1.1. Assignment

The MyCourses assignment activity can be linked to Turnitin, allowing the teacher to use Turnitin's plagiarism check, including AI detection, and Turnitin's feedback studio. 
Add an assignment to MyCourses. Add settings under Turnitin advanced options. Read more on the Turnitin tutorial.

The Assignment can be graded using the Turnitin rubric (Grade mark options). The grade can be scaled to the desired assignment grade. Also, group feedback can be used for the assignment.

1.2. Turnintin activity

1.2.1. How to add a Turnitin activity to MyCourses? See the Turnitin tutorial

1.2.2. Some notes and tips:

Number of parts: 

  • Case 1: If drafts or different parts of the same assignment are to be returned, add parts for the different returns and separate return dates for each part,. Work returned for different parts by the same student will not be compared for the originality report (e.g. the draft will not be compared to the final version), even if the option to archive the work in the comparison database is selected in the return box settings and the work of different students is compared.
  • Case 2: If the file size exceeds 40 MB, it must technically be split into sections of less than 40 MB.

Post date, the date when students see their feedback:

Set the date after which the student can see the content feedback from the teacher in Feedback Studio and the grade in the feedback box. If you set the date to be the same as From Feedback, the student will see the feedback given as soon as it is given.

Grade 

  • Only whole numbers can be used in the overall grade. If the scale you are thinking of using contains half points, multiply the scale by two to give whole numbers.
  • Define the overall grade as a proportion, as Turnitin always calculates the overall grade as the sum of the parts, with the maximum grades of the parts first being proportioned to the maximum of the overall grade.
  • Examples:
    • if there is only one part, specify that the maximum overall score = the maximum score for part 1. If you would like to use the pass/fail scale, however, choose points with a maximum of 1, i.e. pass = 1 (fail = 0). Explain the meaning of the scale to students in the assignment.
    • If the assignment has two parts, part 1 of which is a draft (maximum mark = 0) and part 2 of which is a final version (maximum mark = 5), set the maximum overall mark to 5.
    • If the assignment has five parts, each of which accounts for one-fifth of the total grade, and the total grade is also the grade for the course on a scale of 0-5, the grades for the parts of the assignment could be, for example, 10p maximum each, with a maximum total grade of 5.

Draft version: A clear difference between the activities for drafts and versions for grading is needed, because the meaning of a Turnitin similarity report differs depending on the phase of the thesis process:

1.3. View and manage students' submissions

1.4. Assess with Turnitin similarity report

        View and interpret the similarity report in Feedback Studio.

Turnitin's AI tool

The AI tool is automatically available in all Turnitin submission boxes, and all new submissions are subjected to analysis. It is visible to teachers only, and there are no controls in the tool. The restrictions that currently limit the use of this tool are the following:

  • the text is in English,
  • the text length should be between 300 and 15000 words, 
  • the file size must be less than 100 MB, and
  • the accepted file types are .docx, .pdf, .txt, .rtf.


Links to the Turnitin Instructor guides:

See also how students view feedback in Feedback Studio.

1.5. Teacher Submits on Student's Behalf 

Normally, students submit papers themselves into a Turnitin submission box. If a student has submitted the paper some other way, a teacher can submit it in Turnitin on her/his behalf. Note The Code of Academic Integrity: students should be treated equally.

  1. Open the Turnitin submission box in your MyCourses course. If there is no Turnitin assignment activity in the course workspace yet, see instructions on how to add it.
  2. If the student whose paper will be submitted is not listed in the Turnitin submission box, add her/him as a participant to the MyCourses workspace. Go to Course home page > Participants > Enroll users > type the name of the student in the Search field and choose the right student from the search results > check that the Assign role = Student 
  3. Submit the file on the student's behalf: click the icon with an upward arrow (the icon looks like a cloud with an arrow in it) on the student's row in a submission inbox and see how to submit a file in Turnitin tutorial

1.6. Peer review in assignment


A teacher can add a peer reviewing feature to a Turnitin assignment activity.

The teacher can choose, whether pairing is done automatically or manually by students or by the teacher herself/himself.

Students review their peers' papers in PeerMark view where they answer evaluative questions. In addition, they have the possibility to comment freely on the paper (annotation feature).

It is recommended that if the teacher reviews students' papers in addition to peer reviews, she/he does it in Feedback Studio instead of PeerMark view (where the teacher would be as if he/she was "one of the peers"). So, rule of the thumb could be: students evaluate their peers' papers with PeerMark tools and the teacher evaluates students' papers with Feedback Studio tools.

Instruction in the Turnitin tutorial

Minuses: 

  • student interface is not intuitive and requires reading the instructions
  • peers cannot see the similarity reports of other students, but they can review their submissions otherwise.
  • peer assessment grades given to students are not transferred directly to Moodle course assessment

Link to student instructions

1.7. A group assignment in Turnitin activity

Add a Turnitin assignment settings:  

  • Description: guide and inform students with the following advice:
    • A representative of each group submits their group work (all versions). 
    • It is good to submit a draft version in order to get a Turnitin similarity report about it a day before the due date of the final version at the latest. A representative can view and share a similarity report with the rest of the group. The group interprets the report and corrects possible wrong similarities in the draft before submitting the final version.
    • Submissions are copied into the Turnitin student papers repository, so that they are protected against plagiarism by others in the future, and the submissions are compared against each other.
  • Number of parts = 2
  • Assignment Part 1: Name = Draft version, Due Date (= 1 day before is recommended or at the same time as the final version), Assessment available (=the same time as the Start date), Maximum mark = 0 (if the draft is not graded)
  • Assignment Part 2: Name = Final version, Due Date, Assessment available, Maximum mark = 5  (if the scale of the group assignment is 0-5) 
  • Originality Report Options: Store Student Papers = Standard Repository 
  • Common module settings: Group mode = Separate groups (precondition: groups exist in the workspace) 

After the due date of the Final version, open the first submission by clicking its name. Turnitin Feedback Studio opens in a new window. Read a submission and interpret its similarity report at the same time. Give a mark for it on the top bar of Feedback Studio. Handle the next submission by clicking an arrow to the right on the top bar.  

Go back to the submission inbox in MyCourses and give marks to the other group members: 

  • Select a group in Separate groups dropdown menu 
  • Give the mark for the rest of the group members by clicking a pencil icon in Grade column 

A student sees his/her mark both in the assignment inbox and in Grades view in MyCourses.