How To Enable and Use Turnitin in Brightspace

The University of Windsor uses Turnitin is the similarity (plagiarism) detection software embedded into Brightspace. Turnitin can be used to detect similarities of student submissions against online and submission databases, and provide a text similarity report.

Enable Turnitin

Instructors can use Turnitin to provide a report comparing student submissions against the available databases through the Assignments tool in Brightspace. To enable Turnitin for a specific assignment, use the following steps:

  1. In the Assignments tool, click New Assignment (or edit an existing assignment).
    Picture of Assignments in Brightspace, arrow is point to New assignment (1)
  2. Give the assignment a name and enter the grade and details of the assignment.
    Arrow points to Assignment title (2)
  3. Click Evaluation & Feedback to view the options below it.
    Assignments tab, Arrow is pointing to evaluation & feedback (3)
  4. Click Manage Turnitin.
    Assignments tab, arrow is pointing to Manage Turnitin (4)
  5. Inside the pop-up window that appears, under Similarity Report check Enable Similarity Report for this folder. Make additional selections, if required, under Display and Submissions Check and/or click on More Options.
    Turnitin Integration, Two arrows, First arrow is pointing to Similarity report. Second arrow is pointing to More options (5)
  6. Click Save at the bottom to save your settings.
    Arrow is pointing to Save Button (6)
  7. Click Save and Close.
    Arrow is pointing to Save and Close in assignments tab (7)
  8. You will now see a new symbol displayed next to your assignment when viewing your assignment list. This indicates that Turnitin has been enabled.
    Arrow is pointing to turnitin symbol in assignment 1 (8)

Interpret the Similarity Reports

Turnitin generates a percentage report for each submission. High scores do not necessarily mean that the submission contains plagiarized content and low scores do not mean that there is no plagiarism. The report only indicates the percentage of similarity within the document to text in other documents.

  • Text Similarity: the ideas or words of another are present in one's work.
  • Plagiarism: the act of copying, reproducing, or paraphrasing significant portions of one’s own work, or someone else's published or unpublished material (from any source, including the internet), without proper acknowledgement, representing these as new or as one's own. – from the University of Windsor Policy on Student Code of Conduct, emphasis added.

When is Text Similarity Expected?

Important: Similarity is expected when assignments include:

  • An expectation of supporting arguments
  • Templated material
  • Essay prompts or short answer questions
  • When a student includes:
    • Quotes
    • References and citations
    • Common facts or facts that can’t be paraphrased (eg. “Little Rock is the largest city in Arkansas”)

All of the above will increase the score of the similarity report. 

Interpret the Report

The Instructor will need to use their own judgment when reviewing the similarity reports.

  1. Click the second number in the second (red layer) grouping of tools on the right of the screen to open the Match Overview.
  2. The Match Overview itemizes all the portions of the submission that have a similarity match, providing the percentage of the submission. It also assigns each item a number and a colour that matches the number and colour that labels the text in the document.
  3. The Match Overview shows in which repository the text was found.
  4. When you click one of the items in the Match Overview, a pop-up will appear in the document beside the corresponding text. The pop-up will provide a view of the source text.

Image of the Similarity Report.

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