Turnitin
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Turnitin at Newcastle University
The Turnitin similarity checker is built into Canvas Assignments and searches a huge database of journals, past student work and much of the internet to find strings of text which match student work. When a student submits an assignment, a report showing these matches is produced that only markers can see. This can then be assessed to see if a student has used common phraseology in their work or, as is often the case, they have simply referenced text improperly.
Turnitin and Plagiarism
Turnitin does not "find" plagiarism. It is necessary for someone to look at the report and make a judgement about the information provided by Turnitin. It can be an important check to ensure students are not submitting work previously submitted by another student, but more often is simply a way to identify students who need more help with correct and proper referencing technique.
Please refer to our University Assessment, Feedback and Marking Policy governing the submission of assessments through Turnitin and Canvas.
Feedback Studio
Turnitin Feedback Studio is as an additional platform which allows digital submission of assignments to be marked online. Although this tool has some useful features (e.g. QuickMark comment libraries), we always recommend using the native Canvas assignment tools for a better student experience.
To understand the difference between Turnitin and Canvas assignment types, please see the below comparison table. Please note that the type of assignment you choose will determine which marking tool you will need to use.
|
Feature |
Canvas Assignment |
Turnitin Assignment |
|
Similarity Check |
||
|
Group Assignments |
Yes - Canvas Group Assignments |
No |
|
Online Marking Tools |
Yes - Speedgrader |
Yes - Feedback Studio |
|
Comment libraries |
No |
Yes - QuickMark Guidance |
|
Peer Assessment |
Yes - Peer Review Assignment |
Yes - PeerMark |
|
Multiple File Submission |
Yes - by default students can submit multiple files using file upload. |
No |
|
Submission file size |
5 GB |
|
|
Anonymous Marking |
Yes - Canvas Assignment Set Up (Canvas Orientation) |
Yes - Turnitin Assignment Set Up (Link to be added) |
|
Independently Double Marked |
Yes |
No |
|
Student Preview |
Yes - Canvas Student View |
No |
Turnitin Peermark Assignments
If you are considering having a Peer Assessment as part of you module, you may consider using a digital tool integrated in Canvas to manage the assignment submissions and distribution of papers amongst the students. It is recommended that you use Canvas Peer Review, due to the features available and the user experience. If you wish to use Turnitin PeerMark, please see the following guidance.
Before you can set up a PeerMark assignment you need to create an assignment in Canvas that uses Turnitin as an external tool. With this initial assignment set up, you can then use the Turnitin dashboard to set up and configure the settings for the Peermark assignment.
The links below are to the Turnitin website - we have linked to guides that are relevant when we are using Turnitin as an external tool in Canvas.
Instructors
- Overview – About PeerMark assignments
- Creating a PeerMark assignment
- Guiding reviewers - Creating a scale question Creating a free response question
- Saving questions to a new library
- Manual paper distribution
Visit the Turnitin site for a full list of instructor guides for Peermark and a full list of student guides for Peermark.