[External Tools] Enable Turnitin for Discussion Posts

[tlake2]

Greetings:

Thank you for your time in reviewing this idea.

It would be wonderful if Turnitin were enabled for Discussions posts and responses.

This would prevent students from cobbling together information from online sources to write original discussion posts.  It would be optimal if the Turnitin feature worked like the one provided for assignment submissions, so that students and faculty can see the percentage of match, etc.  This would be another great tool for helping students understand the importance of originality and avoiding plagiarism.

Thank you very much for your consideration.

[eoEgerton]

Before teaching in higher ed, I had always thought the value of discussion forums lied in their potential to promote higher-order thinking and had never thought of it as a potential vehicle for plagiarism. In ideal academe, discussion forums would have well-defined expectations for students to think critically about real-world applications, post thoughtful, original content, and invite peers to engage in meaningful conversations; however, the reality is that many assignments fall short and students find shortcuts.  "Turn It In" would be a fantastic addition to deter even a glimmer of desire to circumvent the system and encourage students to stay focused on the task for which they are responsible.

[AngelaTaylor]

I'm an instructor who assigns weekly discussion posts. Enabling Turnitin within Canvas would be a very useful feature!

[mwroberts]

Just caught a student who plagiarized a discussion post.  Please add this feature!

[NataS]

It would be extremely helpful to be able to turn on TurnItIn for Discussion Posts. I've caught students copying from previous students in my class multiple times and I can only imagine how many more went unnoticed.

[nkirschn]

I love to use the discussion feature so students can learn from each other, but it does make it hard to keep track of plagiarism. This would be an awesome addition for Canvas!

[amiller38]

Add Turn-It-In as an option to discussions. 

[MelanieTidman1]

Hello

I am frankly appalled that a popular LMS like Canvas has not included this function to automatically run discussion posts through TII. I could run them through Safe Assign manually in Blackboard which was the source of many an instance of plagiarism that I could **bleep** in the bud. I find this unacceptable.

If we let students plagiarize their discussions, we are, in essence, teaching them how to plagiarize. Then when they do it in the assignments we lower the boom? I find this very unfair to the students.

I don't know if Canvas even reads these ideas. The original posts for this issue in this Community were posted in 2016, which is now 5 years ago!

And here in 2021, we still do not have a way to run Discussions through TII in Canvas?

 Like I said, appalling!

Dr. Melanie Tidman

[kylecage0]

I agree, Melanie! The only workaround at this time requires the instructors to copy and paste each student's discussion post into a word document, and then run those documents through TII. Not only does this require more work for the instructor (like most workarounds that are suggested on this community), it also doesn't provide the students with the same opportunities to learn how to be accountable for their own academic integrity. Online courses rely heavily on discussions and it is not fair for students to only be held accountable for plagiarism detection on their assignments and not on their discussion posts. The only other option I can think of would be to require students to write their discussion posts in a word document, upload that document to a 0-point assignment in the course just to get the TII report, and then post to the discussion board. Both options for workarounds are ridiculous and not at all scalable. 

This 5+ year old feature request needs to be implemented! 

[SCampbell0067]

Turnitin needs to be integrated into discussion boards and quizzes. At the moment, instructors can only use Turnitin for assessments submitted as assignments, leaving students free to submit plagiarized work for discussion board posts, quizzes, and exams. This has always been a problem, but has become a much more serious concern over the last year and half when everyone switched to remote learning. For example, I'm unable to assign students a timed, take-home, essay-based exam because I have to choose between a timer and having their work run through anti-plagiarism software.  This is a pressing concern that needs to be addressed as quickly as possible. Thanks.

[ungoddess]

Can we please enable TurnItIn for discussion posts? I have just informed several students that they violated campus policies on plagiarism and academic dishonesty and it has been a waste of my time to copy and paste their submissions into search engines to detect plagiarism. This has been a feature integrated into other LMS (like BlackBoard), so I do not see why Canvas cannot do it too.