Overview
Turnitin is the originality checking tool in use at the University of Pennsylvania. In May 2016, Penn enabled the Turnitin LTI integration with Canvas, which many teaching teams and students found challenging to use. In 2018, Instructure, the vendor for Canvas, and Turnitin have introduced a new way to create Turnitin-enabled assignments that addresses many of these challenges.
The new integration uses Canvas’s Plagiarism Framework and restores functionality that is unsupported with Turnitin LTI external tool assignments, including support for group assignments and multiple submissions. If you need help, please email canvas@pobox.upenn.edu.
Important Notes:
- The new integration using Canvas’s Plagiarism Framework will be the preferred option for most courses. Teaching teams with existing Turnitin LTI assignments may want to change these to assignments that use the CPF.
- Turnitin LTI cannot be used with group assignments.
- Turnitin cannot be used with discussions or quizzes.
Turnitin Plagiarism Framework Integration Provides:
- Familiar Assignment Configuration for Faculty: When a Canvas “online submission” assignment is set up for either file upload or text entry submission, teaching team members can optionally add “plagiarism checking” to that assignment.
- Familiar Assignment Submission for Students: Students can submit assignments that will be checked for originality via a familiar Canvas assignment submission screen, rather than using the Turnitin Assignment Dashboard. Students will need to accept Turnitin’s End-User License Agreement each time they submit (or resubmit) an assignment.
- Support for Groups Submissions: Turnitin can correctly handle group submissions for group assignments.
- Support for Resubmissions: If students resubmit an assignment to Canvas, teaching teams will be able to see the originality scores and reports for both original and subsequent submissions.
- Support for Multiple Submissions: If an assignment requires students to submit multiple files to the same assignment, Turnitin will provide originality reports for all files that are in formats it can check.
- Easy Support for Admins: Admins can configure and manage Turnitin-enabled assignments without being enrolled as a teaching team member.
- Support for Course Copy/Blueprint Sync: Turnitin-enabled assignments can be copied from one course to another without having to launch and reconfigure the copied assignment.
- Support for Test Student/Student View: The Test Student can submit to assignments configured using the Turnitin plagiarism framework.
- Support for Rubrics: Rubrics attached to Turnitin-enabled assignments are visible on the assignment page to students and teaching team members.
Turnitin LTI will continue to be available. Teaching teams interested in using Turnitin Feedback Studio (an alternative to Canvas SpeedGrader) or Turnitin PeerMark (an alternative to Canvas Peer Review) may prefer to create Turnitin LTI assignments.
Comparison of Turnitin LTI and Turnitin with Canvas Plagiarism Framework:
| Turnitin LTI | Turnitin with CPF | |
| Performs originality check of student work | ✔ | ✔ |
| Uses Canvas Assignment | ✔ | |
| Uses External Tool Assignments | ✔ | |
| Can be used for Group Assignments | ✔ | |
| Allows students to resubmit work | ✔ | |
| Allows students to resubmit work late | ✔ | |
| Allows students to submit multiple files | ✔ | |
| Supports restricting file submission type | ✔ | |
| Supports varied due dates of assignments | ✔ | |
| Supports Turnitin Feedback Studio | ✔ | |
| Supports Turnitin PeerMark assignments | ✔ | |
| Allows for visibility of Canvas rubrics | ✔ | |
| Supports Canvas Bulk Download of submissions | ✔ | |
| Allows Test Student to submit | ✔ |
Last Updated: 25 May 2018