[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.

[LKidwell]

As we try more ways to keep people online engaged, we are making more use of discussion boards as a way to facilitate group work. It would really be helpful to be able to utilize TurnItIn for discussion threads, especially if they are graded. I can see not making it available for ungraded threads, but graded ones need that capability.

[kirsten_ryall]

Agreed. Online discussions are more important than ever in these crazy times. Adding Turnitin makes sense. I understand there are work-arounds, but imagine a world with less workarounds 🙂 Our teachers could just focusing on teaching, and not admin.

[Mdk6]

Discussions are essential for student engagement.  Please add a plagiarism check into discussions.

[Steven_S]

It would be great to have a built-in canvas plagiarism checker, but most schools subscribe to one for scanning assignments.  Integrating those third-party checks into discussions is the subject of several ideas:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Enable-Turnitin-for-Discussion-Posts/idi-p/366...

I don't see the conversation about using another popular tool, unicheck, in discussions.  It may have been archived.

Of course, that still excludes others such as the scan my school uses at grammarly.edu without a lot of cutting and pasting, and so a download option would help: https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Download-discussion-board-posts/idi-p/377692

[KWiegand]

It looks like I'm not the only one who would find a TII check on Discussions helpful. I use Discussions as a critical feature in my class, and I would like to catch misunderstandings on how to cite works and out-right intentional plagiarism early in the class rather than with a big writing assignment. Discussions would be the place to do this. Having a TII option would make this relatively easy to do.

[melle]

I'm curious why Turnitin is available for paper submissions and even for group exercises (as "regular" assignments) but not for discussion posts. Many of us faculty have caught students using other students' discussion posts from past classes, but we've only caught this in certain circumstances. I see that faculty have been asking for this since 2016 - can we do this please? Faculty really need it. Students need it too: many times they aren't aware of what plagiarism is in a discussion post and this would help them to see their score. Ultimately, there seems little sense in checking all other student work for plagiarism but not what they do most regularly: discussion posts. 

Cheers,

Ellen

[melle]

I agree completely - we need this so much because there is no way to check plagiarism in the tool most students (and professors) use every week: discussion posts. This would be a great way to have conversations with our students regarding the need for academic integrity in ALL college work, not just formal papers. 

[concofme]

I echo what previous commenters have said.  Let's get this implemented already!

[agrimstad]

We need plagiarism detection in Discussions and on Essay Questions on Exams! 

It is way too time consuming for faculty to search on our own, particularly when this software (TurnItIn or Unicheck or Vericite) exists!  We just need Canvas to make it an option to use on Discussions and on Essay Questions on Exams.

[kylecage0]

This is desperately needed!