Turnitin

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Turnitin Flex Workshop Recordings & Updates


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.

The following Dos and Don’ts are from a Turnitin presentation about best practices.

Dos:

  • Set clear expectations regarding academic integrity
  • Help students understand the relationship and differences between similarity and plagiarism
  • Use the Similarity Score formatively
  • Ensure that students understand the Similarity Score and what it means about their writing

Don’ts:

  • Use the Similarity Score as a “gotcha” or punitive measure
  • Conflate similarity and plagiarism
  • Use the Similarity Score exclusively as a summative measure 
  • Implement the use of the Similarity Score without ensuring that students understand what it means and how they can use it to improve their writing

Turnitin is available in Canvas.  MiraCosta College has an unlimited license to Turnitin, GradeMark, and Peer Review for all courses.

Turnitin integration with Canvas

The links below provide more details about how to use each method.

LTI vs Plagiarism Framework – Which integration is right for you?

  • Turnitin LTI 1.3 for Canvas
    • Uses a direct link from the Canvas’s “Assignment page” settings menu.
    • Users clearly notice that they have gone from Canvas into Turnitin.
    • Student roster synchronization
    • Simplified assignment set-up & copy tool.
    • For faculty who like to use Turnitin’s grading and feedback tools along with its plagiarism detection.
  • Turnitin Plagiarism Framework for Canvas
    • Offers a tighter integration between Turnitin and Canvas within Canvas Assignments.
    • The Turnitin experience still “feels” like Canvas.
    • For faculty who like to use the Canvas grading tools along with Turnitin’s plagiarism checking capabilities.

Turnitin General Support and Help

Professional development opportunities are available from Turnitin:

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:

Resources on AI and Turnitin

Plagiarism Prevention & Student Intellectual Property

MiraCosta faculty using Turnitin for plagiarism prevention should be aware of these key points from MiraCosta’s administrative procedure on intellectual property:

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.