Turnitin

Turnitin

Turnitin is Northwestern's anti-plagiarism software. When a paper is submitted through Turnitin, it is compared against three vast databases. A Similarity Report is generated that will show which elements of a student's paper match content from Turnitin's databases.

If you are experiencing slowness or access issues, check the status of Turnitin Links to an external site.. 

The primary sources for the databases are:

• The Current and Archived Web: Similar to Google and Bing, Turnitin has a web crawler that indexes content into a searchable form. Turnitin currently contains over 45 billion webpages from the current web as well as archived webpages.
• Student Papers: Over 50 percent of plagiarism comes from other students' work. Turnitin compares submitted papers to a database of over 337 million papers in the Turnitin paper database. Each day, the Turnitin student database grows by 190,000 papers.
• Content Partnerships: Turnitin has partnered with leading content publishers, including library databases, textbook publishers, digital reference collections, subscription-based publications, and homework helper sites. These partnerships have contributed over 130 million additional articles to its databases.

Using Turnitin to Check Drafts

Turnitin can be used to check drafts, but one setting should be changed for this case. In the submission settings, select the Do not store the submitted paper. This will still check for plagiarism, but will not store the paper in the database. This is important because if you store the draft assignment, when the student submits the final paper, it will come up as plagiarized.

Turnitin and the Gradebook

If you use Turnitin for an assignment, a flag icon will appear in the gradebook. A grey icon indicates the submission has not been checked. A green, yellow, or red flag indicates that the submission has been checked. The color indicates the value of the similarity report. 

For instructions on how to enable Turnitin for your assignments, consult the Canvas Learning Center at the link below.

Turnitin instructions