Turnitin

Turnitin is a plagiarism prevention service available on Canvas. When students submit their papers electronically, Turnitin compares the text with billions of other documents on the Internet, including papers submitted by other students around the world and commercial databases of journal articles and periodicals. Whenever similarities between the text in a student's paper and the text in an existing document are found, Turnitin highlights those similarities, providing an annotated Similarity Report showing both the student's paper and the original source.

In April 2023, Turnitin announced the launch of AI writing detection capabilities in their products including Feedback Studio and Similarity. Although stating that these tools can detect "the presence of AI-assisted writing with 98% confidence and a less than one percent false-positive rate in a controlled lab environment," this tool should not be used as a definitive judgment of plagiarism, but rather as a learning moment to discuss academic integrity in the classroom.

AI detection is still very much in its infancy, and more applications are in development. Explore these Turnitin resources to better understand how to factor in the use of AI in your assessment strategies:

Students can use Turnitin Draft Coach on their web version of Microsoft Word as a guide when drafting an assignment before submitting it to their course. Turnitin Draft Coach allows students to run a Similarity Score Check to prevent unnecessary plagiarism, fix any citation and references mistakes with Citations Check, and correct any grammatical errors with Grammar Check. 

Turnitin Draft Coach is automatically enabled on the Microsoft Word web version available to CSULB students through Single Sign On (SSO). If Turnitin Draft Coach is not enabled, visit How to Add to Microsoft Word. Watch a brief video for an overview of Draft Coach for students.

Visit the How to use Turnitin Draft Coach and the Understanding Turnitin Draft Coach guides to get started.

Need Help?

For additional support with Turnitin Draft Coach, please submit a ticket with the Turnitin Support Center.

Additional Resources: 

For the latest updates, visit these Turnitin resources: