The Teaching & Learning Technologies team has been supporting Unicheck as the plagiarism detection tool within Canvas during both its pilot and first full year of production. We heard loud and clear from faculty and instructional designers a strong desire to explore alternate tools. We’re happy to announce that, after a successful pilot, Turnitin is now available in all classes for use in Canvas assignments. Unicheck will be unavailable in Canvas after December 28, 2018, and we recommend that instructors who choose to use these tools select Turnitin as the Plagiarism Framework option for new and existing assignments moving forward.
Why use Turnitin?
Instructors can use Turnitin in their lesson plans to promote authenticity and appropriate citation methods. This empowers students to think creatively while emphasizing the importance of authentic authorship and following the Honor Code. The Office of Undergraduate Education recommends that faculty who use Turnitin for writing assignments include language in their course syllabus about the use of the tool.
Getting started with Turnitin
Creating a Plagiarism Framework assignment in Canvas is easy and straightforward. The instructor decides if the submission is stored in the institutional repository or if the originality report is shown to students. Once a paper is submitted via the Canvas Turnitin integration, the similarity score displays a percentage of the paper’s content that matches existing content in the Turnitin databases. Turnitin not only promotes critical thinking and creative writing, but also allows instructors to provide feedback on student submissions by using the annotation tools offered in Canvas’s SpeedGrader.
Features offered by Turnitin:
- Provide Originality Check that’s integrated with the Canvas SpeedGrader
- Allows multiple file submissions
- Canvas Peer Review
- Personalized feedback on student submissions
- Set parameters on sources that are excluded
Detailed information about using the new Turnitin integration can be found at the Turnitin page on the Canvas Support website.
Header photo by Wadi Lissa on Unsplash