Use Turnitin with Assignments

What is Turnitin?

Turnitin is a third-party integration that can compare student submissions with other texts in their database and detect similarities between them.

It is not strictly a plagiarism detector and relies highly on instructors to review similarity reports — similarity does not equal plagiarism.

The Turnitin integration is available through the Assignments tool in Brightspace.

Turnitin and AI Detection at UArizona

Turnitin's AI detection feature has been disabled at UArizona for several reasons:

• TurnItIn and other AI detectors aren’t reliably accurate. These tools may incorrectly identify human writing as AI writing or AI writing as human writing. Also, detection tools can be easily fooled.
• Use of AI detectors has a disproportionately negative impact on non-native English speakers. TurnItIn and other detector tools consistently misidentify writing by non-native speakers (opens in new tab) as generated by AI.

See information about Teaching, Learning, and Artificial IntelIigence (opens in new tab). For questions related to AI and how to approach AI in your teaching, please contact Gretchen Gibbs, Professor of Practice, at ggibbs@arizona.edu.

Enable the Turnitin Similarity Report on an Assignment

Step 1

While setting up or editing an Assignment, expand the Evaluation & Feedback area.

Step 2

Select Manage Turnitin.

Step 3

Mark the checkbox to Enable Similarity Report for this folder.

Step 4

Leave the radio button for Automatic similarity checking on all submissions selected to allow Turnitin to run reports automatically upon submission.

Step 5

Select Save.

Back to Top

Enable Turnitin Online Grading

Step 1

While setting up or editing an Assignment, expand the Evaluation & Feedback area.

Step 2

Select Manage Turnitin.

Step 3

Mark the checkbox to Enable Online Grading for this folder.

Step 4

Select an option for syncing grades from Turnitin's online grading tool suite:

• Automatically sync grades as Draft in Brightspace: This will move grades entered and saved in Turnitin's grading tool suite automatically to the associated Assignment and attached grade item (if there is one) in Brightspace.
• Manually sync grades as Draft in Brightspace: This requires the instructor to manually publish grades in Turnitin's grading tool suite, which will then forward to Brightspace.

Step 5 (Optional)

Select the More Options button to view and select additional options for grading made available through Turnitin.

Step 6

Select Save.

View Turnitin Similarity Reports

Step 1

Navigate to Assignments on the Navbar.

Step 2

Select the Actions Menu icon next to an assignment for which Turnitin has been enabled (or select the hyperlink of the assignment name and proceed to Step 4).

Step 3

Select View Submissions.

Step 4

In the Turnitin Similarity Report column, select the box with a percentage in it to read a student's Similarity Report.

Step 5

In the Feedback Studio that opens, select the appropriate icons to access the following features:

• Flags for Review: If the number next to the flag icon is greater than zero, select the icon to review the flagged elements.
• Match Overview: Select the percent similarity number to view highlighted words, arranged by number and color to indicate source of similarity. Click on a highlighted word for details on the source and context.
• All Sources: Select the icon beneath the Match Overview to access a list of all the internet sources where similarity was noted in the document.
• Filters and Settings: Select the filter icon to adjust filters and settings as desired.

See the example of the Match Overview below:

For questions related to interpreting Similarity Reports, please contact Gretchen Gibbs, Professor of Practice, at ggibbs@arizona.edu.

Back to Top