Reusing Turnitin Assignments

To avoid issues reusing Turnitin assignments when copying (importing) courses in Moodle, you must reset the Turnitin assignments in the newly copied class.  To do this, follow these steps immediately after the course has been copied:

1. For each course, login to the course, click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of the main course screen, and select Reset
2. Scroll down and click on the Turnitin Assignments tab
3. Select "Copy Turnitin Assignments"
4. Click Reset Course
5. A new page will display, confirming that the reset has been performed.
6. Click Continue

Once the reset is complete, your Turnitin assignments can be updated and are then ready to be used by students. 

Grammar Checking in TurnItIn Assignments

Even if you're not teaching a writing course, writing is an important component of many courses.  To help you provide constructive feedback on your students' writing, we have added the ETS e-rater grammar check software to GradeMark on TurnItIn. When creating a TurnItIn assignment, you'll have the option of enabling this feature, which will scan each submission for grammar errors and mark those errors in the GradeMark interface.

One strength of the GradeMark interface is its flexibility.  That same flexibility extends to the e-rater software:

• Choose which types of errors to be detected (e.g., usage or spelling)
• Dismiss e-rater comments on a case-by-case basis or dismiss entire categories of comments
• Add your own comments to each error to tailor the feedback to your students

E-rater also links to a grammar handbook, so students can read an in-depth explanation of each error and how to avoid it in the future.

The e-rater software is no substitute for a careful evaluation, but the comments provided by it provide an easy way to begin the process of providing feedback.  For information on setting up the e-rater feature and how to use it, see this guide on the Moodle Training Course.

Tips for Using the Moodle Turnitin Plugin

On occasion, professors and students do report uploading issues in Turnitin. Here are some tips that can be shared with students to make uploading to Turnitin a smooth and easy process:

1. Be sure that the submission is in an acceptable file format.  The list below contains accepted file types for plagiarism checking.  Please note that Pages files are not accepted, but Pages users can save their file into one of the accepted formats to submit. - Microsoft Word™ (DOC and DOCX)
   - Corel WordPerfect®
   - HTML
   - Adobe PostScript®
   - Plain text (TXT)
   - Rich Text Format (RTF)
   - Portable Document Format (PDF)
   - Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX, and PPS)
2. When you upload the file and then click the button to submit, make sure you do not close out of the window until you see the screen confirming your submission and providing your digital receipt.
3. Occasionally, Turnitin experiences an outage. Widespread outages are reported here: https://twitter.com/turnitinstatus
4. If you see an error message during the upload process, be sure to record it in case further troubleshooting needs to be done.
5. A temporary issue such as a weak internet connection or a heavy load on the system can sometimes prevent a file from submitting correctly.  Wait a few minutes and try again to see if the problem is resolved.
6. Still need help?  If the problem persists, visit the Client Services office for assistance submitting the file.  Be sure to inform the Client Service's staff of any specific errors that have occurred. Students can also contact Turnitin directly by submitting a ticket through Turnitin's Heldesk: https://turnitin.com/help/helpdesk.asp

You can learn more about using Turnitin with Moodle by viewing the Instructor Manual and Student Manual.