Using Turnitin with Moodle

This page provides instructions for instructors on how to:

  • Setup and configure a Turnitin assignment
  • Submit an assessment on behalf of a student
  • Enable tutors to grade Turnitin assignments

Create a Turnitin Assignment in Moodle

  1. On the course home page of the relevant course, click Turn editing on Turn editing On button.
  2. In the relevant section, click Add an activity or resource, and in the pop-up list select Turnitin Assignment 2 and click Add.
  3. On the Adding a new Turnitin Assignment page, complete the fields using the following table as a guide:

Field

Action

General
Turnitin Assignment Name Enter a suitable name, as simple as possible. This name should contain no more than 40 characters.
Summary

Enter details of the assessment item—copy and paste assessment details from your course outline.

A link to the marking criteria is also useful here. Also, remind your students what file types they are expected to upload in. Turnitin will only accept common file types such as doc, docx, rtf, txt, pdf, htm or HTML and also others such as hwp, odt, wpd, ps or PowerPoint and Excel if they contain computer readable text.

It is generally recommended to use the common file types and others such as Excel files are best saved as PDFs first before uploading.

If you copy and paste from Word, remember to use the Paste from Word function .
Submission Type Select File Upload, direct Text Submission, or either (Any Submission Type).
Number of Parts

Select a number of parts.

If you want members of a group to submit one part of the assignment each (max 5 parts). They will not be able to see each other's work. (If you want them to be able to, you might want to use the Workshop tool for this assignment.)
Maximum File Size The default, 100MB, is large enough to handle complex files.
Display Originality Reports to Students For a formative, corrective approach to grading, select Yes. This will allow the students to view the Turnitin originality report for their own assignment.

Grade
Grade

Keep marking schemes simple. If the assignment is worth 20% of the course's final mark, select 20. An item with a maximum value of 20 marks will be created in the Moodle Gradebook.

Note: You cannot enter decimal marks in Turnitin.
Grade category Select the Gradebook category in which you want this assignment to display.
Start Date When the assignment will be available for submissions.
Due Date Deadline for submissions.
Post Date

The date on which marks are released to students.

  • If you don't want students to view their marks as you award them, set the Post Date for some time after you anticipate completing marking. Once you've completed marking, return and change the post date to the desired day.
  • If you will be using GradeMark to mark the assignment, you must set a post date.
  • If you want students to be able to re-upload submissions, set the Post Date after the Due Date so that the necessary buttons display until the due date.

Originality Report Options
Allow Submissions after the Due Date Yes is recommended. Items submitted after the due date and time will be marked as late.
Report Generation Speed

To allow students to review their submission before submitting it, or to allow them to re-submit before the due date, select either:

  • Generate reports immediately, reports can be over-written until the due date
  • Generate reports on due date.

If you select Generate reports immediately, first report is final, students will receive one report as soon as they submit. They will not be able to re-submit.

If you allow students to re-submit and generate a new report each time, note that only the first three originality reports are produced immediately. Subsequent reports will be generated 24 hours after the submission. This prevents students from "gaming" the system by re-submitting every couple of minutes with small changes.
Store Student Papers Select Standard Repository.
Check against stored student papers
Check against Internet
Check against journals, periodicals and publications
Check against Institutional Repository		 Yes is suggested for all these choices.
Exclude Bibliography
Exclude Quoted Material

It is recommended that you retain the default setting of No for both these fields. This allows markers to check the accuracy of quotations and the reference list. Including these items in Originality Reports should keep the percentage match at an acceptable level.

However, keep in mind that the percentage match is only an indicator. Turnitin cannot detect plagiarism; it can only deliver a figure on how much a student's work matches other work. The marker must view and interpret the report, not take the raw percentage match as an indicator of originality.

Both of these settings can be turned on/off if required while reviewing an individual assignment.
Exclude Small Matches 3 to 5 Words is recommended, to exclude accidental language matching—or you can enter a suitable figure and select Percent.

GradeMark Options
Attach a rubric to this assignment

Launch Rubric Manager to use a rubric for marking.

See the GradeMark page for more information about using a Rubric with Turnitin.

Common Module Settings
Group mode

Turnitiin does not support group assignments as each submission can only be attributed to a single student and cannot be attributed to a group configured in Moodle.

Group mode is provided as a way of filtering submissions based on groups to facilitate marking by multiple tutors.

  • No Groups does not allow filtering of submissions.
  • Separate Groups allow filtering based on groups. Recommended over Visible Groups as students will not be able to see the names of groups they do not belong to. See below for more information.
  1. Make appropriate selections in the remaining sections Click the question-mark button for assistance.
  2. Click Save and display.

Submitting an Assignment as an Instructor on Behalf of a Student

  1. On the course home page, open the relevant Turnitin assignment.
  2. In the Submission Inbox,  select the upload assignment button Upload Assignment butotn next to the relevant student’s name.
  3. Input:
    1. Submission Type
    2. Submission Title
    3. File to Submit (if using a File Upload submission type)
  4. Click Add Submission
  5. Digital Receipt for the submission will be displayed. Click Close in the top right to return to the Submission Inbox.

Facilitating Different Tutors to Mark Turnitin Assignments

Turnitin does not have functionality built in for allocating submissions to different tutors for marking however, groups can be used to filter students during the marking process.

  1. Create groups of students whose work you want each tutor to mark.
  2. When you create the Turnitin assignment or edit the settings, under Common Module Settings set the Group Mode to Separate Groups.
  3. Click Save and Display
  4. Instruct your tutors to:
    1. Log into Moodle
    2. On the course homepage, click the Turnitin assignment link
    3. On the Submission Inbox page, select their marking group from the Separate groups drop-down list at the top of the page.
    4. View and mark only the submissions from their group.