Canvas and Turnitin

dhulsey
Community Champion
573
277421
Introduction

Turnitin is well known for plagiarism and integrates with Canvas when an institution purchases a Trurnitin subscription. Many instructors rely on Turnitin.com services for plagiarism education, prevention, and detection. Turnitin is also a valuable tool for grading and peer reviews. Turnitin currently integrates with Canvas in two different ways, but Turnitin is phasing out the older method.

The oldest Turnitin integration with canvas is known as the API integration. Currently, Turnitin is phasing out this older integration, but still offers support to schools who are not having a good experience with the LTI.  

The newer method of using Turnitin is the LTI tool. Turnitin’s page for the LTI tool includes the official Admin, Instructor, and Student Guides

Tutorials from Instructure for using the Turnitin LTI can be found here: , How do I create a Turnitin assignment?, and How do I manage Turnitin assignments?

Canvas has also developed a more robust framework for plagiarism detection services: Spring Cleaning Is Coming: Plagiarism-Detection Improvements Headed Your Way! Turnitin has announced that they will be continuing the LTI plugin while also developing a new plugin using the framework canvas is developing. The target release for the new plugin is Fall 2017. This new plugin promises Turnitin assignment creation within Canvas's interface for those who wish to use Canvas for most operations but would like an originality report from Turnitin. Users who wish to grade in Turnitin or use Peermark will wish to use the LTI version. However, Turnitin says institutions will be able to run both the LTI and the new plugin simultaneously. 

What is "Feedback Studio"?

Feedback studio is the name for an interface overhaul for Turnitin that took place in mid 2016. You can see an interactive tour and demonstration of the interface (Note the ability to use bold, underline, italics and hotlinked text in Grademark comments).  The materials in this blog now refer to feedback Studio, but only Grademark and originality reports have been incorporated into Feedback Studio. Peermark and its interface has not changed at this time.

Does Feedback Studio alter any functionality?

Yes, but the changes only affect the grading functionality of Turnitin.  As of May 23, 2016, the ability to view the complete list of Grademark comments is missing. For students, the implementation of rubrics in Feedback Studio is clunky as I discuss in this video:

Thankfully, Turnitin is listening and refining Feedback Studio. As of early 2017, the ability to search for quick marks while grading has been restored.

As a local Canvas Administrator, how do I configure the Turnitin LTI?

There are multiple sets of instructions with varying levels of detail for local canvas Administrators on the Turnitin website. Here is the best set of instructions, and here is the current configuration of the Turnitin LTI at the account level for my school:

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1. Name the configuration.

2. The consumer key is provided to your account by Turnitin.

3. The launch url is provided by Turnitin and is the same for all institutions. The launch url for Turnitin UK Users is https://submit.ac.uk/api/lti/1p0/assignment.

4. Completing the domain field with "turnitin.com" ("turnitin.uk.com" for UK users) enables Turnitin to launch from the Canvas speedgrader report icons.

5. Setting the privacy to public allows Canvas to share student names and emails with Turnitin.

6. Turnitin documentation states that the Custom Fields may be left blank. However, adding the code developed by canvas engineers adds several convenient features that sync information between canvas and Turnitin so that instructors do not need to enter information in both Canvas and Turnitin, including due dates, assignment id's, assignment titles, points possible, and availability dates. The graphic depicts all of the available codes.

Here is a short video demonstrating the syncing features added by the custom code.

Can my institution enable both the API version and the LTI version as we transition to the LTI?

Turnitin has offered varying answers on this question. The latest answer is yes. In an email sent to local Turnitin instructors on 4-11-2016, Turnitin states, "For those who are wondering, it is possible to run the legacy Canvas integration and Canvas LTI integration in parallel during the transition period."

What happens to API enabled assignments when the API version gets shut off?

In an email sent to local Turnitin instructors on 4-11-2016, Turnitin states, "When the previous Canvas integration becomes unavailable, classes and assignments originally created through the previous integration will remain accessible by logging into Turnitin directly. These older classes and assignments will not be visible in the LTI integration."  Although, I believe this access is limited to Turnitin administrators.

On the Canvas side, The API enabled assignments stay in Canvas and all Canvas functionality remains intact when the Turnitin API gets turned off. Submissions and grading in Canvas persists in Canvas once you turn off the API; only the link to Turnitin is lost, which means losing direct access to originality reports and any grading done in Turnitin. Although, with the API turned off and LTI turned on, you can currently see the icons and percent in the speedgrader for past assignments. If you try to click on the icon, you get this error message:

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The text "Turnitin has been enabled for this assignment" persists in Canvas assignments when the API has been turned off but the LTI tool has not been turned on for that assignment even if the course is copied for a new term Of course, there is no way of knowing if this will change once Turnitin phases out the API altogether.

An instructor who wants to preserve grading in Turnitin from the API version for personal access, must save the grading as a .pdf one paper at a time before the API gets turned off. Originality reports can be saved one at a time, or reports can be reproduced by resubmitting the file to Turnitin and disregarding the first submission when interpreting the originality report.

When we turned on the LTI, I converted my existing assignments to use the LTI without issue.

Do teachers and students have to sign up for an account at Turnitin.com?

No one absolutely needs to create a separate Turnitin account. The tool uses the email address in the user's Canvas profile as an identifier, and log in from Canvas is seamless even for first time users. However, the instructor cannot use the Canvas test student for testing the LTI tool because the test student does not include a profile and email address. When I started using the LTI, I had a previous Turnitin account under the same email my Canvas profile uses, so the tool recognized me and put all submissions into my preexisting account.

If an instructor accessed Turnitin for the first time in the LTI and then later had a desire or need to access information in the web interface at Turnitin.com, the instructor can go through the forgotten password process at Turitin.com to set up a password and then can begin to use the webinterface. It is probably advisable for an instructor to have access to the Turnitin.com interface for using the iPad app, submitting for students at Turnitin.com, managing rubrics and saved grading comments, etc.

Does the LTI version of Turnitin have feature X?

Yes! All of the major Turnitin features are present in the LTI version, including originality reports and grading (with reusable comments, rubrics, etc.) through Feedback Studio, e-rater (automated comments), grade anything (PowerPoint Excel, etc.),  peer review (in Peermark), ios app, and cloud submit.

How does an instructor set up an assignment using the LTI tool?

Instructors add Turnitin as an external app to an assignment. This video demonstrates the process (assuming you have enabled the custom codes in your LTI configuration for Turnitin:

When creating an assignment, should I load Turnitin in a new tab?

I prefer to use a new tab, but there are pros and cons to both approaches. Probably the most important thing is to be consistent on your campus to avoid confusing students. Here is a video showing what each option looks like:

Update:  As of June 30, 2016, Instructors must no longer launch a Turnitin assignment to initiate the assignment in Turnitin. The Turnitin release notes state, "Students can now launch into an assignment and trigger its creation; this relieves instructors from being forced to have first interaction with the assignment before students are able to submit." However, the instructor must set an available from date and a due date in Canvas to allow students to initialize an assignment.

How do students submit to a Turnitin LTI assignment?

Go here for a .pdf tutorial on uploading a word processing file to a Turnitin assignment.

How do students complete peer reviews?

Here is a .pdf tutorial on using PeerMark.

I want to set up an assignment sequence of rough draft, peer review, and final draft.

You will need two assignments in Canvas / Turnitin. The first assignment will be for students to submit drafts and critique each other with Peermark. The second assignment will be for the submission of the final draft. This video tutorial demonstrates setting up an assignment and adding a Peer review component with Peermark. Note that only the grade on the paper in Grademark gets passed back to the canvas gradebook, so if you want to grade Peer reviews, you can add reviews into the paper grade (what I do), or you can set up an assignment with no submission and manually enter grades for the peer reviews:

How does the grading work?

An instructor can choose to grade using Turnitin's Grademark or Canvas's Speedgrader.

I do all of my grading in Turnitin's Grademark. I use the Quickmarks (saved comments I can reuse) with a rubric and enter the grade in Turnitin. The grade gets passed to the Gradebook in Canvas. It actually works quite a bit like the Canvas Speedgrader, and you can advance from student to student as well as quickly flip through all of a student's submissions for the term. I prefer Turnitin's Grademark because I can save and reuse remarks (with clickable url's!). Turnitin also can layer the originality report and Grademark, so the instructor can see the originality report while grading. Unlike the older API plugin, Quickmarks, rubrics, and PeerMark libraries persist across Canvas courses, so there is no need for importing or exporting Turnitin assets after the initial use.

As of the August 29, 2015 update, the student submits the paper to Turnitin, and Turnitin sends a copy of the paper to Canvas. The copy of the paper in Canvas may be graded in the Speedgrader, but if you wish to use a Canvas rubric, you must add the rubric to the assignment before configuring the assignment submission as an external tool.

How do students receive their feedback?

Here is a tutorial for receiving instructor feedback through Grademark. If the instructor chooses to grade in the Canvas speedgrader, then the process is the same as it is for any other Canvas assignment except that the student can also click on the Turnitin icon to view her originality report.

How can I tell if my students have viewed their feedback?

If you use Grademark for grading, you can access the Turnitin inbox through the link on your Canvas assignment:

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In the image above of a Turnitin assignment inbox, the eye icon indicates a student who has viewed feedback. The dots are students who have not seen the feedback.

Will Turnitin send a grade from Turnitin to the Canvas Gradebook?

Yes! Grades entered in Turnitin automatically get posted to the Canvas grade book. However, this is a one way link. Grades posted in Canvas do not show up in Turnitin.  

Can I use the Turnitin iPad app to grade?

I use it all of the time! In fact, the iPad Turnitin app does something nothing else does right now: you can download papers to the iPad and grade them without an Internet connection, using a rubric and Quickmarks (saved and reusable comments). Then, when you hit wifi again, the papers sync back to Turnitin (and therefore to Canvas).

Where can I see the originality report for a paper?

Icons for the originality report show up in the Canvas speedgrader and gradebook.  The full report can be seen by clicking on the icon in the speedgrader or accessing the LTI tool from the Canvas assignment or through the Turnitin iPad app.

What happens when I copy a course in Canvas?

The assignment, settings, instructions, and dates persist in Canvas when an instructor copies a course for a new term.The LTI assignment must be visited (if you load TII inside of Canvas or the LTI tool must be launched (if you load in a new tab) to reestablish the assignment and settings on the Turnitin side. Now, a student can access the assignment from Canvas to initialize the assignment in Turnitin; However, the instructor must set an available from date and a due date in Canvas to allow students to initialize an assignment.

How can I use Turnitin with an essay question on a Canvas Quiz to get an originality report?

There are two options.

The first option is to use a file upload question in the quiz. This allows students to upload a file in response to the question, and the instructor can bulk download the files from the quiz as documented in How do I create a File Upload quiz question?.  Once the students' files are downloaded in a zip file, the instructor could upload the zip file to the Submitting via quick submit https://guides.turnitin.com/01_Manuals_and_Guides/Instructor/Instructor_User_Manual/37_Quick_Submit on Turnitin's website. This is one good reason for instructors to set up accounts through Turnitin's interface and enable the quick submit in their settings.

The second option is to use essay questions in the quiz. After the students complete the quiz, the instructor can generate an item analysis. Download the item analysis and open it. Next, locate the column with the essay responses you wish to scan, and it helps here if you can search for a key word to locate the column. I always include the word "essay" in my essay questions, which lets me locate the columns I need quickly. Next, copy the column and submit it to Turnitin via cut and paste with Submitting via quick submit 

Here is a video that demonstrates using quick submit:

I want to check discussion posts for originality.

A feature request for using Turnitin on Canvas discussions is under review: . In the meantime, you can navigate to a discussion, select the entire page (ctrl A on Windows; Command A on Mac). Next, use Submitting via quick submit  on Turnitin's website and paste in the text. Some text you may not want will be included like the discussion prompts and your discussion replies to students, but if you can live with that, you can batch scan the posts, and what you copy even includes each student's name, so you know who wrote each post:

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I want to use the Turnitin LTI but need a Canvas rubric for grading / assessment

Create your assignment as a Canvas assignment without linking it to Turnitin. Save the assignment. Add your rubric to the assignment, and edit the assignment to enable Turnitin. I

Can Students submit to Turnitin LTI assignments from the Canvas mobile apps?

Not at this time. As per Canvas iOS app and External Apps(LTI), Turnitin needs to make its LTI tool fully compatible for a mobile environment. However, it is possible for students to submit essays by using the browser on their mobile device. Additionally, Turnitin's iPad app supports student use for submitting papers  and viewing feedback. For students to gain access to the iPad app, they should go through the password recovery process after accessing Turnitin at least once through the canvas integration.

Are there any complications with the Turnitin LTI tool?

There is some loss of Canvas functionality that may affect some instructors:

  • Turnitin assignments will only accept one file per assignment.
  • Using differentiated due dates as documented inHow do I assign an Assignment to an individual student or course section? breaks date syncing with Turnitin because Turnitin can only handle one set of dates per assignment. As a workaround, an instructor could set a date in Turnitin that corresponds with the last date in Canvas, allowing all groups to submit to the same assignment, but this only works if your school is not using the custom codes to automatically sync due dates with Turnitin.  Alternatively, an instructor could set up multiple assignments, releasing each assignment only to one subset of students.
  • If an instructor wishes to alter a Canvas rubric on a Turnitin assignment, she must Turn off the LTI to alter the rubric and then reinstate the LTI when done editing the rubric. Warning: disabling the LTI after students have submitted will severe the connection between Canvas and the LTI; you should only do this if students have not submitted.
  • It is not possible to use the Turnitin LTI (or any other external tool submission) with a Canvas group assignment; the option to assign to a group disappears as soon as "External Tool" is selected as the submission type.

I have a question that is not answered here.

You can comment on this blog, and I am happy to help, but I do not work for Instructure or Turnitin and have no inside information. I am an English Professor, and I use the Turnitin LTI tool in Canvas daily. 

I do not like something about the Turnitin LTI. Who should I make aware of my displeasure?

Most issues are going to be with Turnitin. File bug reports and give feedback at Turnitin - Support Wizard.  You can also contact your local Canvas admin to pass feedback to the Turnitin rep for your institution. I encourage you to do this. Let Turnitin know that Canvas users want and deserve their attention. Turnitin is a great product, but it is also an expensive one. Get the most for your money by getting your feedback to the right folks.

However, it is also true that Canvas and Turnitin are working together, and Instructure Employees have initiated discussions on the following known issues:

Turnitin + Canvas: submissions appearing on the wrong assignment

Turnitin + Canvas issue: "Resubmit to Turnitin" button occasionally results in submission getting st...

Turnitin + Canvas: Allow teachers to resubmit on behalf of students

Canvas + Turnitin: Retreive TII originality score again after due date has passed

Questions? If so, please don’t be shy!

Does Feedback Studio alter any functionality?

573 Comments
Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

 @brueckert , I am 99% certain that this is not currently possible, because there is a feature idea currently open for voting that requests this very functionality:

brueckert
Community Champion

Thank you stefaniesanders, I think any feature that improves the ease of use of the TII LTI is worth an upvote, though am I right that we would actually need to work through TII and not Instructure in this case?

dhulsey
Community Champion

This should already be possible, Brian as long as the instructor does not change  the file names or types during the process. Here are the related tutorials:

How do I bulk download Assignment submissions in Canvas?

How do I bulk upload Assignment submissions in Canvas?

The students, of course, will need to use Speedgrader to retrieve their graded files, but the instructor will not need to do any grading there.

Do do you think that will work?

brueckert
Community Champion

Thank you Dallas; I forgot about the dropdown in the gradebook. How does this work with Turnitin LTI active on the assignment though? Will the Canvas re-upload pass through to Turnitin again, or will these marked up papers stay on the Canvas side of things?

dhulsey
Community Champion

I don't think so. I thought the re-uploads from the instructor get attached to the assignment as submission comments, not as resubmissions to the assignment. 

The bigger problem (and I should have tested this last night) is that the download link in the grade book does not appear if the LTI is enabled. You might want to try filing that as a bug because there are file submissions there, and I don't see why you shouldn't be able to bulk download and upload to / from Canvas for grading.

The other option would  be to not enable the LTI. The instructor could use pure Canvas functions for the papers and submit the zip file from the bulk submission to the Quick submit feature at Turnitin.com.

brueckert
Community Champion

I apologize if this has been addressed already, but I've had a teacher report that Turnitin LTI assignments aren't populating the student calendars or their upcoming assignments section of their dashboards. I've double checked the LTI settings and everything is configured correctly (and seemed to work fine when I ran through some tests prior to our Winter break). Has anyone else seen this behavior?

Chris_Hofer
Community Coach
Community Coach

Seems to be working fine for my "dummy" student account,  @brueckert ​.  The assignment showed up in the calendar on the day that it was due, and it also appeared on the Dashboard.

jared_flaherty
Community Contributor

if you don't assign a due date in Canvas, then turnitin will automatically stick a due date of +7 days from the date of creation.    this will not display in the Canvas calendar, nor syllabus area.        my tests show that when assignment of a due date is done in Canvas, it does indeed show in the calendar and syllabus areas.

brueckert
Community Champion

Thank you  @Chris_Hofer , and  @jared_flaherty . This is a frustrating problem to troubleshoot as everything worked properly in my tests as well. I'll have to dig in to how these particular assignments were configured.

hristovt
Community Novice

Do students see a Canvas grading rubric when they submit a TurnItIn assignment? It seems that students cannot see the assignment rubric unless the instructor duplicates the rubric as a TurnItIn rubric in the optional settings. Is this correct?

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

 @hristovt , if the instructor created the assignment as a regular online assignment, then attached a Canvas grading rubric, and then changed the submission type to External Tool (Turnitin), the student will see the Canvas grading rubric only if he or she navigates to the Submission Details screen as described here: LTI External Tools - Ability to Add Rubric.  In addition, the instructor can choose to take a screenshot of the rubric and include it in the assignment description, as I described earlier in that same thread. I hope you'll add your feedback to the feature idea.

Chris_Hofer
Community Coach
Community Coach

When you are in the Turnitin LTI interface as an instructor, you have the option of adding a rubric to your assignment.  (This is not the same as adding a Canvas rubric.)  If you build the rubric via the Turnitin interface, students would be able to see it prior to submitting the assignment via Turnitin.  In order to use a Canvas rubric, you would create your assignment and rubric in Canvas first...then, instead of selecting the options for submitting online, on paper, etc., you would choose "External Tool" and then select the Turnitin LTI.  The Canvas rubric will still be a part of the assignment...it's just that it's sort of hidden because you are now using the Turnitin LTI interface.  You could still access the Canvas rubric through the SpeedGrader for the assignment.

You might want to consider voting for this Feature Idea...which I originally suggested but has been brought up again by someone else and is getting more votes:

jared_flaherty
Community Contributor

Shall we start talking about Revision Assistant here?    

dhulsey
Community Champion

I have never used it, and I don't think it is built into the Turnitin  LTI currently. The first step would probably be to make a feature request to Turnitin for support in Canvas. Jared, is Revision Assistant sold as a separate product from Turnitin?

jared_flaherty
Community Contributor

It was just announced this morning I think.    It does look like it is included with our service, it's an option in the turnitin.com options when creating a new assignment.       Definitely does not look like it is in the Canvas LTI.     Huge bummer, as I was really hoping to roll out our new partnership with turnitin (we just got our license January 15th) exclusively through Canvas.     This new feature looks to be very, very valuable and will have to be rethink our strategy b/c of it.

crafte
Community Champion

We have started to notice some odd things when papers submitted to Turnitin drop boxes are opened in SpeedGrader. Anytime a student submits a paper, Crocodoc (in SpeedGrader) will create a 'Paper Extract' version of the original paper as well. For some students this 'Paper Extract' is set to be the second (most recent) submission and the actual paper seems to be listed as the first submission. The instructor adds comments to the student's uploaded paper using the Crocodoc commenting tools in SpeedGrader. Students can only see their most recent paper submission. This means the student is only able to view the 'Paper Extract' created by Crocodoc but not the actual paper with the instructor's comments.

Another issue is happening when instructors allow students to resubmit their papers to the Turnitin drop box. Again the problem occurs in SpeedGrader. It seems when a student resubmits a paper, the original paper reappears as another submission listed with the same time stamp as the resubmission. At some point the originality report for the resubmission appears in the Turnitin drop box but not in SpeedGrader. It stays listed as pending or with an error message.

Has anyone else noticed these issues?

snugent
Community Champion

I think I know the answer to this question but I just want a confirmation. Can students submit TurnItIn assignments via the Canvas app? I reviewed the documentation in the Canvas Community and on the TurnItIn website and couldn't find anything that referred the Canvas app. Thanks

jared_flaherty
Community Contributor
snugent
Community Champion

Here is a review of the TurnItIn Revision Assistant via IHE. I would like to know if this is part of the TurnItIn license or is it licensed separately? 

Turnitin, expanding beyond plagiarism detection, launches Revision Assistant

dhulsey
Community Champion

 @crafte ​​, that sounds like it is worth a bug report. However, I am wondering if you have both the API and LTI versions enabled? If so, turning off the API version might help. That still won't solve the issue of instructors who allow multiple submissions on the Turnitin side, and I would definitely make a bug report about that one. For TII  bug reports, I have gotten good results with making a screencast, posting it to YouTube and sending the video link to both Canvas and TII support.

snugent​, Students cannot submit a paper to an LTI Turnitin assignment. The LTI link does not appear in the Canvas app. According to Instructure, TII would need to make their LTI tool fully "mobile friendly." Students probably could get the job done in their mobile browser though. Another interesting element is that adding support for students is coming to Turnitin's mobile app (at an unknown date), so I wonder if support for LTI assignments might show up there.

I think revision assistant is included in the current TII subscription. I can now create a "Revision Assignment" through Turnitin's web portal. I am going to dig into the revision assistant in the next few weeks, but it is the first week of classes for us, so it will be a bit before I can get to it. Of course, it looks like Jared has the scoop on the revision assistant!

 @jared_flaherty ​, that is an awesome find! Thanks for sharing that. Time to start experimenting!

snugent
Community Champion

FYI

The TurnItIn website and service is down.

Turnitin Status (@TurnitinStatus) | Twitter

snugent
Community Champion

It is back up now.

brendaa
Community Contributor

We're still not seeing the Turntin Settings in the Canvas LTI integration.

snugent
Community Champion

It is has been up for us since I posted the last message. I was on their website and it went down again for few minutes. Apparently they had DDOS attack.

morris_admin
Community Contributor

Regarding Revision Assistant and the LTI, I submitted an inquiry yesterday received the following response:

Turnitin Revision Assistant is a new product which is purchased separately from Classic Turnitin. Your school's Turnitin account administrator will need to contact your Turnitin sales representative to discuss adding the Revision Assistant product.

I'd be interested to hear if anyone hears differently from TII!

Thanks!

dhulsey
Community Champion

Wll, that is sad. TII is already pretty expensive. Smiley Sad

jared_flaherty
Community Contributor

Yes, this is sad news indeed.    I emailed my rep and got this response:

Revision Assistant (RA) is not included as part of the Turnitin Service and I sold as a separate application

linitzk
Community Novice

Still completely non-functional for us (and much of the world, apparently).  Really unhappy with turnitin - spent the last week trying to reconcile our faculty to dealing with the irritating new LTI process and interface, and now this.  #TurnedOffByTurnitin

linitzk
Community Novice

BTW, Canvas folks: No reflection on you.  I will be sharing my unhappiness with turnitin, but only way I can reach thme right now is by tweet, and it seems mean not to wait until they're out of crisis mode.  :smileyplain:

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Well,  @linitzk ​, you're not alone. Smiley Wink  My dealings with Turnitin have always been most unpleasant and by and large unproductive.

I'm sure it's been linked earlier in this blog, but if you haven't seen it, add your feedback here:   Frankly, I doubt Instructure would be willing to devote resources to implementing such a feature, but it's worth discussing the alternatives. Perhaps someone is using the Unplag LTI and can tell us about it?

buellj
Community Contributor

Hi All,

In case anyone runs into this. We switched over to the LTI integration winter break and had our first pants-on-fire need to get an old originality report. The links within Canvas no longer worked and we were never able unable to access the originality reports within the Turnitin Admin interface due to the API integration's use of null email addresses instead of the instructor's real email address. We called Turnitin Support and they refused to send the old originality reports via email. Escalating to a manager they landed on the solution of making me the instructor for all of the old API courses so that I could access the old reports as needed via the Turnitin admin interface.

So the old reports are accessible for account administrators if this method is used.

John

dwillmore
Community Champion

This is very helpful, and a fair workaround for the issue.

crafte
Community Champion

Hi  @dhulsey ​, thank you for the suggestion. We removed the API prior to the new term start. Everything seems to be working well in the Turnitin drop box. The problems are only in SpeedGrader. The originality reports appear in the Turnitin drop box but not in SpeedGrader. The problem seems to occur when the copy of the students' papers are received in the Canvas assignment to provide access in SpeedGrader. According to Instructure the problem is on their end since Turnitin is receiving the submissions.

jared_flaherty
Community Contributor

Heylo Everybody-

I'm looking for some help understanding "available active students" in our LTI integration.         It looks like our school purchased a license for X number of students, as it states in my admin view:

this accounts applicable student limit:   XX,XXX

Does anyone know how a student becomes 'in'activated?        We are planning on utilizing turnitin strictly through Canvas.

Thanks!

Jared

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

Hello,  @jared_flaherty ​! Although I was not a Turnitin administrator, I worked with the TII admin at our school to make sure that students were "deactivated" in a timely fashion. I believe the process requires you to send a list of students who will no longer be active (e.g., because they have graduated) to your Turnitin account rep periodically, and he or she will in turn take care of removing those students from the Turnitin "roster." You will want to keep on top of that, because if you do not, and your school reaches the license limit, assignment submissions to Turnitin that occur after the limit has been reached will not be processed. So check with your account rep at Turnitin for additional information on how to deactivate students and stay under your licensed limit.

jared_flaherty
Community Contributor

Thanks, Stefanie!  

Adam_King
Community Novice

Disappointed that this new LTI method doesn't support group assignments. Sad that we are losing this functionality Smiley Sad. How have schools worked around this limitation? These are the options I see:

Option 1:

Tell students that they will no longer have the ability to submit as a group and won't be able to see what and when their teammate submitted. Tell faculty that they will no longer be able to grade students together as groups and won't be able to tell which groups have or haven't submitted.

Option 2:

We don't enable TurnItIn on group assignments, instead putting text in the assignment description that "Group assignments will be randomly checked via TurnItIn". Students and faculty then retain all group functionality, but faculty would need to manually run papers via IT through TurnItIn. We would set up a separate catch-all TurnItIn assignment outside of the course, where students can check their paper against TurnItIn on their own. That way the students can see if their paper has problems (though the 24 hr re-submission delay is problematic).

Adam_King
Community Novice

Do any TurnItIn competitors support group assignments?

dhulsey
Community Champion

Hey, Adam. If I were using groups, I would stick with the Group assignment functionality in Canvas and run all submissions through Turnitin. Since Canvas allows downloading zip files of all submissions and Turnitin accepts zip files with many files, downloading all of the submissions and then submitting them to TII's quick submit feature only takes an instructor a minute or two. The bulk download and submission would also work well for preserving maximum Canvas functionality and still doing plagiarism screening. Here is a video: Quick Submit - YouTube.

As far as I know, no LTI tool supports group assignments; the group assignment option disappears as soon as you select "External Tool" in the assignment settings, so this seems to be a limitation with either LTI or the way LTI is implemented in Canvas -- I am not sure which.

Adam_King
Community Novice

Thanks Dallas and great video! I'll definitely look into that quick submit option and running the group papers through TII that way!

Adam_King
Community Novice

Hi Dallas, I've created a feature request now titled: "Support Group Assignments with External Tools (LTI) Assignment Types". I'm not sure if this is a Canvas or LTI limitation either, but maybe someone from Instructure will chime in. It would be nice to have group assignment support with LTI!

morris_admin
Community Contributor

Hello All,

I am working with an instructor who teaches two sections of the same course. Both sections are using an assignment set up for the Turnitin LTI in the same way. In one section, some of the student papers are not transferring over to SpeedGrader and in the other section, it's all working fine. We have TII set up at the account level and so far haven't had a problem with papers transferring. Is this happening to anyone else? Is there anyway to "push" the paper back to Canvas from TII? I tried grading it in TII, and while the grade comes over as expected, the paper did not.

I have a ticket in to Canvas but thought I would check here too!

tdelillo
Community Champion

I heard that at least one of our instructors was having that same problem. I didn't get the details, so I don't know if they submitted a ticket or found any workarounds.

snugent
Community Champion

I am curious if both sections exist in the same course or are they in separate courses? I ask this because I noticed in our TurnItIn admin a TurnItIn course is created the first time the external TurnItIn tool is used in Canvas. I am wondering if the sections exist in the same Canvas course if that might be causing a conflict?? 

dhulsey
Community Champion

Hi, Jessica! In fact, someone else has been having this issue and has reported it as a bug: Submissions through Turnitin LTI not appearing in SpeedGrader.

gncrum
Community Contributor

Does anyone know if it is possible to submit multiple files to a Turnitin assignment through the Canvas Turnitin LTI? For instance, if assignment requires two different file types( a powerpoint and a pdf). It does not look like the Turnitin box accepts a zip file and if you resubmit to the assignment the dialog box warns that the previous submission will be removed...

Thanks,

Greg

dhulsey
Community Champion

Hi, Greg. Turnitin LTI assignments can only accept one file per student. Depending on the optional settings, an instructor can prohibit students from multiple submissions or, as you observe, multiple submissions will be accepted, but the new file overwrites the previous file (destroying any critiques or feedback for the earlier submission).

In the particular situation you describe, I would have the students publish the PowerPoint as a .pdf, merge it with the other .pdf file for a single submission. My theory is that Turnitin converts most files to .pdf to display in their viewer anyhow.

I realize having students combine everything into one file will not be possible in all cases, but maybe it helps?

amanda_taintor
Community Contributor

I know this was addressed a year ago on this thread but I have high hopes the answer is different now. Can an instructor upload a student submission into turnitin from Canvas? This was very easy to complete from blackboard but from what I have read so far an instructor must log into turnitin to upload a student submission. Is this still the case?

Thanks!

dhulsey
Community Champion

Yes, it is still the case. Although, there is a feature request to allow professors to submit assignments on the behalf of students in Canvas: ​. Of course, it is not clear how implementation in canvas would affect operation of an external LTI tool. I hope that helps!

Adam_King
Community Novice

Hi Amanda, one workaround that I use to get an originality report is that I create a TurnItIn assignment in a sandbox course (a place where I test things in Canvas). Then, I submit the paper using one of my test accounts. I bet it would also work using the "test student" (student view). When setting up the assignment, I usually set it so that the paper is not included in the TurnItIn paper repository.