Canvas: Turnitin Overview

Turnitin is an originality checking and plagiarism prevention service that checks student writing for citation mistakes or inappropriate copying. The Turnitin plugin for Canvas offers many activities in one easy-to-use service. Turnitin is available for assignments. The University doesn't currently support any other options for using Turnitin.

Turnitin cannot be retroactively added to an assignment. If you decide to use Turnitin after students have submitted their assignments, you will need to create a new assignment using the directions below and ask the students to submit their assignments there.

Using Turnitin with an Assignment

From the course menu on the left, click Assignments.
Click the Add assignment button (+) on the upper right.
Enter a Name and Description/Instructions for the assignment.
Enter Points, choose an Assignment Group, and Display Grade as needed.
For Submission Type, select External Tool.
For Enter or find an External Tool URL, click Find.
In Configure External Tool, scroll down and click Turnitin.
Click Select. The Turnitin URL will appear in the URL field.
When finished selecting assignment options, click Save at the bottom. The Turnitin inbox window appears.
Click the Settings gear. The Turnitin settings page opens.
Most of these values are pulled from the Canvas assignment. If there is no Start Date return to the assignment settings and enter an Available from date. Choose Enable PeerMark if you want to use Turnitin peer reviews.
Click Optional settings.
Select the Turnitin options you want to use for generating Similarity Reports. (If you want students to see their similarity report for this assignment, be sure to check that first selection box option.)
At the top of the list is a drop-down menu that includes the choice to allow student re-submissions. The default setting is to allow only one submission and NO re-submissions! Most instructors are wanting the second choice in the menu.
"Generate reports immediately (student can resubmit until due date)."
Click Submit near the bottom of the screen to save the Turnitin settings.