UC San Diego Division of Extended Studies has integrated the plagiarism checker tool Turnitin into our Canvas system. To use the tool you will need to set up a Turnitin-enabled Assignment using the directions below.
For Turnitin to run an Artificial Intelligence report, the document must meet the below requirements:
- File size must be less than 100 MB
- File must be a minimum of 300 words and be written in long-form English prose (i.e. paragraphs, essay-length texts)
- File must not exceed 15,000 words
- File must be written in English
- Accepted file types: .docx, .pdf, .txt, .rtf
NOTE: Please be advised that Artificial Intelligence (AI) detection is not 100% accurate, so your attention and thorough inspection are required to fully use the AI report when discussing AI use with students. Please read the following article for more information: How to interpret the Turnitin Similarity Report (Instructors)
Creating an Assignment with Turnitin Protections
- To add a new assignment that will automatically be scanned by Turnitin, go to Modules and click on the + icon next to the Module title where the assignment should be added.
- Make sure "Assignment" is listed in the "Add" field and highlight "Create Assignment" below. Provide a name in the "Assignment Name" field and click "Add Item".
- On the "Create new assignment" page, under Submission Type, Select Online, and select Text Entry, File Upload or both. Once you make this selection a new field will appear called Plagiarism Review.
- In the Plagiarism Review area drop-down and select Turnitin DES and set Show reports to students to Immediately if you wish for students to be able to review their results.
- An expanded menu will appear allowing you to customize the Turnitin settings. For information on the Turnitin settings please reference the following help article: Turnitin Scan Settings and Optimization (Instructors).
Viewing Turnitin Results
Once students have submitted work to the Turnitin-protected assignment, you can use SpeedGrader to access the similarity report.
- Open SpeedGrader on your Turnitin-protected assignment.
- In SpeedGrader, you will see a colorful icon with a percentage called a similarity score badge. You must click the percentage badge to view the report because the percentage on the badge does not provide enough information for you to make any decisions nor does it indicate if AI was used on the assignment.
- After clicking the badge, you will see the report. There are three tabs on the top of the interface, one for Similarity (i.e. potentially plagiarized content), one for Flags (inconsistencies that would set it apart from a normal submission), and one for AI Writing (how much of the submission has been generated by AI). Click each tab to investigate the submission contents.
- Similarity
- Flags
- AI Writing
- To interpret the results of your report, please read the following articles:
NOTE: If you would like to run one-off reports, please contact Instructor Excellence at ext-instructorexcellence@ucsd.edu for more information.
For more information on Turnitin, please visit our Turnitin Resources Central Hub the Turnitin Guides website.