Turnitin

Turnitin is integrated with Canvas assignments allowing you to check your students’ work for originality. Turnitin generates an Originality Report that shows matches from the internet, journals, previous JHU student submissions, and student papers from around the world.

Important 

  • Review the Report: Turnitin provides a score on originality, but it is important to review the full report before drawing any conclusions on whether student work was plagiarized.
  • Drafts and Final Submissions: If an assignment in Canvas has drafts and final submissions and all of those assignments are checked by Turnitin, care must be taken to avoid “self-matching”. If the drafts are stored in the Turnitin repository, then subsequent drafts and the final submission may show very high percentage matches to the original submission. This can be avoided by changing the draft assignments setting “Submit papers to:” to the option of “no repository.”

What Canvas Roles Work with This Tool?

Possible Course RolesAccess Level
TeacherCan add to an assignment, can see similarity reports, and submit assignments in Student View
StudentCan submit an assignment, can view similarity report if allowed by the Teacher or Leader
Waitlisted StudentCan submit an assignment, can view similarity report if allowed by the Teacher or Leader
TACan add to an assignment, can see similarity reports, and submit assignments in Student View
GraderCan add to an assignment, can see similarity reports, and submit assignments in Student View
DesignerCan add to an assignment; however, cannot see similarity reports
ObserverNo access since they cannot submit assignments or view the grade book
Guest FacilitatorNo access since they cannot submit assignments or view the grade book
Leaders
(Community Sites Only)
Can add to an assignment, can see similarity reports, and submit assignments in Student View
A review of which Canvas roles work with Turnitin and their level of access.

How to use 

Best Practices 

  • Let students know that Turnitin will be used to set expectations and build trust.
  • Recognize that Turnitin can show false positives (meaning it looks like a lot of text was plagiarized but it was not). It is important to review the report, not just the originality percentage. Sometimes if students submitted a draft earlier in the term (and it was added to the repository) or if they submitted it on their own to Turnitin, it might show as plagiarized.

Accessibility

Turnitin Accessibility Compliance