Canvas @ Yale

Turnitin: Assignment Settings Options

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Once you have turned on Turnitin for your Canvas Assignment, you will have some additional settings that you can select and customize to tailor your Turnitin assignment to your teaching needs.

The AI detection feature of Turnitin is currently disabled. For more information please visit the Poorvu Center page on AI Guidance.

Table of Contents

This article will address the following Turnitin Setting Headers:

  1. Store submissions in
  2. Compare submissions against
  3. Similarity Report
  4. Show report to students

1. Store submissions in

Student submissions to your Turnitin assignments are NEVER shared with Turnitin or other institutions.

This setting determines whether or not copies of your students' papers will be stored in the Yale-only "Institution paper repository."

If you choose to store papers in the Yale-only "Institution paper repository," future student submissions to assignments submitted through Canvas @ Yale can be checked against the papers submitted to your assignment.  

Note:

  • For student papers to be compared against each other, the papers MUST be stored in the Yale Institutional Repository. A similarity report is generated at the time of submission and again after the due date. The final paper is sent to the institutional repository on the due date, and the similarity reports are re-generated once the due date has passed
  • If you are creating an assignment to collect a "draft" version of a student paper, DO NOT store the draft assignment in the Yale-only Institution paper repository. This will help prevent false positives when the student submits their final version of the assignment.

2. Compare submissions against

You can select what types of resources student submissions will be compared against.  You may select as many or as few of these options as you want:

  • Student repository - this is the Turnitin database of student submissions.  This is populated by schools who wish to share their papers more broadly for integrity checking. Yale does not submit student papers to this repository.
  • Institutional repository - this is a Yale-only institutional repository of student submissions. Student papers stored here are from Turnitin assignments Yale faculty have chosen to store in the Yale-only Institution paper repository.
  • Website content - this is any publicly available website.
  • Periodicals, journals and publications - this is Turnitin's own catalog of periodicals, journals and publications they subscribe to for the purposes of checking papers against.

3. Similarity Report

You can select some custom settings for what to include / exclude from being identified by Turnitin as a potential issue. Many of these issues can be adjusted when you are looking at a student submission's originality report. These settings simply impact what is displayed when the report is run by default.

  • Exclude bibliographic materials - Turnitin will identify segments of the student submission that look like a bibliography or citation section.
  • Exclude quote materials - Turnitin will ignore parts of the student submission that are in between double quotation marks.
  • Exclude small sources - You can set a standard or threshold for what is identified as a potential problem. You can choose the number of words or percentage of words.
    • Example: if you set a threshold of 10 words, Turnitin will only highlight segments of the submission where more than 10 consecutive words are the same as another source.
  • Enable grammar checking using ETS® e-rater® technology - This is an automated grammar, usage, mechanics, style and spelling checker.

4. Show report to students

You can opt to provide copies of the Turnitin reports to the students. We highly recommend that students are able to view their own reports "Immediately" so they can use them as a learning tool to understand how to properly cite materials.

For more information, refer to our guide on Creating an assignment with Turnitin.

For more help, please contact [email protected].

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