Turnitin Schoology Integration - How to Create a Turnitin Assignment and Check for Plagiarism (Grades 7-12)

    Teachers in Grades 7-12 can utilize Turnitin for students to submit work, which will check for plagiarism. Students can type into the box or upload a Word document, a PowerPoint presentation, a PDF, or a Google Doc/Slides/Sheets via Google Drive.

    To set up a Turnitin assignment:
    1. Go into one of your Courses.
    2. Click on 'Add Materials'.
    3. Click 'Add File/Link/External Tool'.
    4. Select 'External Tool'.
    5. Change the 'Tool Provider' drop-down to be 'Turnitin'.
    6. Give your Assignment a title, enable grading (if applicable), fill in the due date, grading options, and category.
    7. Click 'Submit'.
    8. Your newly created assignment will now be listed within the chosen course. Click on the assignment title to enter the Turnitin assignment inbox where you will be able to access the Turnitin assignment settings.


    Assignment settings

    Now that the base assignment has been created, you can adjust the assignment dates and maximum grade, as well as customize the assignment further. 

    1. Click on the settings gear.

    2. Add instructions and edit the Max Grade, Start Date, and Due Date (they were auto-populated when creating the assignment). Enter a Feedback Release Date (the date and time students can begin viewing your comments and grades).
    3. Enable PeerMark if desired.
    PeerMark™ is a peer review assignment tool. Instructors can create and manage PeerMark assignments that allow students to read, review, and evaluate one or many papers submitted by their classmates. With the advanced options in PeerMark instructors can choose whether the reviews are anonymous or attributed, decide if students should be excluded from reviews, or pair students to assign students specific papers to review.

    Select the checkbox to allow PeerMark assignments for this assignment. This will add two new PeerMark tabs to your Turnitin LTI tool.

    4. Adjust any Optional Settings by clicking on the 'Optional Settings' gear. These include:

    Submission storage options

    • Standard paper repository : Student papers will be checked against other institutions' student submissions.
    • Institution paper repository

      Student papers will only be checked against other student papers within your institution. With this setting enabled, if a student from your institution submits a paper matching a paper of a student from another institution, Turnitin will not identify this match.

    • Do not store the submitted papers

      A similarity report will still be generated for paper submissions, but your students' papers will not be stored in the Turnitin standard paper repository or the institution's paper repository for future comparison.

    • Student's choice of paper repository

      Students have the freedom to choose where they would like their paper to be saved. It is advised that this setting is only used if you do not intend to use Turnitin to assess originality.

    Allow submissions of any file type 

    Select the checkbox to allow all file types - even those that are not supported for generating a Similarity Report. This includes files that include media.

    Allow late submissions 

    Select the checkbox to allow late submissions for the assignment; students will be able to submit papers after the due date.

    Enable anonymous marking 

    Select the checkbox to obscure student names within the assignment inbox, Similarity Report and online grading until the assignment's feedback release date. Student names may be revealed for an assignment by clicking on the anonymous marking enabled button to reveal the author's name for the paper.

    If a student's name is revealed when anonymous marking is enabled, an audit trail will be created and your Turnitin administrator will receive a notification. Revealing student names in any way cannot be undone.

    Enable Translated Matching 

    Translated matching is an optional service offered by Turnitin, which allows your students to submit content in a non-English language, whilst retaining the ability to match against our vast database of English language content.

    When Translated Matching is enabled for an account, Turnitin will identify the language that a paper has been written in. This paper will then be fully translated into English. The resulting English language content is then matched against all the databases that have been activated for the assignment. If a match is found, this will be displayed alongside any matches we have found in the non-translated version of the paper.


    Translated matching currently supports the following languages:

    Arabic, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian Bokmal, Norwegian Nynorsk, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.

    Enable grammar checking using ETS® e-rater® technology

    e-rater grammar feedback technology, developed by ETS®, automatically checks submissions for grammar, usage, mechanics, style and spelling errors. This tool provides in-depth feedback with on-paper marks. To use e-rater technology for an assignment it must be enabled before any submissions have been made to the assignment.

    Select the checkbox to enable grammar checking and use the drop-down menu to select the schooling level of your class so that the correct handbook is made available. Select the dictionary applicable to your institution, and use the checkboxes to select or deselect the areas of a student's submission that you would like e-rater to provide feedback on.

    Attach a rubric 

    Rubric scorecards can be used to evaluate student work based on defined criteria and scales, as well as helping to assess institutional requirements. Select the checkbox to attach a rubric, then use the drop-down menu to select an already-created rubric for grading this assignment. Alternatively, select Launch Rubric Manager to create a new rubric.

    Compare against

    These search options allow you to select the repositories that students' submissions will be checked against when processing Similarity Reports for papers. The similarity score may decrease if a repository option is deselected.

    5. Press 'Save Settings'.


    Accessing and Interpreting Similarity Reports

    Please visit the Turnitin website to learn more about accessing and interpreting similarity reports: https://help.turnitin.com/feedback-studio/schoology/instructor/creating-and-managing-assignments/optional-lti-settings.htm#similarity-report.


    For more information on how to utilize Turnitin in Schoology, please visit the Turnitin Schoology Instructors page: Schoology Instructor (turnitin.com).



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