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Office of Information Technology (OIT) > Moodle > Instructor Guides > Anti-plagiarism (Turnitin)

Originality Checker (Turnitin)

Turnitin is an originality checker and grading software suite available to University of Minnesota instructors who have a Moodle 2 site. The Turnitin Assignment tool allows students to submit papers themselves and instructors to submit papers without student involvement.

Student work submitted to the Turnitin Assignment tool can be checked against various databases:

After student work is checked, Turnitin produces a report that shows matching sequences of words in the submitted assignment, any matching sources, and the percentage of matching words.

This service offering is part of our Academic Technology Tools services.

Add a Turnitin Assignment to Moodle

  1. Click the Turn Editing on button on the course homepage.
  2. Click on the Add an activity... drop down menu and select Turnitin Assignment. The Adding a new Turnitin Assignment will appear.
  3. Enter a title for the assignment in the Assignment name field and enter a description of the assignment.
  4. Select the Submission Type for the assignment.
  5. To change the assignment dates click on the pencil icon to the right of the dates for the assignment.
  6. Use the Start Date and Due Date pull down menus to select the new dates for the assignment. The Start Date will by default be set to the date and time the assignment was created. The Due Date will by default be set to a week after the Start Date.
  7. Use the Post Date drop down menus to select the post date. Once all the dates have been set click on the check mark icon. The post date is the date when marks/grades will be released to students

Submit Student Papers

  1. Click the Turn Editing on button on the course homepage.
  2. Click the Turnitin assignment link for which you want to submit a paper.
  3. In the Turnitin assignment Summary screen, click the Submit Paper tab.
  4. Select a student’s name from the drop-down menu.
  5. Enter a title for the submission on the Submission Title text box.
  6. Click Choose File to browse for the file you want to upload.
  7. Click Add Submission. The Submission Inbox tab opens.
  8. Click Refresh Submissions. The submitted paper appears in the Student Submission listing.

View Originality Reports

  1. Click on the Turnitin assignment name.
  2. Click on the Submission Inbox tab

  3. Click on the Originality Report icon to the right of the student's name to open up the Originality Report for that paper .

While an Originality Report is generating, the Originality Report icon will appear in gray. While Originality Reports for a student's initial submission to an assignment will generate within ten minutes of the submission, Originality Reports for resubmissions to an assignment can take up to 24 hours to generate.

If the instructor has allowed students to view Originality Reports for their submissions, students will be able to access their Originality reports in their My Submissions tab for the Turnitin assignment.

Warning: These indices do not reflect Turnitin's assessment of whether a paper has or has not been plagiarized. Originality Reports are simply a tool to help an instructor find sources that contain text similar to submitted papers. The decision to deem any work plagiarized must be made carefully, and only after in depth examination of both the submitted paper and suspect sources in accordance with the standards of the class and institution where the paper was submitted.