Turnitin is a cloud-based service integrated within Canvas for originality checking, online grading, and peer review that can save instructors time and support feedback to students. Turnitin can support the submission, tracking, plagiarism prevention, and evaluation of student work online. Turnitin also includes an AI writing detection tool which has been available at MiraCosta since spring of 2023.
It’s a good practice to use Turnitin to support student learning about academic writing through a formative process, and not as a policing tool. You can set up Turnitin to allow students to see their similarity scores for themselves during the drafting process; however, the AI detection tool is available only to faculty.
Turnitin errors are often due to issues with the Turnitin service and are not something MiraCosta controls. Turnitin has support services for your questions or problems.
Sample paper to test the AI tool from Turnitin – an AI-generated paper that you might use to test the AI tool in Turnitin. Note that Turnitin can return high scores for detected AI even for non-AI generated papers (false positives).
The following papers advise serious caution with the use of AI detection:
When an instructor makes use of software that incorporates student works into its database, as is common with plagiarism-prevention software, the use should be governed by the following guidelines:
– Student work may not be submitted to plagiarism-prevention software or other software that incorporates a student’s work into its database without the student’s knowledge. – Students should be informed in the syllabus that such software is used in the course and that the software incorporates any student work submitted into its database. – Students should be given alternatives, such as requiring students who do not submit their work to plagiarism-prevention software, to document their references using an annotated bibliography and/or photocopies of the first page of all sources used and/or to write a brief paper describing their research methodologies.
LabArchives is an electronic lab notebook that can help instructors and learners better manage, share, and publish research notes, data, protocols, and related documents.
MiraCosta College’s institutional license gives all MiraCosta College students, staff, and faculty free access to LabArchives. Log on with your MCC login and password to access LabArchives. Faculty can also integrate Lab Archives with Canvas.
Features of LabArchives
Share and collaborate on notebooks by multiple parties.
Store multiple file types, including images, GraphPad Prism, FlowJo, PDFs, and Office documents
Create templates, forms, and custom applications for routine laboratory tasks.
Instructors can provide feedback on students’ notebooks.
Storage of every version of every file, recording the date, time, and username.
Adjust-All is a simple Canvas tool that enables you to change all course item due dates and announcement publication dates in one place, rather than having to access each item individually.
The first time you use Adjust-All, you’ll need to click the blue Authorize button – it’s fine 😊
This tool is only available to faculty – students won’t see it in your course menu.
There are a few other things you can do with Adjust-All. Click the gear icon at top right to see options for bulk adjustments to dates or publishing status.
Respondus is a quiz authoring and management tool that allows instructors to create exams, quizzes, and surveys offline that can then be published directly to Canvas. Test questions can be uploaded from a text file, rich text file, or Word document. Existing Canvas tests can be downloaded, saved, and printed. In the latest release of Respondus, you can now publish directly to “New Quizzes” within a Canvas course.
MiraCosta College has a campus-wide license for the Respondus software allowing installation of the software on any on campus computer or faculty personal computer. Respondus is a Windows application. For MAC users Respondus is available via VMWare.
Download Respondus – You will need your MiraCosta College login and password to obtain the current year installation password.
MiraCosta’s Canvas system may be accessed at miracosta.instructure.com – faculty and students log in with their SURF username and password. You’ll also find a link to log into Canvas at the top right hand side of the campus website www.miracosta.edu. See below for many great resources to help you learn to use Canvas, and earn MiraCosta Flex credit along the way.
Top Canvas Resources for Faculty
Canvas Instructor Guides – comprehensive step-by-step tutorials on all Canvas features for instructors.
Canvs Student Guides – comprehensive step-by-step tutorials on all Canvas features for your students.
MiraCosta Canvas tutorials – locally created guides on key Canvas features and how Canvas works with SURF
24-7 Canvas hotline for faculty: 1-833-345-2890
Do you think Canvas might be down or experiencing errors? Check the Canvas Status website.
Canvas Flex Workshop Recordings
For accessibility-specific workshops, please see “Canvas Accessibility Workshops” section below..
What does a Canvas class look like? Well, there are a number of approaches to designing a class in Canvas. Check out some short videos by MiraCosta faculty. And then go behind the scenes – in Canvas – to learn more!
Canvas Student Orientation – this open Canvas course can also be a good way for faculty to introduce themselves to Canvas from the student perspective. Faculty are also welcome to link directly to this resource within their own Canvas classes to help their students learn key features of Canvas.
Flex Credit is available for time spent engaging with any of the above resources. This is a pre-approved activity (in the Other Activities category Conferences and Presentations).
And often starting with a Google search is the quickest path to finding something really useful!
Again, Flex Credit is available for time spent engaging with any of the above resources.
Canvas Faculty and Student Support
MiraCosta’s Online Education department provides support for faculty using Canvas, and MiraCosta’s ITS Help Desk provides support for students in Canvas classes.
When local support is unavailable, including evenings and weekends, Canvas provides technical support for faculty and students at the following phone numbers.
Faculty: 1-833-345-2890 Students: 1-877-884-1673
Canvas has excellent “Getting Started” guides for faculty and for students. See above for more faculty training resources.
Faculty and students can also create a helpdesk ticket for support from within Canvas by clicking on the Tech Help icon and then selecting Report a Problem.
Many other LTI tools (“Apps”) are available – some have been made available institutionally and you can see those in the Navigation tab of Course Settings; others can be enabled by faculty individually; you can see those in the Apps tab of Course Settings. See the Canvas Guide on the App Center to learn more.
Workarounds
Canvas does not have a dedicated journaling tool. It is possible to use Canvas tools to provide students with a place to submit their writings or reflections at various points throughout the semester. This is done by creating a series of assignments within the same assignment group.
MiraCosta College took on a comprehensive Course Management System evaluation in spring 2016 that led to the selection of Canvas. The college then transitioned away from Blackboard and Moodle and to Canvas during 2016-17 and 2017-18. Starting in summer 2018, Canvas is the sole supported course management system for MiraCosta classes.
One of MiraCosta’s early Canvas adopters, music professor Christy Coobatis, says this about using Canvas in spring 2017:
Has been an extremely successful semester because of it!
Both students and I loved the program.
I have more and clearer communication than ever before!
Another, Adult High School professor Julie Cord, says:
I am in LOVE with Canvas and I truly feel it has helped support my students and my teaching already in very substantial ways.
