Changes in Turnitin

You should all by now be aware of the changes to Turnitin this year (see Judith Keene\’s all staff email from 8th September for more information) and we thought it would be useful to go into more detail about a few things that you need to know.

Turnitin has moved

The most obvious change is that the link to add Turnitin has moved from the Assessment tab to the Build Content tab.

The icon has been replaced

When you create a submission point, the Turnitin logo is no longer displayed and has been replaced with a Blackboard link icon. To make it clearer for students, it may be a good idea to include the word \’Turnitin\’ in the title. We would strongly discourage naming a submission point \’Turnitin\’ alone however, as assignment names should always be clearly descriptive.

Adaptive Release

You may notice that, when you create a submission point, you will now see a message like the one below.

There is no need to be concerned by this. As the new installation works slightly differently, this just means that a start date has been set. Contrary to what the message suggests, all students will be able to see the submission point.

You need to hide the assignment in the grade centre

Either at the point you set the assignment up, or before you start marking, you will need to manually hide the Blackboard Grade Centre column from students – otherwise they will be able to access their grades as soon as they have been entered. See the Post Setup Actions section of our Turnitin Guidance for instructions.

Student preview isn\’t available

When you try to check your submission point in student preview, you will receive an error message. This is because it is no longer possible to enter a submission point in student preview mode. It does not mean that there is a problem with the submission point.

The due date can be altered more easily

Although you enter the due date as normal, should you make a mistake, or if the date changes, the date must be changed from the edit menu rather than from the settings within the submission point. This has been introduced to make it quicker to make such changes.

It is better for monitoring submissions and reminding students to submit

One of the best features of the new installation of Turnitin is the capacity to monitor which of your students have not submitted. When you look in the assignment inbox, on non-anonymous assignments all students will be listed and it will tell you whether they have submitted or not. You can even send an email reminder to students who have not submitted, including on anonymous submission points.

To do this, go to the Grade Centre, locate the column that relates to the assignment, hover over the column header and click the arrow icon. Then select \’Send Reminder\’.

Some staff have found that the first time they set up a Turnitin submission point, they receive an error message. Clearing your history and cookies will usually resolve this issue. As always, make sure you are using Chrome or Firefox.

If you have any further queries, please contact the Technology Enhanced Learning Unit at tel@worc.ac.uk