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Adding a Turnitin Assignment Activity

Adding a Turnitin assignment activity to your course

To add a Turnitin assignment activity to your course page:

With the editing turned on at the course main page, locate the section you wish to add your Turnitin assignment activity then click the Add an activity or resource link and choose Turnitin Assignment. All settings may be expanded by clicking the Expand all link at the top right corner.

Configure the following lesson settings:

General

  • Turnitin Assignment Name
      • Enter the name of your Turnitin assignment here.
  • Summary
      • Provide an optional description of the Turnitin assignment and some instructions here. Tick the Display description on course page box if you want the description to appear on the course page.
  • Submission Type
      • Choose how you want the students to submit their work here. File Upload requires students to upload a file containing their work. Text Submission provides students with a text box where they can type or paste their work. Any Submission Type lets students choose whether to submit a file or text entry.
  • Number of Parts
      • Allows for a multi-part assignment creation. Students may submit one piece of their work on each part. This can be used for submitting one or multiple drafts of an essay before submitting a final one. The Turnitin assignment allows up to 5 parts to be added.
  • Maximum File Size
      • Set the maximum size of the file that students can submit here.
  • Allow submission of any file type?
      • Choose if you want to allow students to submit their work in any file type. The default is No.
  • Display Similarity Report to Students
      • Specify whether students can see the reports that the Turnitin generates. The default is No.
  • Grade Display
      • Set the display mode for the grade here. Grades can be displayed as a fraction or percentage.
  • Auto Refresh Grades/Scores
      • Specify if you want the grades and similarity scores to be refreshed automatically or manually.
  • Set these values as assignment defaults
      • If this box is ticked, the changes you currently made will be set to default for future Turnitin assignments.
Turnitin: General settings

Grade

  • Grade
      • You can select the grading type for this Turnitin assignment here.
  • Grade category
      • If you have categories in your gradebook, select the one you wish the activity to be in here. This setting controls the category in which this activity’s grades are placed in the gradebook.
  • Grade to pass
      • Here you can set a passing grade for the activity. This may relate to Activity completion such that a student will not be able to access a follow up activity until they have passed this activity.
Turnitin: Grade settings

Assignment Parts

The Turnitin assignment is composed of only one part by default. These can be increased in the Number of Parts option in the General settings. If the assignment contains more than one part, each part will have its own form.

  • Name
      • Specify a name for the part.
  • Start Date
      • Specify the start date and time when the Turnitin assignment will be available to students. This defaults to the date and time you created this assignment.
  • Due Date
      • Specify the deadline for the Turnitin assignment. This defaults to 7 days after the date and time you created this assignment.
  • Post Date
      • Specify the date and time at which the grades and feedback are made available for the students to view. This also defaults to 7 days after the date and time you created this assignment.
  • Max Marks
      • Enter the maximum points or marks that can be earned in this part. The default is 100.
Turnitin: Assignment Parts settings

Similarity Report Options

  • Allow Submissions after the Due Date
      • Specify whether you want to allow students to submit their work after the due date has passed.
  • Report Generation Speed
      • Choose the generation speed of the reports here.
  • Store Student Papers
      • Specify what repository you want to store the students’ papers. The papers stored will be used solely for the purpose of detecting possible plagiarism during the grading process this term and in the future.
  • Check against stored student papers
      • Choose whether you want the submissions’ originality to be checked against other student papers stored in the Turnitin repository.
  • Check against internet
      • Choose whether you want the submissions’ originality to be checked against internet content.
  • Check against journals, periodicals and publications
      • Choose whether you want the submissions’ originality to be checked against content from academic publications.
  • Exclude Bibliography
      • Select whether you want to skip over the bibliography section in a student’s submission from originality checking.
  • Exclude Quoted Material
      • Select whether you want to skip over any quotes used in a student’s submission.
  • Exclude Small Matches
      • Enter the minimum number of words or the percentage of the essay that need to match in order to flag a section of a student’s submission.
Turnitin: Similarity Report Options settings

GradeMark Options

Specify whether you want to attach a rubric to this Turnitin assignment. Click the Attach a rubric to this assignment drop-down menu to choose a rubric. If there are no existing rubrics in the drop-down menu or if you want to create a new rubric, click the Launch Rubric Manager link to open the rubric editor.

Turnitin: GradeMark Options settings

Other settings

Choose the ‘Common module’, ‘Restrict access’, ‘Activity Completion’, and ‘Tags’ settings as you would when you set up any resource or activity. These general settings are further discussed in Activities and Resources: General Settings.

In your course page, click the Turnitin assignment activity. Doing so will redirect you to the Turnitin assignment Submission Inbox.

Sample Submission Inbox

There are several settings available in this page that you can configure:

  • Click the Edit icon  to change the title, date, or grade. Doing so will make drop-down menus or a text field appear.
  • Click the Rubric icon to edit existing or set up a new rubric.
  • Click the Launch Quickmark Manager icon to edit existing or set up a new Quickmark feedback.
  • You can bulk download students’ submissions by exporting it. You can export the submissions in Excel, PDF, or their original format. The files will be compressed and added to a zip file along with a manifest file. The manifest file contains the compression results, the list of all files successfully added, and details on any files that failed during compression.
  • Click   to refresh the submission list.
  • Click   to notify students who have yet to submit their work.
  • Click   to open your Turnitin inbox. The number inside the parenthesis indicates the number of unread messages you have in your Turnitin Messages Inbox.
  • You can control how many entries are shown using the Show Entries drop-down menu.
  • You can use the Search bar to easily look for student submissions.
  • Click on a student’s submission title to grade and give it feedback in the Feedback Studio, which will open in a new browser tab.