Submit an Assignment to Turnitin in Canvas
- Christine Sandella
Turnitin is an assessment tool that works with Canvas Assignments to estimate the originality of written work. The tool compares submitted assignments with a database of webpages, articles, books, and other uploaded files and generates a Similarity Report. The report highlights sections of the submitted assignment and displays the original source when similarities are found.
To Submit an Assignment
In Canvas Assignments, locate the Turnitin assignment and click Submit Assignment in the top right-hand corner.
Select “Choose a file to upload” or drag and drop a file to upload directly from your computer.
Select the checkbox to Acknowledge the Turnitin statement. This agreement is between you, the individual user (not the university), and Turnitin, LLC, the company that licenses the tool to the university for integration through Canvas. Please read the entire Turnitin EULA carefully.
Creating Draft Assignments
If you plan on having students submit multiple drafts for a paper, the best practice would be to create each draft as a separate assignment.
If you're creating a revision/draft assignment, you should choose not to store the paper in Turnitin's student paper database. This will prevent subsequent submissions from being marked as plagiarized. In the Turnitin Optional Settings, set the Submissions to this assignment will be stored in: field to Do not store the submitted papers.
Using Canvas Rubrics with a Turnitin Assignment
If you're using a Canvas Rubric to grade an assignment turned in through Turnitin, you must create the Canvas Assignment initially as a standard Online Submission. To do so:
Set your assignment’s submission type to Online Submission.
Add your rubric in Canvas.
After the rubric has been added, edit the assignment to change the Submission Type to External Tool, and select Turnitin.
Save your assignment.
Continue setting up the assignment by editing the Turnitin-specific options.
Best Practices for Using Turnitin in Canvas
Turnitin submissions cannot be made through the Canvas Student app.
Canvas does not support mobile browsers, so Turnitin submissions through mobile browsers are not recommended.
You should always add a Due Date for your Turnitin assignment. If you leave the Due Date blank, Turnitin will automatically set the due date to 2 weeks from the creation date or first availability date.
Setting an Available Until date will prevent students from accessing their Originality Reports after this date, so we suggest leaving this date blank.
While it’s possible to submit PowerPoint files through Turnitin, they will be converted into a static PDF. All text and images will remain in their original format but other features, such as presenter notes, embedded video and animations, will be excluded. Presenter notes are not evaluated as part of the Originality Report.