Using Turnitin

What it is

Turnitin is a tool that compares student papers with a vast array of online sources and paper repositories and returns a detailed report on similarities. This similarity report may reveal evidence of plagiarism in a student's work, but the report needs to be carefully reviewed by the instructor before such a determination can be made. (See Turnitin's Plagiarism Spectrum, a document that can also be used to educate students on the use of source material.)

At Brown, Turnitin can only be used within Canvas, by submitting papers through assignments. The Turnitin website cannot be used directly for generating reports.

How to use it (instructors/TAs)

If Turnitin has been configured on an assignment in Canvas (see your Instructional Designer for help) follow the instructions below to view the report on a student's submitted paper. (Note: The report may take 5–45 min. to generate after submission.)

1. Go to the assignment page and click on the SpeedGrader button, on the right:
2. In the right pane of SpeedGrader, next to the file name of the student's uploaded paper, there's a percentage in a colored box. Low scores are in green, middle in yellow, high in red. Click on this number to access the report. (Note: Students access the report through Grades.)
3. The main Turnitin report window opens. Use the tools on the right to learn more about sources that match student's text. (Click to enlarge.)
4. Click on the number (percentage of text matched online) to see the source(s) listed. Click on a source to get specific pages (when available).
5. To download a PDF version of the report, click the download button (down arrow) on the right.
6. Choose Current View. The PDF should go to the Downloads folder on your computer.