What is Turnitin®

turnitin 

Turnitin® is an online text matching tool in MyCanvas that scans your assignments against a database of existing web pages, academic books, and articles, and identifies improper citations or potential plagiarism.  

When you upload your assignemnt, the content is compared to the Turnitin® database. A similarity report is generated, indicating how much of your writing matches writing from previously existing sources (given as a %), and highlights all phrases that match the text in an existing source.

Student Success Tip: Submit your assignment in advance of the due date and use the similarity report to review and revise content!

Access Turnitin

Turnitin Help

Follow these steps to submit an assignment:

  1. Join the Library@MyCanvas Course in MyCanvas
    Library@MyCanvas Join this course
  2. Click on the Assignments and choose Turnitin - Check Before Submitting Your Assignment
    Library@MyCanvas, Assignments tab, Turnitin Check Before Submitting
  3. Click on the Start Assignment button if it is your first time submitting.
    Click on Start Assignment

    *Subsequent attempts: Click on New Attempt
    Click on New attempt for subsequent attempts
  4. Upload a file, check to agree to the terms, Click on Submit Assignment
    Submit a file

NOTE: When you use the Turnitin folder your papers are not deposited to Turnitin’s repository.

After you submit your essay, Turnitin will generate a Similarity Report, which highlights matches between your essay/paper and other sources, flagging passages that require better paraphrasing or referencing. It may take a few hours for a report to display.

Follow these steps to view the report:

  1. From the Assignments tool, select the assignment that you have submitted, and click on Submission Details
    Click on Submission Details
  2. To view your Similarity Report, click on the Similarity Score. The Similarity Score is the percentage of the text in your document that matches sources in the Turnitin database. This will open the Feedback Studio in Turnitin.click on percentage to view report
  3. Once the document opens up in the Turnitin Feedback studio, you'll see your document on the left and the matching sources on the right sidebar. feedback studio from turnitin
  4. Text within the student paper that matches the content within the Turnitin database will be highlighted in the student paper. Each match is given a number and a colour. This number and colour appear within the student paper and correspond to the sources in the sidebar. The percentage refers to the words in the entire paper that match the source.matching sources in sidebar in turnitin studio

Understanding the Similarity Score

  • Blue(0%): No matching text
  • Green(1-24%): Low similarity, typically includes common phrases or properly cited quotes.
  • Yellow(25%-49%): Moderate similarity, may include more substantial content matches.
  • Orange(50-74%): High similarity, indicating a significant amount of matched content.
  • Red(75-100%): Very high similarity, indicating that most of the text matches other sources.