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.
Note: TurnItIn cannot generate Similarity Reports for text submissions in Dropbox.
The Turnitin AI (Artificial Intelligence) Writing Detector
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:
- Teaching in the Age of AI Writing
- Academic Integrity in the Age of AI
- Approaching Assessment: Design, Security, Integrity, and AI
Turnitin User Guides & Resources
For the latest updates, visit these Turnitin resources:
