Best Practices for Teaching with Turnitin

Taylor University has implemented Turnitin, a plagiarism detection software, in Brightspace. All faculty have the option to utilize Turnitin with assignments directly housed in Brightspace. Turnitin is to be used as a tool to help faculty and students uphold academic integrity and foster original thinking skills.

Below are best practices and guidelines for using Turnitin for your courses. As stated in the Taylor University student handbook: “As a Christ-centered University community, we apply biblical responsibilities for honesty to all forms of academic integrity. Plagiarism is forbidden; we expect truthfulness and fidelity to be expressed in every learning context. (Luke 16:10; Ephesians 4:25)”

1. How to add Turnitin to an assignment

  • Familiarize yourself with Turnitin by watching this training video 
  • Follow these directions to Using Turnitin for a Brightspace Assignment 
  • You can help learners check their similarity report by giving these directions:
    • Go to Activities & Assessments
    • Click on Assignments
    • Click on the Completion Status link

2. Suggestions on how to implement Turnitin within your course

  • Inform students – create trust and clear guidelines with your students by discussing Turnitin, your rationale for using it, and setting expectations for its use.
  • Place a statement in your syllabus that explains you are using Turnitin.
  • Practice using it – create an assignment that is associated with introducing Turnitin. This allows faculty and learners to become acquainted with the new technology without it having a significant impact on their grades. The Turnitin practice assignment should be something original (like introducing themselves) rather than having all students submit writing based on a common text, so you don’t have to spend time analyzing reports. 
  • Host a discussion – this can be done via TEAMS or a discussion post, where you lead students in a brief discussion about Turnitin results and provide time for Q&A. It is important that the learners and the instructor are clear on what the report indicates.
  • Familiarize your students on how to properly cite AI usage.

3. Understand what the similarity report means.

4. What do I do if I suspect plagiarism?

Turnitin should be utilized as a tool for identifying non-original content and not relied upon exclusively to determine plagiarism.

Things to consider when you suspect a student has plagiarized. 1) Your professional opinion, 2) Compare assignment(s) to previous writings, 3) Timeliness of multiple submissions, and 4) Consider Turnitin scores.  With these considerations in mind, if you still suspect the student has plagiarized, having a conversation with the student is the first step, then evaluate the response of the student. The next step is to decide how you would like to proceed. Using your best judgment you can accept the assignment as is, ask for a redo for partial/full credit, or give zero credit. Report any suspicion of plagiarism to your dean.

Below are recommendations on how to handle Turnitin reports.

5. Understanding the AI score

6. What do I do if I suspect AI usage?

Turnitin does offer an AI detection tool. This tool is different than the similarity report. Faculty are advised to use the AI detection tool with extreme caution. A significant number of universities are not currently using AI detection tools due to the high percentages of false positives.

Below are our recommendations for using Turnitin AI detection tools.