​​Turnitin – Student’s guide

The teacher can define Turnitin check for assignment, forum, workshop and quiz activities. By default, no check is performed on returned files.

The similarity of written works can only be compared in text files, but they can include images and diagrams, for example. For a more detailed list of allowed file formats, see the Turnitin help page File requirements.

The first time you use the service or if the terms of use change, you agree to Turnitin’s End User License Agreement (EULA). If the agreement is not accepted, the documents are submitted to Moodle only and no text similarity check is performed. If the student has already previously accepted the latest agreement in SeAMK Moodle, the selection will not appear.

If a student submits their work without having the EULA approved, they can go back and have it approved.  The submission will then automatically go to Turnitin for review. Once the EULA has been approved, it will appear on the Moodle as follows:

If the teacher has allowed students to view the similarity report, the student will also see the Turnitin icon and the text similarity percentage when the check is complete. The percentage icon is a link to the similarity report.

It is important to remember that the report is only a tool that must always be interpreted. It lists the similarities found in the submitted work in the reference database, but it does not directly indicate whether plagiarism is involved or whether similarities are allowed. The interpretation of the similarity report is discussed later in this guide in section 5.

Moodle always sends notifications to the teacher and student by email when submission is made. If the teacher has not disabled notifications, the student can change the settings in their Moodle profile so that the Turnitin Integrity plugin does not send notifications. The teacher’s settings are shown in the picture.

Turnitin Draft Coach is a Word Online (Microsoft 365) utility that helps authors check the originality of their texts and the accuracy of source citations during the writing process. It can also be used to check the grammar of English-language texts. Draft Coach is not available in the desktop version of Word.

Using the Turnitin Draft Coach:

1. Open a browser e.g. Chrome or Edge
   2. For example, go to office365.epedu.fi.
   3. Log in with your Microsoft account username@seamk.fi
   4. Authenticate using Microsoft Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
   5. Open Word from the M365 applications. Open the document you want or create a new one

After a short delay, Turnitin will automatically appear in the tools at the top of the Word document and by selecting Draft Coach you can access its tools. The first time you use Turnitin, you must also accept its terms of use.

A Similarity Check can be performed up to three times on the same document. The checked text is not stored in Turnitin’s database, and the report is only visible to the author.

After the check, a summary of the check is displayed on the right-hand side of the Word. It allows you to quickly examine the similarities found. You can access the full report by clicking on the “View Full Report” button. Full Report is also the report format for the report available in Moodle.

For more information on using the Turnitin Draft Coach, see the Turnitin help page Turnitin Draft Coach FAQ (eng).

Whether you use the Moodle activity or Draft Coach in Word Online to check the text document, Turnitin will generate a report based on a database comparison. The report may take a while to generate depending on the length of the text.

An overview of the similarity matches can be found in the right-hand panel of the report window; it contains a list of all source matches found in the document, ordered by highest match to lowest match. Each matching source is color-coded and listed numerically to make it easier to distinguish between multiple matches.

In the side panel of the overview, select the source to search for a marked match in the document. The number and colour tags make it easy to match text and source matches marked in the document in the overview side panel. If necessary, you can exclude a source from the comparison by clicking on  icon or the ‘Exclude Match’ button.

Excluded sources can be returned by clicking on the “Exclusion” text at the top of the side panel. The sources can then be returned one by one or all at once. In this example, one source has been filtered out.

By clicking on the Filters button, selections can be made from the reference material to be used, and specifications can be made for the content to be excluded from the report, e.g., source lists, short parallels or direct quotes marked with quotation marks.

Sometimes there are several text matches from the same source. Selecting a source will display all related hits in the Hits overview side panel; you can move freely between them using the forward and back arrow keys. However, if there is only one hit associated with a source, the arrows are not used.

If required, the report can be saved and shared using the functions in the top right-hand corner of the report. The original document (Original Submission) can also be downloaded.

The information from Turnitin’s similarity check should help the author to make decisions on how to improve his/her writing. Whether it is for subsequent drafts of the same assignment or for future assignments of a different nature.

The Overall Similarity percentage is based on the textual similarities found in the document from Turnitin’s reference data. It is perfectly normal to find some similarities. The length of the text also has a relative impact on the percentage, i.e., short texts can have a significantly higher percentage than long texts. So, it is not worth paying too much attention to the percentage alone.

The similarity percentage does not directly indicate that there is plagiarism in the text. Similarities noted in a report should always be considered in context. Also, the accuracy of citations cannot be verified from the report based on the overall percentage. Translations between languages are not always revealed by the check. It should also be kept in mind that the Turnitin reference material does not cover all textual material, i.e., the check cannot find all similarities.

Turnitin recognizes duplicate copies of the same document sent by the author and does not recognize identical parts of the document as plagiarism.

• Let us first examine the whole report briefly to get an overview of the similarities.
• One way to continue looking at the report is to first look at the hits with the highest match percentages in the list. Are they direct quotes? Are they acceptable? Even if the source is acknowledged, long quotes are not considered acceptable.
• It is still a good idea to go through the report in a systematic way.
• Filter out from the report those similarities that can be considered acceptable, e.g., quotations with appropriate attribution.
• Other acceptable similarities may include a phrase/definition/expression that is well established in the jargon and should not be expressed differently. Other common expressions that are repeated in texts, such as the purpose of this thesis…
• The list of references can also be filtered out if necessary. In the English text, Turnitin identifies the bibliography by its title. It may not recognise the Finnish title, e.g., Sources, Source list.
• Matches that have no practical relevance can be filtered out. For example, matches with a small word count or percentage.

When editing a checked text document, please note that SeAMK templates work best in the desktop version of Word. It is recommended that only document review is done in Word Online and editing in the desktop version when using the template.