Turnitin checks student submissions against web pages, publications, and other student papers and creates a similarity report. Used well, it’s a teaching tool that helps students learn to quote, paraphrase, and cite correctly, and it helps you start conversations about academic integrity. Turnitin is available in every Citadel Canvas course.
Get Started
Add Turnitin to an Assignment
- In Course Navigation, click Assignments.
- Click the +Assignment button at the top right.
- After adding the assignment title, instructions, points, and other details, in the Submission Type dropdown, select Online.
- Under Online Entry Options, select Text Entry, File Upload, or both.
- In the Plagiarism Review dropdown, select Turnitin.
- Set the Turnitin options to fit your assignment.
- Set the rest of the assignment options, such as Group Assignment, Peer Review, and Availability and Due Dates, and click Save & Publish or Save.
Tell Students
Let students know which assignments use Turnitin and how you’ll use the reports. Every course’s Start Here module includes an Understanding Turnitin Similarity Reports page for students.
Understanding Similarity Reports
A similarity report shows where a submission matches other sources. A similarity score is not a plagiarism score. A high score doesn’t always mean plagiarism, and a low score doesn’t always mean there’s no problem. There’s no “safe” percentage. Always review the highlighted text yourself.
Types of Matches
Turnitin’s report may sort matches into the four groups below. Even if your report doesn’t show these groups, they’re a useful way to decide what kind of feedback a student needs.
| Type of match | What it means | How to respond |
|---|---|---|
| Not cited or quoted | Matching text has no quotation marks and no citation | The most serious concern. Review it closely and talk with the student. |
| Missing quotation | The source is cited, but exact words aren’t in quotation marks | Often a skill gap. Teach the student when quotation marks are needed. |
| Missing citation | Quotation marks are used, but the source isn’t credited correctly | Often a citation or formatting error. Ask the student to correct it. |
| Cited and quoted | Matching text is quoted and cited | The academic standard. Check that the sources are real and used accurately. |
Source Types
- Internet sources let you compare the student’s text side by side with the matching web page.
- Submitted works are papers from other students. They may be labeled as private content, so you can’t view the full match. Review these carefully.
Flags
Turnitin may also flag signs that a student tried to trick the system:
- Hidden characters: text colored white so it can’t be seen, sometimes used to pad word count or lower the similarity score
- Text replacement: letters swapped with look-alike characters from another alphabet, so copied words don’t register as matches
Flags like these are a serious concern and call for a conversation with the student about academic integrity.
Read Each Report in Context
- Review every highlight yourself. The color in SpeedGrader and the percentage in the report show you where to look. They don’t tell you whether there’s a problem.
- Ignore expected matches. Correctly cited paraphrasing, reference lists, common phrases, and your own assignment prompt can all appear as matches.
- Consider the assignment. Some assignments naturally produce similar language across students.
- Look for patterns. An occasional citation mistake is a teaching moment. Repeated problems after feedback may be an academic integrity concern.
AI Writing Detection: Use with Caution
Turnitin also shows an AI writing indicator, which estimates how much of a submission may have been written by generative AI. The AI indicator is not proof that a student used AI, and it should never be the only basis for an academic integrity decision.
Why the AI Score Has Serious Limits
- It can be wrong in both directions. It can flag work a student wrote on their own, and miss AI-written text, especially text that has been paraphrased or edited.
- Independent testing found these tools unreliable. Researchers tested 14 AI detection tools, including Turnitin, and concluded they were “neither accurate nor reliable.” Simple editing or paraphrasing of AI-written text greatly reduced detection (Weber-Wulff et al., 2023).
- Some writers are more likely to be wrongly flagged. In one study, AI detectors labeled more than half of essays written by non-native English speakers as AI-generated, even though students wrote them (Liang et al., 2023).
- Low scores are especially unreliable. Turnitin shows scores below 20% as an asterisk instead of a number, because results in that range are less reliable and false positives are more likely.
- It can’t show how a student used AI. Even an accurate score can’t tell you whether a student used AI in a way your course allows, such as brainstorming or grammar help.
What to Do Instead of Relying on the Score
- Treat the score as one piece of information, never as a conclusion.
- Look at the student’s process. Review drafts, outlines, version history, and earlier work in your course.
- Talk with the student. Ask them to explain their ideas, sources, and how they completed the work.
- Check your expectations. Make sure your AI expectations were clear for that assignment.
- Follow The Citadel’s academic integrity process if you still have concerns.
The strongest protection is assignment design. Process checkpoints, in-class work, oral explanations, and course-specific tasks show students’ own thinking far better than any detector. See Teaching in the Age of AI and Assessment, Grading, and Rubrics.
Use Turnitin as a Teaching Tool
- Set clear expectations. Explain your expectations for original work and citation in your syllabus and assignment directions.
- Check drafts. Let students submit a draft and review the similarity report with them, so they can fix quoting, paraphrasing, and citation problems before the final version.
- Teach with the report. Walk through a sample report in class to show what good paraphrasing and citation look like.
- Focus on learning. Use matches as a chance to coach students on using sources well, especially early in a course.
For more on academic integrity, see the Academic Integrity Certificate.
Get Help
- Turnitin resources: See Turnitin’s guide to AI writing detection in the classic report view.
- CEITL support: Email CEITL@citadel.edu for help setting up Turnitin or reading a report.
Sources
Liang, W., Yuksekgonul, M., Mao, Y., Wu, E., & Zou, J. (2023). GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers. Patterns, 4(7), 100779. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2023.100779
Weber-Wulff, D., Anohina-Naumeca, A., Bjelobaba, S., Foltýnek, T., Guerrero-Dib, J., Popoola, O., Šigut, P., & Waddington, L. (2023). Testing of detection tools for AI-generated text. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 19, Article 26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-023-00146-z
Have a question? Contact CEITL