Turnitin is an online resource that assists students on how to avoid plagiarism and academic dishonesty through the use of Turnitin.
- Turnitin monitors citations and originality in student work
- Turnitin intergrates with our LMS (Learning Management System) Canvas
Note: At SVSU, Turnitin can only be used within Canvas, by student-submitted papers through assignments. The Turnitin website cannot be used directly for generating reports. When you are setting up your assignments, you can select Turnitin as your Plagiarism Review tool.
In this article:
SVSU Support
Conor Shaw-Draves
Brown Hall 232
989-964-2542
cjdraves@svsu.edu
Creating a Turnitin Assignment in Canvas
Setting up an assignment for Turnitin is something that instructors can set for an Assignment on there own.
- In your Canvas course site, click "Assignments" in the left course navigation menu.
- Click the "+ Assignment" button, top right.
- In the Assignment settings, type in the assignment name, instructions, points, etc. as you normally would for an assignment such as:
- Assignment name
- Assignment description
- Points
- In the Submission Type section, click the drop-down menu and choose “Online” then check the box “File Uploads."
- In the “Plagiarism Review” section, click the drop-down menu; select “Turnitin.”
Note: The Plagiarism Review option won’t show unless you have chosen File upload as your submission type.
Next, adjust your Turnitin Settings (sample image below); we recommend:
Compare submissions against:
- Ensure all four boxes under the Compare submissions against section are checked.
- ✓ Student repository — papers collected by Turnitin globally.
- ✓ Website content — checks webpages
- ✓ Periodicals, journals and publications — checks many journal periodical databases and books.
Similarity Report:
- Under "Similarity Report" section:
- Select Exclude bibliographic materials — prevents matches on bibliographies.
Disable if the assignment includes an annotated bibliography or is only a bibliography.
- Select Exclude quoted materials — assumes that all materials in quotation marks and properly formatted block quotes are not plagiarized.
- Select Exclude small sources — is used to exclude common phrases. Do not set to more than 10 words or 1%.
The recommendation is to Set source exclusion threshold text box to the minimum of 4 words with maximum of 10.
Excluding small matches prevents common phrases or word pairings from appearing in the Originality Report. The filters are used to fine tune reports. With the exception of Translated Matching, you can turn them on or off in individual reports.
- Select Save as default settings — Check this box if you wish to reuse these settings for future assignments.
- In the Show report to students section, choose how you would like to show the originality report to your students.
Turnitin Settings
If needed, see official help article from Turnitin: Creating an assignment
- Set the assignment dates and then click the “Save & Publish” button to create the Turnitin assignment.
How Students Submit an Assignment with Turnitin?
Open the Assignment, you will see Attempt 1 in the upper-left of your screen along with the Assignment expectations. If there is a Rubric you will also see it attached to the Assignment.
- You can drag a file or upload, once uploaded you will see it attached.
- Make sure that you check the box (bottom-left of your screen) "I agree to the tool's End-User License Agreement This assignment submission is my own, original work otherwise you will not be able to submit your file."
- To the bottom-right, click Submit Assignment.
- After submission you will see a preview of it displayed in the page.
NOTE: To submit the Assignment, you may need to scroll the page to see all the steps in the image below.
Turnitin Official Support