TurnItIn for Insturctors: User Guides, Manuals & Tutorials: Create an assignment

1. Title: Enter the assignment title.

2. Instructions: Write important instructions or requirements for his assignment if any.

3. Submit papers to:

• Standard paper repository: Submissions will be part of Turnitin student database to be used for future matching with other students' submissions globally.
• No repository: Submissions will not be stored to Students' global database and will not be used for any similarity comparisons. (This would be better in group project papers or lab reports where students would submit the same content or use the same references).

       4. Enable PeerMark: If you checked next to this option this will allow submitted papers to this assignment to be included in the peer review where students can read and review their colleagues' submissions on that assignment.

       5. Max Grade: Enter a mark for this assignment (optional, it's only used if you're going to use rubrics).

      6. Set the dates 

• Start date: is the date and time that students can begin submitting to the assignments.
• Due date: is the deadline for the assignment after that date and time; no submissions are allowed unless late submissions are enabled.
• Feedback Release Date: is the date and time when comments and grades become available for students to view. It is recommended that the feedback release date to be after the due date to give you time to grade.

7. Click on Optional Settings button to adjust the similarity and grading settings

1.Allow submission of any file type: Turnitin by default will only accept files that can generate similarity reports. Review the list of accepted file types.

2.Allow late submissions: Select whether students will be able to submit to the assignment after the due date has passed. Selecting Yes will allow students to submit after the due date and their submissions will be highlighted with a red colour.

Note: If late submissions are allowed and you are submitting a late paper, please note that late resubmissions are never allowed. Only first submissions can be submitted late to an assignment.

3. Attach a rubric : Select yes If you would like to use a rubric /grading form to grade the papers submitted to this assignment.

You may use the "rubric list" drop down menu to select a previously created or imported rubric or you can click on Launch Rubric Manager then create a new rubric or grading form or click on the "Find a rubric that's right for your assignment in Turnitin Teaching Tools" link to download & import online rubrics.
Check the GradeMark page for more information on using rubrics.

1.Generate similarity reports for submissions: Similarity reports are by default generated for all student submissions.

2.Select from the drop-down list when the Similarity Report is to be generated. 

• Generate reports immediately (students cannot resubmit) - Similarity Reports for all submissions will be generated immediately. Submissions must be deleted by the instructor to enable resubmission.
• Generate reports immediately (students can resubmit until due date): After 3 resubmissions; reports generate after 24) - Students may resubmit until the due date. Similarity Reports for the first 3 attempts will generate immediately. Any submissions thereafter will generate a Similarity Report after 24 hours.  Once the due date and time is reached, only the latest submission is available to the instructor or student as previous versions are overwritten. This option is used when students are asked to reach a specific similarity score and revise their submissions.

• Generate reports on due date (students can resubmit until due date): - Similarity Reports will be generated on the due date and time of the assignment. Students may resubmit as many times as needed until the due date and time without receiving reports.

3.Allow students to view Similarity Reports: By default, Turnitin allows students to see Similarity Reports. If No has been selected, then the report will show Not Available to the students.

4.Excluding Quoted or Bibliographic material or Small sources:

• Exclude bibliographic materials: Turnitin by default excludes texts appearing in the bibliography, works cited, or references sections of assignments to be excluded from being checked for matches in the Similarity Index when generating Similarity Reports. This setting can be modified only through individual similarity reports if the first paper has been submitted.
• Exclude quoted material: Turnitin by default excludes texts appearing within quotations to be excluded from being checked for matches in the Similarity Index when generating Similarity Reports. This setting can be modified only through individual similarity reports if the first paper has been submitted.

• Exclude small sources?: Turnitin provides instructors to automatically exclude sources in the source list that are below a set word count or a percentage score from all originality reports to focus on larger, more problematic and suspect matches. This can be done by either entering a numerical value into the Word Count or Percentage fields will be excluded from originality reports in this assignment.

Compare against: Select which Turnitin repositories students' submissions will be checked against when generating similarity reports for papers. This allows an instructor to disregard a source type if the comparison against this source is not needed.

• Student paper repository - compares current submissions to previous students' submissions across institutions world wide and your institution.
• Current and archived website content- compares current submissions to a repository of billions of archived internet pages which is updated daily.
• Periodicals, journals, & publications - compares current submissions to many major professional journals, periodicals, and online books.

If you have provided a template document for your students to follow, this can be excluded from their similarity reports by uploading the template to avoid any matches with each other once they submit the same template. Templates can be uploaded to the assignment settings so that they can be automatically excluded from all student's similarity reports.

Adding a template for exclusion

1. Upload a Template

• Uploaded file templates must be less than 100 MB. If your file exceeds 100 MB, you can reduce its size by removing any images or save the file as a rich text or plain text file.

• Accepted file types for upload: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WordPerfect, PostScript, PDF, HTML, RTF, OpenOffice (ODT), Hangul (HWP), and plain text.

• Templates must have at least 20 words of text.

          2. Create a Custom Template 

Type your template or copy and paste from another document.

If you  would like to save Check next to this option to have all future assignment settings the same as the current one & then click "Submit" to save your assignment settings above

The ETS has been removed

Turnitin has been notified by Educational Testing Services (ETS) that they will no longer be supporting their e-rater grammar service in 2025. As a result, Turnitin will be removing e-rater from all of its products as of December 31, 2024.  

In the absence of grammar checking provided via e-rater, we recommend using Turnitin Draft Coach to provide grammar checks for students while drafting in Microsoft Word on the Web or Google Docs. 

For instructors, they might consider encouraging students to use Draft Coach during the drafting process to address grammar issues early.