where otherwise noted, content in these research guides is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.