This refers to Moodle 4.1 from December 2023 onwards

How to Create a Turnitin Assignment Drop Box

 

  • Like Moodle Assignments, Turnitin allows the electronic submission and marking of assignments.
  • Its main purpose is to provide plagiarism/similarity reports. It does this by text-matching submitted assignments against an extensive library of journals, periodicals, previously submitted student essays and visible internet pages.
  • Warning Note: All originality reports and assignments are stored on the Turnitin server, not the UoN server. We therefore advise that all assignments with originality reports are downloaded after the deadline to ensure you have a local copy.
  • Warning Note: The assignment (class) lifespan is 6 months after the first assignment has been created on the module site. After the 6 months have passed all assignments will be timed out. The Turnitin lifetime for the module can be extended by 3 months by creating a new assignment in the same module or by reactivating in Turnitin's admin. You can continue reactivating for up to 5 years. 

  • The first time you create a Turnitin assignment, you will be sent a login from http://www.turnitinuk.com which is the vendor's site. While you can view and grade assignments on this site, this is not optimal. All staff are advised to access Turnitin assignments through the dropbox in Moodle, whether to edit, or mark or use Feedback Studio.
  • IMPORTANT NOTE: Each Turnitin assignment must be created from scratch. You cannot copy or import Turnitin assignments as the link to Turnitin then breaks causing negative student experience.
  • Turnitin Assignments will not accept video or audio submissions.

 

Adding a Turnitin assignment: step by step instructions 

  1. Log in to Moodle, navigate to the module and enable Edit mode by sliding the toggle switch to the right (top-right).

  2. In the relevant topic, click + Add an activity or resource hyperlink. 

  3. In the window presented, select Turnitin Assignments.

 

Moodle settings for Turnitin

From top to bottom...

  • Turnitin Assignment Name - The Assignment Name shows on the module main page and in the Turnitin drop box.

  • Summary - Use this box to expand on your title and add useful information such as deadlines, word counts and desired file formats.

  • Display description on module page - Tick this box if you wish the summary to appear in the Moodle page. (Recommended).

  • Submission Type - Select from File upload, Text submission and Any submission type.

  • Number of Parts - Maximum is 5 parts. Useful if the student need to submit multiple documents in different formats, e.g. PDF assignment Word cover sheet.

  • Maximum File Size - Select from 10KB to maximum file size 100MB. Settings are set to 100MB by default.

  • Anonymous Marking - Cannot be changed once set [Note: Names become visible when grades become visible – on Post Date, which cannot be changed so choose the Post Date carefully.

  • Allow submission of any file type - Set to 'No', so that only those files are submitted that Turnitin can process. If you are using Feedback Studio, but not the text-matching feature, e.g. for submissions of formulae, then you can set to 'Yes'.

  • Display Similarity Reports to Students - Choose whether students can see their own similarity score report. 

  • Grade - Choose ‘Point’ or ‘Scale’ then max points, e.g. 100. If not numeric, ensure that other settings do not use numeric grades either. You can also set a minimum grade to pass.

  • NOTE: If Anonymous Marking is enabled, then the "Post Date" should be set to be at the end of the marking period - it is the date when the student names become visible. Once names are visible, changing the post date cannot re-anonymise them.
  • NOTE: Once anonymous marking has been enabled (set to Yes) you cannot change it to "no" (e.g., to see the names for admin purposes) and then change it back again to anonymous.
  • NOTE: Student names may be revealed for an individual assignment by clicking on the "Anonymous marking enabled" button to reveal the author’s name for the paper. 


Assignment Parts

For each of the parts that you allow students to upload for the assignment, a separate start date, due date, and post date can be set. These are edited in the next section of the page:

Post date must be after Due date, which must be after Start date. 

From top to bottom: "Name", "Start Date", "Due Date", "Post Date" and "Max Marks" should be defined or set accordingly.

Similarity Report Options

From top to bottom... 

  • Allow Submissions after the Due Date - This should be set to Yes.
  • Report Generation Speed - Select an option of when the Originality report should be generated.
  • Store Student Papers - Choose whether submissions are stored in the Turnitin repository or not - normally this will be set to Standard Repository.
  • Check against stored student papers
  • Check against internet
  • Check against journals, periodicals and publications
  • Exclude Bibliography - useful if the bibliography is likely to be substantial - bibliographies, being a standard format, often match.
  • Exclude Quoted Material - again, this often causes matches.
  • Exclude Small Matches

Further information about Report generation speed

First report is final means that students may only submit once and only one similarity report is generated, immediately after submission.

If setting 'Generate reports immediately, students can resubmit until due date' is selected this means that students are able to resubmit their work as often as they like until the Due Date. No re-submissions are allowed once the due date and time of the assignment have passed: on the Due Date the most recent submission made is the final one (one late submission is still accepted if the student has not yet uploaded anything at all).

Similarity Reports for the first submission by each student user will be generated immediately. After that, reports are generated only once every 24 hours even if the student resubmits more often than that. Each submission and report replaces the last one so you cannot look at previous versions.

Each time the Similarity Report and similarity index are generated, they may be different if based on a revised submission. This option is typically used when students are self-reviewing and revising their submissions up until the Due Date and have been given the ability to view the Similarity Report (see setting Student Similarity Reports above).

The setting 'Generate reports on due date' means students can resubmit but the similarity report is only generated for the final submission present on the due date.

GradeMark Options

You can attach a rubric or launch the Rubric Manager within Turnitin by clicking on the blue link.


Common module settings

 

From top to bottom:

  • Availability.
  • ID Number.
  • Group mode - note though that if you wish to mark groupwork and have the marks and feedback proliferate across all group members automatically then a Moodle dropbox is the only tool capable of this.

Note: If you wish to enable Groups and Groupings for an assignment dropbox you need to have created the groups first. Please see the Help documents on Groups and Groupings for further details:

Restrict access

There are options to restrict the visibility of the whole dropbox.

Click on the Add restriction... button.

Once you've set everything up as you want it in Moodle, click on the Save and return to module button.

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