Turnitin Feedback Studio

LMU will be piloting Turnitin this Fall. September workshops available below.

"I am excited that this resource is available to our students and faculty, and thank the Academic Technology Committee, Faculty Senate, and a summer working group of faculty and staff for their work in vetting multiple software options." – Provost Poon

Turnitin Feedback Studio allows students and faculty to check for improper citation or potential plagiarism by comparing compositions against the world's largest academic database. By enabling educators to promote academic integrity in their classroom, students learn the importance of original writing and attribution, as well as fostering critical thinking skills. Turnitin Feedback Studio's online grading tools also offer instructors with a simple means of leaving quick and effective feedback.

Important Note: Faculty that wish to use Turnitin are required to copy/paste the following statement to be shared with their students either in their syllabus, in an introductory email, and/or in their Brightspace courses:

Loyola Marymount University has partnered with the third-party application Turnitin to help maintain our standards of excellence in academic integrity. Turnitin is a suite of tools that provide instructors with information about the authenticity of submitted work and facilitates the process of grading for instructors. Submitted files are compared against an extensive database of content comprising of over 165 million journal articles, 1 billion student papers, and 62 billion current and archived websites. Turnitin produces a similarity report and a similarity score. A similarity score is the percentage of a document that is similar to content held within the database. A similarity report gives the instructor more information about any potential matches and their sources. Turnitin does not determine if an instance of plagiarism has occurred. Instead, it gives instructors the information they need to determine the authenticity of work as a part of a larger process. All submissions to this course may be checked using Turnitin.

To learn more about Turnitin, attend one of the following workshops or reach out to your Instructional Technologist for more information.

What Is Turnitin

Turnitin Feedback Studio is a tool that combines plagiarism-prevention and grading feedback. Instructors can view originality reports and provide comments while grading assignments. This streamlined user interface offers students a clearer sense of how to improve their assignments. Feedback Studio includes the following features:

• Originality – Pattern recognition algorithms instantly check student papers for potential plagiarism.
• GradeMark – Efficiently evaluate student work with direct marks and saved comments.
• PeerMark – Encourages students to learn from each other and develop critical thinking skills through peer review.

Turnitin Pilot Workshops

ITS hosted Turnitin workshops at the Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) the week of September 9, 2019. Faculty learned how to annotate and critique student work, facilitate peer review, and explore the plagiarism detection toolset to support student assessments.

To learn more about the content of these workshops, contact your Instructional Technologist.

Turnitin Online Tutorials

Online tutorials provided by Turnitin:

• For Instructors
• For Students

Turnitin FAQs Below, you'll find answers to commonly asked questions about Turnitin. If you have additional questions, please reach out to your Instructional Technologist or the ITS Service Desk.

Why Turnitin?

After a thorough review of several platforms that allow instructors to assess written work, provide meaningful feedback, and conduct an originality check to verify proper citation and submission of original work, the Academic Technology Committee and Faculty Senate selected Turnitin.

What is a Similarity Report?

Turnitin does not check for plagiarism. Instead, it checks a student's work against a database. If there are instances in which a student's writing is similar to, or matches against, a source in this database, the submission will be flagged this for review. The database includes billions of web pages (current and archived), a repository of works students have submitted to Turnitin in the past, and a collection of documents comprising thousands of periodicals, journals, and publications.

Similarity Reports provide a summary of matching or highly similar text found in a submitted paper. When a Similarity Report is available for viewing, a similarity score percentage will be made available. It is perfectly natural for an assignment to match against some material in the database. If a student has used quotes and referenced correctly, there will be matches. The similarity score simply highlights any problem areas in a student's paper; you can then use this as an investigative tool, in order to determine if the match is acceptable.

Is Turnitin integrated into Brightspace, LMU's learning management system?

Yes! Turnitin is integrated into Brightspace and can be calibrated from the Assignments menu. When creating a submission folder for students to submit work, instructors will now see a Turnitin sub-menu, where they can activate Turnitin for specific assignment submissions.

1. Click Assessment > Assignments from the Navigation Bar.
2. Click the New Assignment
3. Add a Name for the assignment in the space provided.
4. Set remaining assignment options as desired.
5. Click the Turnitin menu tab at the top of the Edit Assignment panel.
6. Set Turnitin calibration options:
   • Enable GradeMark for this folder: This setting is for grading and inline feedback and is required to create Similarity Reports.
   • Select whether you want grades to automatically sync or manually sync to your grade center.
   • Originality check: This setting activates the similarity comparison and generates reports for faculty and/or students.
   • Display: Check this box if you wish to allow students to view Similarity Reports.
7. Click Save and Close to complete the Assignment creation.

Additional Options:

• Frequency: Decide whether to automatically create a Similarity Report for all submissions or have only specific submissions checked.
• Check submissions against: Choose the resources to which student papers will be compared.
• Index files for Similarity Checking: When checked, any paper submitted to the assignment folder will be added to Turnitin's database of student papers.
• Grammar Check Settings: Turnitin will also check grammar and other categories listed under this setting.

Do I have to use Turnitin?

Use of Turnitin is at the instructor's discretion and is not required. As always, we encourage faculty to select and use academic technologies that support their individual teaching and learning objectives. While Turnitin is a tool that many faculty will adopt as a means of providing student feedback, peer reviews, and originality reports, there is no campus mandate regarding Turnitin, and faculty are encouraged to pursue alternate methods for assessing and critiquing student work if they elect not to use Turnitin.

We are piloting Turnitin in Fall 2019, making it available to all faculty via Brightspace. If you wish to try the platform, we encourage you to attend a brief training session with a member of the Instructional Technology team, or access the resources below to get started.