Accessing and understanding Turnitin Originality Reports

You can upload to Turnitin on behalf of students. This must be done one student at a time. It is not possible to upload in bulk or anonymously. 

PebblePad assessments can make use of the Turnitin originality checking service to produce reports similar to those obtained through Blackboard. This article provides guidance on setting up and using this feature.

Turnitin is an online text-matching service that is integrated with Blackboard and can generate automatic feedback on student writing and referencing. It can be used as a tool to teach students about good referencing and to discourage plagiarism, and therefore many tutors use it formatively to enable students to check drafts of their work before they submit a final version for marking. See best practice guidelines for formative use of Turnitin for more information.

You can set up a Turnitin Assignment which allows students to see their own Originality Reports by completing the following steps to create a submission point:

Turnitin generates an similarity report based on how much text matches sources in Turnitin's database.

Depending on when Similarity Reports have been set to be generated (i.e. as soon as they submit their work to a Turnitin Assignment, or only on the due date for the Turnitin Assignment), students will be be able to see their own report and use them as a source of feedback to improve their academic writing and referencing. However, they often need guidance from tutors in understanding what the reports mean and how they can be used to improve their original work.

Although Turnitin is helpful for providing a summary of matching or highly similar text found in a submitted paper, it does not help with allegations of contract cheating, where work is original but created by someone other than the student who has submitted it. 

The main value of Turnitin (or other text-matching software) is its use as a formative educational tool to help raise awareness and educate students about plagiarism, and to provide a source of formative feedback on their writing. The following lists provide guidance for using Turnitin formatively with students and the benefits of using such an approach.

Best practice for using Turnitin formatively with students:

The main value of Turnitin (or other text-matching software) is its use as a formative educational tool to help raise awareness and educate students about plagiarism, and to provide a source of formative feedback on their writing. However, depending on the nature of the module assessment, students' work may be submitted to the service to support the marking process, in line with the University's Academic Conduct Regulation.