Turn It In Assignments

Adding a Turnitin Assignment to a BeachBoard Course

New: Watch a closed-captioned movie that shows you how to create a Turnitin assignment in a BeachBoard course [opens in a new window]

Turnitin is a plagiarism prevention service available in BeachBoard. Students submit their papers electronically, and Turnitin compares the text of those papers to the text in billions of other documents on the Internet, in papers submitted by other students around the world, and in 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 document showing both the student's paper and the original source. Click on this link to see a sample Turnitin report.

By default, Turnitin permanently retains a copy of all submitted papers for the purpose of ensuring that those papers are not plagiarized by future students. It is recommended that you do the following:

  1. Notify your students in writing, preferably in the course syllabus, that Turnitin.com will be used in your course. The CSU General Counsel recommends that your notification include the following:

    Students agree that by taking this course all required papers may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to Turnitin.com for the detection of plagiarism. All submitted papers will be included as source documents in the Turnitin.com reference database solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of such papers. You may submit your paper in such a way that no identifying information about you is included. Another option is that you may request, in writing from your instructor, that your papers not be submitted to Turnitin.com. However, if you choose this option you will be required to provide documentation to substantiate that the papers are your original work and do not include any plagiarized material.

  2. Do not submit papers on behalf of your students which may be a violation of the students' intellectual property, but instead advise your students to submit their own papers to Turnitin through BeachBoard.

Add a New Turnitin assignment

  1. Login to BeachBoard at https://beachboard.csulb.edu/
  2. Under My Courses, click the name of the course in which you would like to add a Turnitin assignment.
  3. Click the course's Control Panel link.
  4. Under Content Areas, click the Assignments link.
  5. In the Select: pull-down list in the upper right corner of the screen, choose Turnitin Assignment.
  6. Click the Go button.
  7. Key in the assignment's title in the Assignment Title box.
  8. Choose a start date and time -- the date and time your students can begin submitting their papers.
  9. Choose a due date and time -- the submission deadline for your assignment. Unless you choose, in more options, to allow submissions after the due date, your students will not be able to submit their papers once the due date and time has passed.
  10. Click the + sign to the left of the words "more options" and update any settings you would like to change (see below).  This is optional.
  11. Enter the assignment's instructions in the Special Instructions box. (This is optional.)  
  12. Click the Submit button.

More Options

If you choose to Show advanced assignment options, you will be able to change the options in several different areas.

Enter special instructions

Use this to enter any special instructions you would like to share with your students.  These instructions will be displayed shortly before the students submit their papers to Turnitin

Generate originality reports for submissions?

This is set to "yes" by default.

Generate Originality Report for student submissions:

  • On due date -- reports for student submissions are generated on the assignment's due date
  • Immediately (first report is final) -- reports are generated immediately and students will not be able to resubmit their papers once a report is generated
  • Immediately (can overwrite reports until due date) -- reports are generated immediately but students can resubmit their papers and get new reports as many times as they would like up until the assignment's due date.

Allow students to see Originality Reports?

By default, only instructors can see Turnitin originality reports. Choose Yes in the pull-down list if you want your students to be able to see their own originality reports.

Allow submissions after the due date?

This is set to No by default.

Submit papers to:

Select "student paper repository" if you would like to have papers submitted to this assignment stored in Turnitin's database of student papers and used for future searches. If you do not want papers submitted to this assignment stored in Turnitin's database, select "no repository." If you choose not to have papers stored in Turnitin's database, you will not be able to check submissions against Turnitin's student paper database.

Search options:

For each assignment, you can specify the sources that submitted papers will be checked against. The default settings check the students' papers against:

  • Turnitin's student paper repository 
  • Current and archived Internet pages 
  • Periodicals, journals, and publications (including the ProQuest and Gale InfoTrac OneFile databases)

If you would prefer to check against fewer sources, select uncheck the resources you wish to exclude.

View Your Students' Originality Reports

  1. Login to BeachBoard and, under My Courses, click the name of the course in which you have created a Turnitin assignment.
  2. Click the course's Control Panel link.
  3. Under Course Tools, click the Turnitin Assignments link.
  4. Click the View link beneath the Turnitin assignment.

  5. Click the clored icons to the right of the students' names. [At first, your Turnitin roster will only show the names of students who have used Turnitin in the past. As your other students submit papers, their names and assignments will automatically be added to your Turnitin roster. If you would rather not wait for this to happen, you can force Turnitin to immediately display the names of all of your students by clicking on the Roster Sync link in the top right corner of any Turnitin assignment inbox page.]

    BeachBoard Services, with the help of Turnitin, has created a five-page handout that tells you how to view your students' Turnitin originality reports, the reports that Turnitin generates after your students submit their papers. The handout is available in Adobe Acrobat PDF (672 KB) and Macromedia Flash (243 KB) formats.

More Information

Q: Can I see what this Turnitin assignment will look like to my students?
A: Yes. Login to BeachBoard. Under My Courses, click the name of the course that contains the assignment. Click the Assignments link on the left side of the page. Click the View/Complete link. This shows you what your Turnitin assignment looks like to your students.

Q: Can I edit or modify a Turnitin assignment later?
A: Yes. Turnitin assignments can be modified by using either the Edit Assignment button in the assignment inbox or the modify button in your assignment list.

Q: Can I submit a student's paper to Turnitin without that student's knowledge?
A: It is not recommended because submitting a paper to Turnitin without the student's permission could be considered a violation of a student's intellectual property and copyright.

Q: Does the Turnitin Assignment tool upload files into the Digital Drop Box?
A: No. The Turnitin Assignment tool does not work directly with the Digital Drop Box. In most cases, you will want to use a Turnitin Assignment instead of the Digital Drop Box to manage assignment submission, especially if you are concerned about plagiarism.

Special thanks to SDSU [http://its.sdsu.edu/turnitin/] and Turnitin [http://www.turnitin.com/static/training.html] for their support.