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Setting up a Turnitin Assignment on Blackboard

The Turnitin Blackboard building block allows students to submit an assignment from within their Blackboard course directly to the Turnitin plagiarism prevention software. Turnitin then generates an 'Originality Report' which identifies unoriginal submitted material.  

There are three stages to this process:

1. The Instructor sets up a Turnitin assignment in a Blackboard content – this action automatically creates a Gradebook entry for that assignment;
2. The Student uploads his/her work from within Blackboard via the Turnitin assignment – the assignment is submitted to Turnitin in order to create an Originality Report and a submission entry is recorded in the Grade Centre for that student;
3. The Instructor accesses the ' Turnitin Assignments' area to view the assignment Originality Report. 

The Instructor Creates the Turnitin Assignment

1. Go to the Content Area where you would like the Turnitin Assignment to appear (e.g. Assignments).
   
   
2. Make sure Edit Mode is on.
   
   
3. Under Create Assessment, from the drop-down menu, select Turnitin Assignment.
   
   
   
   The first time you do this, you’ll be asked to accept a user agreement.
   
   
4. You will now see the first step in creating a Turnitin Assignment. Select “Paper Assignment” (the default) and click on Next Step.
   
   
5. You now create the new assignment:
   
    
   
   Each assignment must have a title (required) – try to choose something that is obvious to your students.
   
   If you intend to use the Blackboard Grade Centre to return marks, you can include a maximum point value. But this is not required to set up the assignment.
   
   

You should also set the dates for the assignment. The start date is the first date that the assignment becomes available and when students can begin to submit their work. The due date is the deadline for the assignment. The post date is only used if you are marking online and is the date on which students will see their marks. If you don’t use it, just ensure it is later than the due date.

At this point you can create your assignment, but you may want to consider further settings to set up the assignment according to your own preferences or to School policy.

Click on “more options” to continue. 

Option	Actions
Enter special instructions	This is optional, but useful if you want to give specific instructions to the students.
Generate Originality Report for submissions	Select Yes here – it is the default.
Generate Originality Reports for student submissions	The first option means that the student submits the assignment once and the originality report is generated immediately. The second option allows the student to submit versions, each overwriting the previous, until the due date. Each time the assignment is submitted, a new originality report is generated. The last option allows students to submit the assignment once, but no reports are generated until the deadline is reached, at which time all originality reports are generated. This is not recommended for large classes.
Exclude bibliographic materials from Similarity Index for all papers in this assignment	It is recommended that you leave these settings at the default value of No
Exclude quoted materials from Similarity Index for all papers in this assignment
Exclude small matches
Allow students to see Originality Reports	Experience has show that allowing students to access their own Originality Reports can be useful in supporting student learning. However, this has to take place within a carefully managed and supported environment. Please consult Turnitinnuigalway.ie for advice and support.
Allow submissions after the due date	Selecting No means that students cannot upload an assignment after the deadline (and will have to contact you for further details). Selecting Yes means that students can upload a late assignment.
Reveal grades to students only on post date	It is recommended that you select Yes for this option.
Submit papers to	Submitting to the standard paper repository means that issues of collusion (copying within the class or across class groups) are more easily detected.

Search options:	It is recommended that you check all the options for the best results.
Would you like to save these options as your defaults for future assignments?	You can save your settings as default for the next Turnitin assignment you set up.

Once you click on the Submit button, Blackboard will issue a receipt confirming that the Turnitin Assignment has been created. This stage also creates a Grade Centre entry for the Turnitin assignment.

Turnitin Video

The Student Submits an Assignment

1. The Student navigates to the Blackboard course Content Area (e.g. Assignments) to access the Turnitin assignment (e.g. ’Title of my assignment’, created above).
   
   
   
   
2. The Student clicks on the View/Complete link.  This brings the student to the Class Home page.
   
   
   
   Here, the student can see details about the assignment, including submission dates, and can expand further details by clicking on Show details.
   
   The student clicks on the Submit button to go to the Submissions Page.
   
   
3. The Submissions Page is already populated with the student’s name, pulled from the Blackboard enrolment. The student enters a submission title, browses to find a local version of the assignment, and then submits that assignment by clicking on the Upload button.
   
   NOTE: The student enters the title of the assignment, which is not necessarily the name of the file. It is good practice for Instructors to give clear instructions to the students on which title should be used.
   
   NOTE: Turnitin lists acceptable file submission types on this page. The file limit is 20MB.
   
   
4. Turnitin displays a copy of the submitted assignment and offers the choice of completing the assignment submission or returning to the upload page. This allows the student to cancel the submission at this stage, if necessary.
   
   
5. The student will now see a digital receipt, confirming that the assignment has been successfully submitted. The digital receipt also includes the first page of the submission.
   
   A digital receipt will also be emailed to the student. Each student should ensure that a copy of this email is retained as proof that the assignment was submitted. The digital receipt also contains a Paper ID which can be used to trace the assignment, if necessary.
   
   
6. Once the student has submitted the assignment, an entry will be made in the instructor’s Grade Centre. The originality report will become available within minutes of the student’s work being submitted (unless you have selected the option to generate all reports on the due date).

The Instructor Accesses the Turnitin Originality Report

1. Instructors access the Turnitin Originality Reports under the Course Tools menu of the Control Panel.
   
   
   
   
2. Click ’View’ under the name of the assignment (e.g. Title of my Assignment). You will see a list of all student submissions, ordered by the percentage text matching in the originality reports (highest percentage at the top).
   
   The list can be re-ordered by student name by clicking on the word AUTHOR at the top of the column of student names.
   
   The date of the submission is also available. If you have allowed students to submit after the due date, the dates of late assignments will be highlighted in red.
   
   
   
   Completed originality reports are colour coded with a percentage value. Note that a ghosted out report box indicates that the originality report is being generated. Click on the colour coded icon to view the originality report.

Instructor notes for viewing Originality Reports

Turnitin is not a plagiarism detection tool - it is simply a text matching tool. The percentage matching is not a reliable indicator of the level of plagiarism within student work. You must carefully interpret the originality reports before making a judgement about plagiarism.

For further information and help with interpreting originality reports, please contact Turnitinnuigalway.ie.

Please keep in mind that you may be presented with a large number of originality reports and it may not be possible to view each one. Therefore you need to have considered a strategy for dealing with these. Possible strategies are:

• Only examine originality reports with a similarity index above a certain limit (e.g. 25%)
• Only examine the N originality reports with the highest similarity indices, where N is a number pre-determined by you (e.g. 15 out of 100 assignments).
• Select N assignments at random from those submitted and only submit these to Turnitin.

Further information

For further assistance please refer to the CELT website http://www.nuigalway.ie/celt/

or

email either blackboardnuigalway.ie or turnitinnuigalway.ie

Academic staff who are considering using Turnitin with their students are advised to contact turnitinnuigalway.ie, or the appropriate Plagiarism Advisor for the School, for advice and support.

    

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