Turnitin is one of the most important tools at UTS for identifying cases of academic dishonesty. However, feedback to the LX.lab team from our academic community revealed issues with the Turnitin assignment setup in Canvas – primarily, that it was a complicated process and involved too many steps, thus creating a high possibility of human error. 

We’ve listened to these concerns and have introduced a new feature in Canvas aimed at making the set-up process more straightforward, allowing you to leverage the full potential of Canvas’s native tools, and improving the student experience without losing the power of Turnitin’s similarity reports.

What is the Canvas Plagiarism Review?

The Canvas Plagiarism Review is without a doubt the fastest and simplest way to integrate Turnitin’s similarity services into the assignment set-up process. And it’s easy for both academics and students to access as assignments are submitted directly to Canvas with originality scores from Turnitin incorporated into the Canvas marking interface

What are the benefits of the Canvas Plagiarism Review?

  • Easy set-up: using the Canvas Plagiarism Review reduces the number of steps involved in creating assignments, making it faster and reducing the risk of, for example, entering different due dates in Canvas and Turnitin. 
  • Use with group assignments: you can now set up group assignments and get a similarity report for submitted work.
  • Peer reviews: you can use the Canvas Peer Review function with your Turnitin-analysed assignments. 
  • Multiple submission dates: to allow for students who need special consideration, you can set multiple submission dates.
  • Easier subject rollover: problems with Turnitin submission dates when copying over a course are solved.
  • Multiple submissions: before the due date, students can submit assignment drafts multiple times and get a similarity report for each one. [maybe combine this with multiple submission dates]. 
  • Restricted file types: you can restrict the file types that can be submitted; we recommend using docx. 
  • Check settings: you can use the student view to test your assignment configuration.

For more information on the differences between the platforms, take a look at this detailed comparison matrix

Who should use the Canvas Plagiarism Review? 

The Canvas Plagiarism Review has been developed for academics who only want to use Turnitin for similarity reports, and choose to mark assessments and provide feedback via in other tools, such as REVIEW or the Canvas SpeedGrader.

This means if you want to use Turnitin tools such as QuickMarks or Turnitin Rubrics, you should continue using Turnitin rather than the framework.

How can I get started? 

From now on in Canvas, every time that you select text entry or file upload as the submission method for your assignment, you will automatically see a dropdown menu to choose a Plagiarism Review tool. Once you select Turnitin, all the relevant configuration options will appear.

Where to get support

There are several ways for you to get help if you choose to use the Canvas Plagiarism Review for assignments in your Canvas subject site:

LX Transformation is about ensuring a consistent and fun learner experience for staff and students. As the project continues to unfold, LX.Lab will continue to make technical and pedagogical improvements to the Canvas LMS ecosystem. This tool is just one improvement of many more to come! Keep in touch and watch this space for updates to improvements in Canvas. 

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