Overview
Article Sections
Introduction to Turnitin
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Turnitin® is an internet-based plagiarism-prevention service. Instructors and students can submit papers to the website, which is checked against billions of web pages, works previously submitted to Turnitin, and a repository of journals, and other publications. This tool helps instructors engage students in the writing process by providing feedback that can both assess and help improve students' work. No download, registration, or login is needed.
For User Guide see, D2L Brightspace V2 Instructor
- Please note: Students cannot use Turnitin on their own, faculty must create either an integrated assignment submission folder for students to test their scores in or create an assignment in Turnitin for them to test their scores. Students do not have the ability to check their similarity or AI scores on their own.
General Features:
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Integration With D2L - Turnitin is already integrated into Metropolitan State University's learning environment (D2L Brightspace). Instructors do not need to purchase, register, or download anything.
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Ease-of-Use - Enabling Turnitin within D2L is as easy as checking a box within the course in D2L. Once enabled, students submit their assignments just like any other in D2L for review and assessment. See Turnitin Setup within Assignments for more on how to set that up.
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Turnitin offers a generative AI detection service. For more on the features, please see Turnitin's AI Writing Detection Capabilities FAQ.
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Turnitin can be used as a stand alone service. D2L is not needed. Faculty, if you have not integrated Turnitin within an assignment folder and you would still like to use Turnitin, use the Turnitin Account Request to have an account created for you. Please note: If you have used the Turnitin assignment integration within D2L, your account is already created, you can go to www.turnitin.com and work through the "forgot password" to access Turnitin.
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Faculty can use the Cut and Paste feature of Turnitin through the Turnitin interface at Turnitin. For more on this option keep reading.
Notes:
- Turnitin is most effective when used in conjunction with education and instruction around concepts of plagiarism, author voice, source documentation, citation, etc.
- While Turnitin is often called a "plagiarism detection tool," the software does not actually determine if an assignment has been plagiarized. Rather, it generates a Similarity Report to help an instructor find sources that contain text similar to submitted papers. The decision to deem any work plagiarized must be made carefully.
- Any "matches" Turnitin detects need to be considered within the context of the submitted assignment. For example, Turnitin flags content that is properly quoted and cited as unoriginal, since the student did not write the original words.
- Turnitin does NOT detect all possible copied passages, nor can it detect violations of academic integrity. For example, Turnitin cannot determine if a student paid another person to write his or her paper.
- When students submit their works to Turnitin, they retain their copyrights. For further details see, Turnitin Privacy, Security and Copyright Protection.
Turnitin® - Cut and Paste Feature
Turnitin Cut and Paste feature allows faculty to quickly check content similarity that may not otherwise be checked through our Turnitin integration or by file upload.
Login / Account
If you do not have a Turnitin account, please submit a Turnitin Account Request before proceeding.
If you have used the Turnitin integration in D2L Brightspace you do have an account but may need to reset your password.
- Navigate to https://www.turnitin.com
- Select Login in the upper right corner. Your email address will be your first.lastname@metrostate.edu. This is a personal password; it is not attached to MinnState or the Single Sign On solutions they use.
- If you do not know your password, use the Forgotten Password link (The link is actually in the “click here” after Forgotten your password?).
Settings
Once in Turnitin, select your name or User Info from the navigation in the upper right.
Set Default submission type (second dropdown under Account Settings), to Cut & paste upload.
Set Activate quick submit to Yes.
Select the Submit button to save these changes
Submitting for Report
Setup to check
After settings have been set and saved (section directly above), a Quick Submit tab should display on the left side of the screen, select that tab.
Then select the Submit button.
This will bring up the Customize Your Search page to choose what to compare submissions against.
Select Search the internet, Search student papers, Search periodicals, journals, & publications, and Search the Metropolitan State University.
It also asks if you want to submit the paper to the standard paper repository or to no repository. Default is standard paper repository. IT IS STRONGLY SUGGESTED to switch to “no repository.”
Why this is important to understand: When you submit to the standard paper repository, any future submissions to Turnitin will be bounced off that submission. If you are just checking a section of a paper or a draft of a paper, you may drastically increase the score of future checks on the paper. Leaving it on "no repository" allows the paper to be checked with existing repository items but will not store the paper for future checks of similarity.
It is also important to understand what it is not doing. Turnitin is not violating your intellectual property or copyright. For more information on that please the Turnitin Services Privacy Policy page.
Select Submit when your selections are made.
Mechanics of Copying and Pasting
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At this point you should have a Cut & Paste upload form.
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Enter a First Name, Last Name, and Submission title,
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Paste the student’s work in the Cut and paste your paper field
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When you have filled in the form, select the blue Upload button at the bottom of the form.
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Turnitin will process and then ask you to confirm. Select the blue Confirm button at the bottom of the form.
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Finally, select the Go to assignment inbox button.
Copying and Pasting Keyboard shortcuts:
For copy and paste, Windows based operating systems use Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V for copying and pasting respectively. For Apple OS, it is Command + C and Command + V for their copying and pasting (respectively). You can also right click on a highlighted passage and select Copy from the menu, then right click in the Cut and paste your paper field and select Paste.
An example of how to check a passage would be to highlight the passage, on a PC, I would highlight the passage and use Ctrl + C to copy the passage from the student paper. In Turnitin, I would then set the cursor into the Cut and paste your paper portion of the form and press Ctrl + V.
Checking the score
Depending on how large your pasted section is, the similarity score may be waiting for you upon your return to the quick submit tab.
To view the similarity report, select the similarity score and Turnitin will display the standard interactive report, including AI writing detection.
To download a PDF of the similarity report (once you have jumped into the report), select the download icon (an arrow pointing into a basket) in the upper right corner
To download the pasted document, select the file icon. You can choose to download it as a .txt or .pdf file.
Additional Resources
Faculty Resources
D2L Brightspace:
Turnitin®:
Metropolitan State University’s Academic Integrity policy and procedure
Library Resources:
Student Resources: