Turnitin

What is Turnitin?

Turnitin is an integration available in Canvas which provides staff with the ability to generate Similarity Reports. Turnitin compares student submissions to billions of pages of content located on the internet and proprietary databases as well as the work of other students whose papers have also been submitted to the system.

What is a Similarity Report?

One of the key benefits of using Turnitin lies in its ability to determine whether work submitted by a student is original, or whether it contains matches to Turnitin’s repository of a wide range of web based materials and other student submissions.

Once a student has submitted a file to an assignment with Turnitin enabled, a Similarity Report will be generated according to the settings chosen when the assignment was set up. The file is matched against the information available in the Turnitin repository to produce a Similarity Score.

It is very important to understand that the Similarity Score does NOT indicate whether plagiarism has taken place. Turnitin provides a useful guide to interpreting the Similarity Report with further detail about matches vs. sources, scoring ranges, and different marking scenarios.

The Similarity Report can be viewed by students if allowed by the instructor, and can be downloaded and used as part of the information gathered in any potential investigation process.

Access and licensing

Turnitin is a tool integrated with, and can only be accessed through, the LMS. Staff create a Canvas assignment and enable Turnitin by selecting the Plagiarism Review option in the assignment settings.

Staff can then access the Similarity Report through the SpeedGrader.

Support and resources

• Turnitin assignments and Similarity Reports (staff guide)
• Turnitin AI Writing Detection Tool advice for staff

Turnitin is supported by Learning Environments. For assistance or support using this tool, please submit a support request.