Turnitin LTI for Students

The Canvas Plagiarism Framework (CPF) has been the preferred integration for Turnitin in Canvas since 2018. This integration provides a better user experience for both students and instructors, and it offers additional functionality.

We strongly encourage instructors to use the CPF integration rather than the Turnitin LTI. This guide will be retired at the end of the 2022-2023 academic year.

For questions about Turnitin or assistance with transitioning to the CPF, please contact canvas@pobox.upenn.edu.

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Turnitin’s End User License Agreement (EULA)

A class you are taking may use Turnitin originality checking software. This software requires you to agree to Turnitin’s End User License Agreement (EULA) before you are permitted to use the software.

Please direct any questions or concerns regarding this agreement or Turnitin to your course instructor.

Submit a Paper in Your Web Browser

Do not open the submission page of a Turnitin assignment until you are ready to submit.

If you leave the Turnitin submission page open for an extended period, a page-time out error will occur with this message: “Sorry, we could not process your request. We are sorry, but it appears we are experiencing an issue at this time. Please try again in a few moments. If the issue persists, please contact Turnitin Product Support.” If you see this message, you will need to attempt re-submitting the assignment. If you experience any issues with the re-submission attempt, please email canvas@pobox.upenn.edu for help.

It is recommend that students submit PDFs for Turnitin assignments in Canvas (instructions for converting other file-types to PDF: PC and Mac).

Also, these PDFs should have short names with only alphanumeric characters (e.g., studentname1.pdf). These recommendations should prevent an intermittent issue that has been known to affect non-PDF file-types (e.g., docx) and files with long names and/or names that include non-alphanumeric characters (e.g., studenttermpaper_introductiontophilosophy##.pdf) that prevents DocViewer (the document previewer used in SpeedGrader, which is used for grading) from displaying files.

Instructions

  1.  Go to Assignments and select the assignment name that you want to submit.
  2. You may need to press the button to Load [Assignment Name] in a new window. This will open a new browser tab with the Assignment Dashboard of Turnitin LTI.
    • NOTE: If you didn’t previously accept the “Turnitin User Agreement,” you’ll see it here. Press the I agree—continue button.
    • Click the assignment name or circular “i” icon to read the instructions.
  3. Click the Upload button (tray icon with up arrow), which will pop up a Submit File window.
    • FIRST, type in the title of your paper in the “Submission title” area.
    • NEXT, select your paper by dragging and dropping your file within the dotted lines, or click Select a file to upload. If appropriate, you may also copy & paste your submission, or select a file on Google Drive or Dropbox.
  4. After your upload completes, you’ll see a preview of your paper. Click the blue Accept Submission & Save button at the bottom to complete your submission.
    • NOTE: The Accept Submission & Save button may be hidden or hard to see if you are on a device with a small screen.Example of where to find the
    • If the Accept Submission & Save button isn’t visible, click the “hamburger” icon to collapse the course navigation menu. Try maximizing your browser window, or dragging down the scroll bars to find it. Alternately, clicking the “hamburger icon” will collapse the course navigation menu and better display the Submit File window.
Example of where to find the

With the course navigation menu collapsed, the Accept submission-save button is visible.

5. Once complete, you will see your paper listed with a Date uploaded notation and you can close the browser window. If you don’t see it, refresh your browser page. If you still see the message “You have no active papers in this assignment,” step 4 was likely not completed successfully; in that case, return to step 1.

If you need to resubmit your paper, use the same steps shown above. The only difference is that you will be asked to confirm that you are resubmitting your paper.

Submit a Paper on Your Mobile Device

You cannot submit a Turnitin assignment from the Canvas mobile app. To submit a Turnitin assignment on a mobile device, use the browser on an iPad or Android tablet. Smartphone screens are too small to adequately display the submission window.

It is recommended that students only submit PDFs for Turnitin assignments in Canvas (instructions for converting other file-types to PDF: PC and Mac). Also, these PDFs should have short names with only alphanumeric characters (e.g., studentname1.pdf). These recommendations should prevent an intermittent issue that has been known to affect non-PDF file-types (e.g., docx) and files with long names and/or names that include non-alphanumeric characters (e.g., studenttermpaper_introductiontophilosophy##.pdf) that prevents Crocodoc (the document previewer used in SpeedGrader, which is used for grading) from displaying files (the message “Crocodoc is still processing this document” appears instead of the file preview).

  1. Log into Canvas using the mobile browser (at canvas.upenn.edu) on your iPad or Android tablet.
  2. Go to Assignments and select the assignment name that you want to submit.
  3. You may need to press the button to Load [Assignment Name] in a new window. This will open a new browser tab with the Assignment Dashboard of Turnitin LTI.
    • NOTE: If you didn’t previously accept the “Turnitin User Agreement”, you’ll see it here. Press the I agree—continue button.
    • Click the assignment name or circular “i” icon to read the instructions.
  4. Click the Upload button (tray icon with up arrow), which will pop up a Submit File window.
    • FIRST, type in the title of your paper in the “Submission title” area.
    • NEXT, select your paper by dragging and dropping your file within the dotted lines, or click Select a file to upload. If appropriate, you may also copy & paste your submission, or select a file on Google Drive or Dropbox.
  5. After your upload completes, you’ll see a preview of your paper. Click the blue Accept submission-save button at the bottom to complete your submission.
    • NOTE: The Accept submission-save button may be hidden or hard to see if you are on a device with a small screen. Clicking the “hamburger icon” will collapse the course navigation menu and better display the Submit File
  6. Once complete, you will see your paper listed with a Date uploaded notation and you can close the browser window. If you don’t see it, refresh your browser page. If you still see the message “You have no active papers in this assignment,” step 4 was likely not completed successfully; in that case, return to step 1.

If you need to resubmit your paper, use the same steps shown above. The only difference is that you will be asked to confirm that you are resubmitting your paper.

Turnitin Troubleshooting Guide

This troubleshooting guide addresses the most common problems you might encounter while submitting your assignment, accessing or submitting peer reviews, or reading the feedback on your assignments.

Make sure that you are using a supported web browser.

If you see a “Login to Turnitin” screen or a “There was an error processing your request” message when first going to submit your assignment:
You do not need to log into Turnitin. You should log in only to Canvas using your PennKey and password.

  • First, try closing the browser window, then go to the Home page of the course Canvas site. Next, click Assignments, select the appropriate assignment, and try again.
  • If that doesn’t work, try closing all open web browser windows, then open a new browser window and return to Canvas.
  • It can help to switch to a different web browser – for example, try Firefox if you normally use Chrome, or vice versa.
  • If you prefer to get your preferred web browser working, try clearing your cache:
  • If you continue to see the login screen, clear cookies from turnitin.com websites:

Certain cookie-blocking settings can cause that error message to appear. Try allowing cookies by making these changes:

  • Chrome >Privacy > Content Settings: change from “Block third-party cookies and site data” to “Allow local data to be set (recommended).”
  • Firefox > Preferences > Privacy: use default “Remember history” settings, or if you use custom settings for history set Accept third-party cookies to “Always.”
  • Safari> Preferences > Privacy: change Cookies and website data from “Allow from websites I visit” to “Always allow.”

If your settings are at their defaults, but you also use ad-blocking software, try to create exceptions that allow cookies for *.upenn.edu and *.turnitin.com in that software. These same changes will also help with the Class Recordings tab of the course Canvas site (*.panopto.com).

You cannot submit a Turnitin assignment without having a confirmed default email address in Canvas.

Last Updated: 11 Nov 2022