Tips for using Turnitin
When implemented correctly, Turnitin can be a useful tool for improving academic integrity. Below, you can find tips for using different aspects of Turnitin in teaching. For further information, see Teach with Turnitin.
When implemented correctly, Turnitin can be a useful tool for improving academic integrity. Below, you can find tips for using different aspects of Turnitin in teaching. For further information, see Teach with Turnitin.
The integrated Turnitin Similarity Report Settings in Moodle assignment allows you to use a full suite of Moodle marking options and produce a similarity score in the Moodle Assignment interface.
By default, when adding a Moodle assignment, the Turnitin Similarity Report Settings will be enabled. The default configuration will have Turnitin Similarity Report Settings are:
Note: The similarity report is usually generated within a half hour of the first three submissions. After the third submission, the similarity report will be generated in 24 hours.
Understanding a Turnitin report is a skill, like any other. It is important to ensure students are given guidance in how to interpret a similarity report, and where to seek assistance if significant matches are revealed by the software. See the Teach with Turnitin and Supporting your students pages for more information.
Currently, Turnitin cannot check images for plagiarism. For example, if a student has a text based table or diagram saved as an image Turnitin will not be able to read the text in the image. This can also be an issue if the student has copied content from another source and placed it as an image in the document or if they have scanned their document to PDF.
Key message: Inform students to avoid using images with text in them or scan to PDF.
Currently, Turnitin is only linked to the Moodle Assignment. You would have to manually copy and paste each student’s text-based quiz responses into Turnitin to check for similarity. Unfortunately, this is time consuming and may not be ideal for your situation. However, it is possible that Turnitin may be included into Moodle Quiz in the future.
Key message: Currently, Turnitin works for written assignments and not a Moodle Quiz.
Turnitin has the option to store students' papers in a repository to check all papers for similarity. By default, the Turnitin Similarity Report Settings for Moodle Assignment are set to store student papers on submission and the Turnitin Draft Submission is not set to store papers.
If required, the settings for storing in a repository and checking against future uploaded submissions can be altered in the Store Student Papers section, by changing the setting from/to No Repository.
Key message: Use No Repository under the Store Student papers if you do not want them stored in the Turnitin database.