[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.

[BP8790]

I would appreciate it if Canvas had a built-in tool that compared discussion posts to posts by other students within the same assignments. I know that I should be able to catch the plagiarism, but sometimes students are craft and it would be wonderful if there was a % similar rating for all posted discussion topics.

[Tucker1520]

Sure would love to see this happen! 

[AnneDeClouette1]

Thank you so much for continuing to care about academic integrity in ALL areas (not just assignments) and for starting/contributing to this thread.  It is concerning that there has been no response - and more importantly, no progress - from Instructure/Canvas on this issue. 

I am actually less adamant about Turnitin being *the* product used as the plagiarism dectector in Discussions, since it is quite imperfect.  Let's take this further ... how about Instructure embedding their own plagiarism detector into the Discussions?  That's even easier if Instructure simply writes the code itself to embed in Discussions.  If you can find plagiarism detectors all over the internet, such as https://plagiarismdetector.net/ etc., the code is clearly "out there".  This isn't new technology, as it's embedded into Discussions at at least one of the for-profits with a proprietary system.  We, faculty, shouldn't have to do extra steps. 

If that's a problem, there are plagiarism detection apps that can be plugged in (like TII or TechSmith Knowmia).  But the cheapest route all around is to just write the code.  Come on Instructure/Canvas!  In this back-and-forth remote environment, it's even more critical that students learn how to write with integrity.  Thank you in advance.

-Dr. Anne H. DeClouette, MBA

College of Southern Nevada 

[etate]

Every other faculty member I've spoken with (especially in the last two years) agrees that enabling the external tool of TurnItIn within the discussion boards would be a tremendous help.  If it can be enabled with other assignments submitted through Canvas, why not the discussion board?  I spoke with a Canvas "help" staffer and they claimed because TurnItIn is external and discussion boards happen entirely within Canvas, that this is impossible.  But since the technology exists, can't Canvas create their own plagiarism screening tool to use within discussion boards?

I saw a thread in this forum from 2016 on this same topic, but clearly that hasn't done much to change things.  Please help to make this happen!

[hbrown5018]

Has anything been done about this feature idea? I reviewed the Discussions Redesign and do not see a plagiarism option. 

[MargoFarwell]

It would be very helpful if all discussion posts were run through Turnitin.  This would be a time saving feature that would hopefully deter the level of plagiarism that we are experiencing.  I am an instructor.  

[tliwosz]

I definitely agree that the lack of allowing third-party plagiarism checkers in Discussion boards becomes a major gap in academic dishonesty policies.  Currently, the best I can recommend my faculty is to copy and paste a few posts into an extra course or assignment just to run it through and catch trends of student cheating.

I would like to see this integrated soon.

[scox1]

I want to second most, if not all, of the comments already made, and add this message so that it is clear this is an ongoing concern held by many of us.

[asizemore]

Harmonize recently added TurnItIn plagiarism detection to their discussion product if anyone's looking for a third-party option that does this.

[KCORBITT]

Has this been enabled yet??? Seems kind of crazy that Canvas does not have this feature...