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Turnitin
As instructors of The Florida State University are starting to prepare for the spring semester, they are keeping in mind the overload of student's that are signing up for their classes. With requirements like the Gordon Rule (the "W" credit that requires students to write a 3,000 word paper for a Liberal Studies credit), written papers are sometimes a major part of a professor's curriculum. The last worry a professor with a large class size needs is extra hours spent in the office comparing papers for plagiarism. Thankfully, the new Turnitin software being introduced to Blackboard 9 this week will help prevent plagiarism in the classroom. This tutorial will lay out the various features of Turnitin, as well as help guide instructors on the steps they should take to set up a Turnitin assignment. This comprehensive software is all a professor needs to stop plagiarism in it's tracks.
Getting Started
Paper Assignment
PeerMark Assignment
Revision Assignment
Retrieving Submitted Assignments
Getting Started
The first step an instructor needs to take is setting up a link to the Turnitin assignment:
- Log onto Campus.fsu.edu.
- Enter your course site where you would like to set up the Turnitin Assignment.
- Click into the Content Area where you want the Turnitin assignment to be posted, e.g., Assignments.
- Make sure your Edit Mode is ON.
- Hover over the Create Assessment button in the tool area. Once the drop-down menu appears, select Turnitin Assignment.
- When the new page loads, you will first be asked to choose between the creation of a Paper Assignment, PeerMark Assignment, or Revision Assignment. We will go into details about the use of each later on in the tutorial.
- Once the type of assignment is selected, the next page will allow you to change some settings of the assignment. They are unique to the type of assignment and will be discussed in detail later.
- Once all settings (including titles, date restrictions, and points possible) have been set, go ahead and submit the assignment.
- The Turnitin assignment will become available to students during the allotted time the instructor has granted.
Paper Assignment, PeerMark Assignment, or Revision Assignment?
Paper Assignment
A Paper Assignment is the most common type of Turnitin assignment used. It is also the foundation assignment you use before setting up a more specific assignment, like PeerMark or Revision. After selecting your choice of the Paper Assignment, you will be brought to a page with various settings options. Below is a list of the Options in greater detail:
- General Options
- Assignment Title: One must be given to every new Assignment. The title can be changed at any time and it will reflect in the title of the Grade Center column.
- Point Value: This is not a required field. If no specific value is typed in, the default value of 0 will be given and a Grade Center column will still be created. If you do enter a specific value for a Paper Assignment, a column reflecting that point value will appear within the Grade Center.
- Dates
- Start Date: Instructors can choose a time and date for when they would like the Paper Assignment to be made available.
- Due Date: Instructors can choose a time and date for when they would like the Paper Assignment to be taken down.
- Post Date: Instructors can choose a time and date for when they would like the grades of a GradeMark paper to be posted. Note: This date does not reflect whether or not the paper's grade will show within the Grade Center. Those settings need to be changed within the actual Grade Center.
- More Options
- More Options
- Enter special instructions: Instructors may use this text box area to type in the specific instructions for the assignment. This text box does recognize basic HTML code.
- Generating Originality Reports for submission: This is simply asking the instructor whether or not they would like an Originality Report to be given to students after they submit a paper.
- Generate Originality Reports for student submission:
- Immediately (first report is final):This will only allow students to submit their papers one time. Upon their first and final submission, they will receive an Originality Report.
- Immediately (can overwrite reports until due date):This will allow students to submit papers more than once. Please make a note that it may take up to 24 hours to generate new report for each resubmitted paper.
- On due date:Students may submit one paper through out the available time frame, but Originality Report will only be generated and given to students on the due date.
- Exclude bibliographic materials from Similarity Index for all papers in this assignment: For most research papers, a Bibliography page is required. You can exclude the Bibliography from the Similarity Check (the percentage number that appears for matching material).
- Exclude quoted materials from Similarity Index for all papers in this assignment: Citations are commonly used in research papers to show you are using another person's thoughts and ideas and are acknowledge the fact that it is not your own. This feature will give you the ability to exclude quoted statements from being checked against similar material.
- Exclude small matches: Small matches may be regular sentences showing common knowledge. This feature allows you to remove these small matches from being checked against the system.
- Allow students to see Originality Reports: If you would like to allow students to see Originality Reports, they will see the same reports the instructor does.
- Allow submissions after the due date: This feature allows you to choose whether or not you would like to allow students to turn in papers past the Assignment Due Date.
- Reveal grades to students only on post date: Again, this feature will have no baring on your courses Grade Center grades. This feature specifically works with GradeMark papers only.
- Submitting papers to the Standard Paper Repository or No Repository: This allows instructors to decided whether or not they want their students submitted papers to enter into the Turnitin Student Paper Database. Once inside this Repository, the papers are used to compare to other papers only. The only people who have availability to this paper are the student who submitted the paper and the instructor of the course.
- Search Options
- Student Paper Repository: Specific to papers compared in student repository database.
- Current and Archived Internet: Specific to papers compared with information on the internet.
- Periodicals, Journals, and Publications: Specific to papers compared to online periodicals, journals, and publications.
- Save & Finish
PeerMark Assignment
Peer reviewing is a great way to distribute all students' work to other individuals in the class. Once you set up a regular Paper Assignment, a PeerMark Assignment may be created. The instructor will set up a generalized questionnaire that students will respond to after reviewing their peer's paper. Follow the steps below to understand the options when setting up a PeerMark Assignment.
- Step 1: Assignment
- Selecting the Assignment: An instructor may have set up multiple Turnitin Paper Assignments. From this drop-down menu, they may select the paper in which they want their students to peer review.
- Point Value: Instructors can give grades on how well a student has reviewed their peer. If they would like, they may check off the box next to "Award full points if review is written"; if attempt is made on reviewing, full points will automatically be rewarded to the student.
- Show more options - Assignment Title and Description: This title will display when a student expands the view of this PeerMark Assignment. The assignment description will appear there as well. This will also be the title of the new column created within the Grade Center for this PeerMark Assignment.
- Allow Students to View Author and Reviewer Names: By default, the author and reviewer of PeerMark Assignments are kept anonymous to one another. If this option is checked off, the author of the paper will be able to see who reviewed their assignment, and the reviewer will be able to author of the paper they are reviewing.
- Allow Students Without a Paper to Review: By default, any student whom has not turned in a paper for the Paper Assignment portion of this PeerMark will not be able to review papers. If this option is selected, those whom have not turned in papers will be able to review another students' paper.
- Assignment Dates: The Start, Due and Post dates will be the same availability as the original Paper Assignment. These may be modified if needed.
- Show more options - View Access - Allow Submitters to Read All Papers after Start Date: If this option is selected, students will be able to read all papers that have been submitted into the original Paper Assignment.
- Show more options - View Access - Allow Students to Read ALL Papers and ALL Reviewers after Post Date: If this option is selected, students will be able to read all papers that have been submitted into the original Paper Assignment as well as all reviews that have been made to the assignments.
- **Please Note** that these papers will be anonymous unless the option "Allow Students to View Author and Reviewer Names" had been selected previously.
- Step 2: Distribution
- Paper(s) automatically distributed by PeerMark: This number is the amount of submitted papers that will be distributed for each student to review. These papers are pulled randomly or by the instructor. (More details on that later on in this tutorial).
- Paper(s) selected by the student: This number is the amount of papers a student may choose from in the list of submitted papers to review.
- Require Self-Review: This feature allows students to review their own paper after they have completed reviews on all other assignments.
- Show More Distribution Options:
- Pair Students: By selecting this button, an instructor is able to decide which student which review another.
- Exclude Students: By selecting this button, an instructor can exclude any particular student from reviewing other papers as well as having their own paper reviewed.
- Step 3: Questions
- Adding Instructions: In this text box, an instructor may add instructions on how they would like the students to review their peer's paper.
- Add Question: By clicking this button, you will be able to set up questions in various fashions for your students to respond to while grading a peer's paper.
- Free Response: An instructor can create their own unique question for students to answer.
- Scale: This specific type of questions allows students to give feedback in scale form. E.g: On a scale of 1 through 5, how strong would you rank this students' closing argument?
- Library - Sample Library: Turnitin has made great default questions that may appeal to many instructors. If you would like to use one of their sample questions, simply click "Add this question". When you are done choosing from the library, please click "Finished adding questions from library" at the bottom of the library bank.
- Save to Library: If you click this option before saving and finishing, the questions you have created or added can then be saved in a private library for you, as the instructor, to come back and use during any other PeerMark Assignment.
- Save & Finish
Revision Assignment
Revision Assignments may be used for the sake of giving students the chance to revise their original assignment without overwriting the original. This is a way to create additional assignments with the same settings at the original Paper Assignment, but new Start, Due, and Post dates.
- Create a New Revision Assignment
- Based on Paper Assignment....: From this drop-down menu the instructor will choose the parent assignment in which they would like the Revision Assignment to be based upon.
- Point Value: The instructor may plug in the amount of points they would like the Revision Assignment to be worth.
- Dates: Instructors may edit the Start, Due and Post dates for the Revision Assignment.
- Generate Originality Reports for student submission:
- Immediately (first report is final):This will only allow students to submit their papers one time. Upon their first and final submission, they will receive an Originality Report.
- Immediately (can overwrite reports until due date):This will allow students to submit papers more than once. Please make a note that it may take up to 24 hours to generate new report for each resubmitted paper.
- On due date:Students may submit one paper through out the available time frame, but Originality Report will only be generated and given to students on the due date.
- Allow students to see Originality Reports: If you would like to allow students to see Originality Reports, they will see the same reports the instructor does.
- Submit.
Retrieving Submitted Assignments
Once the assignments are due and the instructor is ready to review the papers, they can go through different steps to retrieve the documents.
- Through the Grade Center
- Under the column where the Turnitin Assignment is titled, you will see a Green Exclamation icon in a particular students' cell that represents a students attempt. Click on the double-down arrows to the right of the icon and select View Grade Details.
- When the new window opens, under the Edit tab, you will see a button to select View User Activity.
- Under 2. User's Work, you will see an icon in the User's Paper row. Click that icon.
- Turnitin will open a new window displaying the student's paper and a short tutorial on grading and reviewing the students' paper.
- Through the "Turnitin Assignments" Course Tool
- In the Control Panel, you will see a menu item titled Course Tools. Once clicked on, a menu will drop down below it.
- Inside this menu, click on Turnitin Assignments.
- The new window that appears will list all of the Turnitin Assignments that have ever been created within the course site. Click on the assignment in which you would like to retrieve the papers.
- Inside this Turnitin area, you will be directed to the Assignment Inbox. Inside here, you will see a list of students, the title of their papers (if they have not submitted one, it will say --no submission--), an Originality Report percentage, the file link, a column for their grades, the ID number of their paper, and the date it had been submitted.
- By clicking on the title of the student's paper or the file's icon, the paper will appear in a new window. A short tutorial on grading and reviewing will appear as well.
If any Blackboard user has questions about the Turnitin software or any other Blackboard feature, please do not hesitate to contact us by phone at 850-644-8004 or by e-mail at help@campus.fsu.edu.