Using Turnitin's Plagiarism Review with a Canvas Assignment

Turnitin Plagiarism Review Setup in Canvas

  1. Create an assignment normally per the instructions here
  2. Change the submission type to Online (See Fig. 1).
  3. Select File Uploads or Text Entry (See Fig. 1). This will add a Plagiarism Review section to the Assignment Editing page.
    Note: If Text Entry is chosen, only text entered directly into the text box will be processed by Turnitin, and that is only if there are 20 or more words. Files attached through the Document Tool in the text editor's menus will not be processed.
  4. In the Plagiarism Review section, select Turnitin (See Fig. 1).
  5. Decide if you wish to show originality reports to students and when. Choices are: Never, After the Due Date, After the Assignment is Graded and Immediately
  6. Finish filling in the other Canvas Assignment settings (see below for recommendations).  
  7. Select Save & Publish.
  8. Share this article with your students so they know where to look for feedback.
    Figure 1: Turnitin assignment settings
    Figure 1: Turnitin assignment settings

Missouri Online recommends the following Turnitin settings

Store Submission in:

This setting is useful in classes where multiple drafts are graded separately.

  • Choose Do not store the submitted papers for draft writing assignments.
  • Choose Institution Paper Repository for final drafts or papers without multiple drafts.

Compare submission against:

These settings control the sources used for similarity checking. Turning any of them off will lessen the value of the report.

  • ✓ Student repository — papers collected by Turnitin globally.
  • ✓ Institutional repository — papers collected in the UM System (no MU content is stored globally)
  • ✓ Website content — open webpages (but not pages behind paywalls).
  • ✓ Periodicals, journals and publications — many journal periodical databases and books.

 Similarity Report:

These are filters used to fine tune reports. With the exception of Translated Matching, you can turn them on or off in individual reports.

  • ✓ Exclude bibliographic materials — prevents matches on bibliographies. Disable if the assignment includes an annotated bibliography or is only a bibliography. 
  • ✓ Exclude quoted materials — assumes that all materials in quotation marks and properly formatted block quotes are not plagiarized.
  • ✓ Exclude small sources — is used to exclude common phrases. Do not set to more than 10 words or 1%. 

Save as default settings:

Check this box if you wish to reuse these settings for future assignments. 

 

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