Turnitin Assignment feedback guide

Turnitin does not tell you if a student has plagiarised, it provides you with information on which you can make a judgement. We often get asked 

what percentage of matched text is acceptable?

There is no answer for this. For example, an annotated bibliography assignment might have a high instance of matched text, because of the use of quotations and use of common phrases. Conversely, an assignment with 0% matched text may be plagiarised from unpublished, offline or purchased from an essay mill. Identifying academic misconduct in a student assignment relies on academic judgement.

Multiple Markers

If you have multiple markers on an assignment which uses similarity reports, agree a consistent approach to filtering your similarity reports. For example, agree that all markers will filter out quotations and bibliographies.

1. Once the assignment submission deadline has passed, select the link to the Turnitin Assignment on the module homepage.
2. This opens the Turnitin Submission Inbox. This page lists the key dates for the assignment and the student submissions.
3. You can use the filters alongside each of the headings to organise your Submission Inbox. Options include to organise by student name, Submission title or Similarity score.

1. Select the blue pencil icon in the Grade column for the student assignment that you want to grade. If the paper does not open, check that you have your pop-ups enabled. If the pop-ups are blocked initially you will need to click on the blue pencil again if accessing via Internet Explorer.

There are two Layers available in Feedback Studio - Grading and Similarity. You can choose to view one Layer or choose to display both the Grading and Similarity Layers simultaneously. The Similarity Layer will highlight any issues with paraphrasing and help you identify where students have cited their references correctly.

The benefit of activating both Layers is that you can provide feedback and comments on the student's academic writing skills. Layers can be switched on and off using  the Layers side panel which is available on the right of the screen.

The Similarity Report toolbar consists of (from top to bottom):

1. Flags for review
2. Match overview
3. All sources
4. Filters and settings
5. Excluded sources

The boxes below explains each of these tools.

Turnitin flags suspect text within a submission.

• Hidden text Text that has been changed to be the same colour as the background colour. This can be an attempt to artificiality inflate the word count of a document or to throw off similarity detection by enclosing text in hidden quotation marks.
• Replaced characters Letters have been swapped for other letters or characters, for example a zero for the letter O. Turnitin automatically swaps the replaced characters for the correct one when generating the Similarity Report.

To view the flagged text, select the flag icon to view the text within the submission and why it was flagged.

The Match Overview gives a breakdown of all the matches found in the paper.

To view the Match Overview, select the similarity score in the Similarity Report menu. It will now be activated and highlight all matches on the paper.

A list of matches and the corresponding percentage of the submission that matches to that source is displayed. Matches are ordered by highest similarity down to the lowest.

Select the match to view the instances where it matches the submission.

Select each match to see how many times the source has been found in the submission.

Use the left and right arrows to navigate to each match within the submission.

Select the arrow next to the percentage to view a list of all the sources where Turnitin has found a match, including papers submitting to Turnitin's repository.

The All Sources panel displays all the sources of matches found in greater detail than the Match Overview.

In this example, the coversheet of the assignment has matched to multiple previous assignments submitted to internal Moodle modules which used the same coversheet.

Select the source you want to exclude and then select Exclude Sources from the bottom of the panel.

A checkbox will appear next to each source. Select the boxes next to individual papers, or select the box next to the source to exclude all submissions to that source.

Select Exclude Sources.

The similarity percentage will update to reflect the new score.

Request to view coursework submitted to other institutions

If a submission shows a match to a paper submitted to an external institution, you can request to see the original submission.

Select the name of the institution at the top of the match to make the request. Then select the Send a request to view this paper button.

Other institutions have their own policies for dealing with requests, and so your request may not be granted.

Request to view coursework submitted internally

From 2 September 2024, you are able to view student paper sources that were submitted to an internal assignment even if you are not enrolled on the module where the matched paper was submitted. You will no longer need to request to view the paper. 

1. Select the highlighted text in the student assignment that you are marking to view the match.
2. If the match is to a student paper submitted internally, select the reading pane icon on the top right of the match in the student paper. This will open up the matching paper in the panel on the right with the matched text highlighted.

   

3. Scroll through the paper in the Full Source Text panel on the right to find all instances of matched text between the student submission and the assignment previously submitted to another assignment. You can quickly navigate using the match arrows at the top of the panel. 

    

Can I download the matched assignment?

1. From the Full Source Text panel, select the link Submitted to City University at the top of the panel. A new tab opens.
2. You can download the matched assignment in the original format or as PDF. Please ensure you save the file securely to City St George's OneDrive and delete from your downloads folder.

Why has the setting to allow lecturers to view matched papers submitted internally being enabled?

This setting has been enabled so that lecturers can quickly get access to the evidence that they need for academic misconduct panels. With the paper view request process, it was not always possible to find a module leader to release the paper or papers were submitted to turnitinuk.com so there was no way of asking for these to be released.

Can I find out what module/assignment the matched paper was submitted to?

You cannot find out which module the matched paper was submitted to unless this information is included on the coversheet or you are a Turnitin Tutor on the assignment to which the paper was originally submitted. The Digital Education team also do not have access to the module information.

How can I exclude confidential submissions from future matches?

Follow the set up in the confidential Turnitin Assignment so that assignment submissions are not stored in the Turnitin Repository.

You can add filters to exclude quotations, the bibliography and small matches.

1. Select the filter icon
2. Exclude Quotes This option excludes any text contained within quotation marks. NB. Turnitin does not disregard any matches within single quotations marks or within an indented block of text when the original file is a .doc or .docx.
3. Exclude Bibliography This option excludes bibliographies. Turnitin recognises the start and end of a bibliography based on keywords. See the link below for more details.
4. Exclude sources that are less than: This option allows you to exclude small matches, for example to exclude common phrases.

• Words - select how many words to exclude from the report
• Percentage - select a percentage of the whole submission to exclude from the report

5. Optional settings You also have the option to use multicoloured highlighting. Each match will be highlighted in a different colour.
6. When you have added or removed your filters, select Apply Changes to see how this affects the overall percentage.

If you have excluded any sources from the similarity report, you can view them here.

To restore excluded sources, select the source and then select Restore.

To restore all excluded sources, select Restore All.