Canvas and Turnitin

[dhulsey]

• Introduction
• What is "Feedback Studio"?
• Does Feedback Studio alter any functionality?
• As a local Canvas Administrator, how do I configure the Turnitin LTI?
• Can my institution enable both the API version and the LTI version as we transition to the LTI?
• What happens to API enabled assignments when the API version gets shut off?
• Do teachers and students have to sign up for an account at Turnitin.com?
• Does the LTI version of Turnitin have feature X?
• How does an instructor set up an assignment using the LTI tool?
• When creating an assignment, should I load Turnitin in a new tab?
• How do students submit to a Turnitin LTI assignment?
• How do students complete peer reviews?
• I want to set up an assignment sequence of rough draft, peer review, and final draft.
• How does the grading work?
• How do students receive their feedback?
• How can I tell if my students have viewed their feedback?
• Will Turnitin send a grade from Turnitin to the Canvas Gradebook?
• Can I use the Turnitin iPad app to grade?
• Where can I see the originality report for a paper?
• What happens when I copy a course in Canvas?
• How can I use Turnitin with an essay question on a Canvas Quiz to get an originality report?
• I want to check discussion posts for originality.
• I want to use the Turnitin LTI but need a Canvas rubric for grading / assessment
• Can Students submit to Turnitin LTI assignments from the Canvas mobile apps?
• Are there any complications with the Turnitin LTI tool?
• I have a question that is not answered here.
• I do not like something about the Turnitin LTI. Who should I make aware of my displeasure?

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:

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:

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:

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:

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?

[lindalee]

 @Chris_Hofer ​,

As far as I can tell, that's a generic error message that Turnitin presents when something's wrong. As  @RobDitto ​ noted, we typically see it when we try to access assignments as without being (or masquerading as) members of the teaching team. But I've also seen it under other circumstances, including:

• If an assignment or Canvas site has been copied/imported into a Canvas site, and the Turnitin assignment hasn't been accessed by a member of the teaching team to establish the link between the assignment and Turnitin.
• If there's something wrong with the dates for the assignment -- for instance, the due date is in the past. Or the feedback release date is before the due date (may be due to how the substitution variables carry over dates, or artifacts from copying).

Any my guess is that there are other reasons that would cause it to appear as well. As an error message, it isn't particularly helpful!

Based on your description, I'd guess it's because the feedback release date/time is before the due date. I'd recommend modifying the assignment and changing the feedback release date to match the due date.

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi  @lindalee ​...

I tried setting the "Feedback Release Date" to June 24, 2016 @ 6:15 p.m. (to match the due date), but I was still unable to access the TII interface using my dummy student account.  I even tried setting the "Feedback Release Date" to June 24, 2016 @ 6:30 p.m. to see if that made a difference, and it did not.  :smileyconfused:

(As a side note, we also have the Custom Fields lines of codes in place so it brings the points, start date, and due date from the Canvas interface over to the TII LTI interface, but that shouldn't have any impact on not being able to access the TII interface using my dummy student account.)

[snugent]

Have you tried creating a new TurnItIn assignment to see if the dummy student can access the new one? That is something I would try. Also you might want to check the course start and end dates. Not sure if that would have an impact but it is worth checking into. Some of our instructors have been seeing a different error message but I believe it stems from the instructor not editing assignment settings in Canvas (we also have the custom fields set). I have found when this happens I must remove all dates from Canvas. Then go back to the TurnItIn settings set the dates I want. Then go back to Canvas and make sure the dates all match. It is such a pain and thankful has only happened with one instructor who had trouble following my directions.

[Chris_Hofer]

snugent​...

Yup...it was a brand new assignment that I had created before lunch today.  This is in my sandbox course, so I don't have any start or end dates set in the course "Settings" screen.  Since we added the Custom Fields code (referenced in Dallas' blog), we don't have to add dates to both the Canvas interface and the TII LIT interface...since the code brings in the dates automatically from the Canvas interface to the TII interface.

[snugent]

That is weird. A couple of weeks ago I was getting a strange error message in our beta instance but not in production. I sent the ticket to Instructure and it was something they fixed on their end. I looked back at the ticket and the error message was "Max_Points - Value must be an integer". I did have a value for the assignment.

[dhulsey]

Hey, Chris! The same thing happened to me using one of my fake student accounts. I switched to another fake student account, and everything worked fine. Also, no students have complained of the error this summer, and I have not been able to figure it out except that Turnitin did not seem to like the email address on that particular fake student. I have no insight. :smileyconfused:

 @anthonem ​, that is a great tutorial. Would you mind if I linked that in the blog entry next time I do an update?

[anthonem]

 @dhulsey ​ - yeah go ahead! The URL should remain stable but let me know if it breaks at any point.

[dhulsey]

Thanks!

[Chris_Hofer]

Thank you,  @dhulsey ​!  This worked.  Very strange, though.  :smileyconfused:

[ccalderon]

HI  @dhulsey ​ - this is not related to any item on this thread, but I am asking you as the resident Turnitin expert! In the legacy plug-in version, do you recall approximately when the ability to "Include in repository" was added under Advanced Settings? Our institution is trying to nail some information down, and we are having a hard time isolating this piece of data. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Crista Calderon

[scottdennis]

.

[RobDitto]

Based on an old email I kept, I believe the "Include in Repository" checkbox was added in a mid-September 2014 release of Canvas.

[ccalderon]

 @RobDitto ​ - thank you so much!! The power of the Community strikes again! :smileygrin:

[dhulsey]

Rob beat me to it, but I am glad you got your answer, Crista!

[vrs07nl]

this is what i plan to do - just trying to get canvas support to understand so that if i do this will not affect their investigations

[vrs07nl]

So here is an update

1. whether you set Tii to one submission and OR appear at once or multi attempts and OR after due date

• random bug causing work to appear in Tii submission but not canvas can still strike
• the canvas advice remains allow resubmissions

2. With the multiple submission OR after due date

• the OR reports did not auto generate
• the option via speed grader to resubmit worked for most but not all of our submissions ( this is a poor attempt at syncing - as have to do it for EACH submission rather than all at once)
• we still have two users whose work cannot resubmit via speedgrader - this is being investigated still)

As our due date had passed and we have a tight feedback turnaround period I had to create an extension for one of these users ( whose work only appeared in canvas and not Tii after a resubmission before due date) and resubmit. I did not remove original canvas submission (could not work out how) - the resubmission worked - work in canvas and Tii with %. I did not do the same for the other student as work was appearing in Tii with % and in canvas ( but no %) as would have got a 100% Tii match. I simpley created a canvas only submisson for that student and resubmitted work there so could be marked

Canvas response to all this 

There have been a number of issues with Canvas and the Turnitin LTI integration, which we are still looking into. With that said it may be a little while before anything is nailed down and a fix is implemented. I would suggest the work around of re-submitting for (student 2) as a fix is most likely not going to be retro active. (I knew that)

We have been able to work through most of the issues which were causing scores to not show up in Canvas, and in most instances you shouldn't need to worry about anything and the current work around if they don't show up is to simply re-submit, which sounds like it was successful for (student 1).  (Sadly this does not address point 2 no OR after due date).

As far as worrying about it being a 100% match, I believe there are settings you can enable so it doesn't compare to a students previous submission. In the LTI settings there is a setting "Compare submitted papers against the following sources" and one of the options is 'Student paper repository' which you could either choose to enable or not. (Not an option as we need to check for self-plagiarism and collusion as well as everything else)

So far as I can tell there are no fixes in place yet and we are all going to have to wait, share workarounds and report issues

[lindalee]

Hi vrs07nl​,

Thanks for sharing Instructure's response to this issue!

[vrs07nl]

Another response from Canvas

I want to let you know that we have looked into the issue with the two students who's scores didn't return from Turnitin and show up in Speedgrader and were able to determine they are experiencing the same issue we see happening in other institutions and users. The reasons this happens can be a variety of things:

• The submission is not ready
• TII returns an error to us rather than a document
• Timeout on TII side

  The end result of this can be that no submission ever gets placed in Canvas for the student. When this happens there isn't anything we at Canvas can do or Turnitin can do to get the submission or originality report and the work around is to have the student themselves re-submit the document.

We're currently working on a feature that will make retrieving the score from turnitin more robust, but until then the above work around of having the student manually re-submit is the best solution.

Nothing specific on why Originality Reports generated in Turnitin after due date id not appear in Speedgrader / Grades or if there is an option to sync ( resubmit) all rather than having to do each individually...

[vrs07nl]

latest response re OR not appearing in speedgrader

The causes we've seen for the originality report not showing up in SpeedGrader is:

• The submission is not ready
• TII returns an error to us rather than a document
• Timeout on TII side

The solution  / workaround to all of these issues is to

1. Try to re-submit via the button in speedgrader
2. Have the student re-submit

  We're working to get better integration, but currently these are the options available

[jfahs]

Thanks Linda creating a list of TII feature ideas!

Joe

[vrs07nl]

here is another feature idea I have just created 'Sync all' option for Turnitin submissions where Originalty % missing from Speedgrader

[dhulsey]

I found this gem in the June 30 release notes on the Turnitin site: "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. This update improves the user workflow for both instructors and students during submission periods."

[jared_flaherty]

Wow. Thanks for the heads up! Nice meeting you today!

Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef>

<http://www.park.edu> Jared Flaherty, MLS

Director of LMS Support

Park University - Parkville Campus

Park Distance Learning

8700 NW River Park Drive, CMB #68

Parkville, MO 64152

816-584-6222 (Office)

jared.flaherty@park.edu<mailto:jared.flaherty@park.edu>

This e-mail message and any attached files are confidential and are intended solely for the use of the addressee(s) named above. If you are not the intended recipient or person responsible for delivering this confidential communication to the intended recipient, you have received this communication in error, and any review, use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, copying, or other distribution of this e-mail message and any attached files is strictly prohibited. If you have received this confidential communication in error, please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail message and permanently delete the original message. Thank you.

[dhulsey]

It was nice to meet you as well, Jared! I met  @kschneider25 ​ and  @KristinL ​ as well. Instructurecon has been fantastic this year.

[gncrum]

Hi Dallas:

Thanks for all your hardwork on wrangling Turnitin and Canvas. I am at Instructurecon as well and will look out for you! Have you had a chance to go by the Turnitin booth yet?

Take care

Greg

[dhulsey]

Hey, Greg! I will keep an eye out for you as well. I did go by the Turnitin booth and spoke briefly to one of the reps. She (sadly I have forgotten her name) encouraged people with concerns or requests to visit the Turnitin Roadmap site to make and vote for feature ideas.

[snugent]

Last Monday I received an email from TurnItIn that stated the Feedback studio document viewer would become the default on that day. I am currently revising our documentation and have come up against a few snags.  Just wondering if anyone is having issues with the following:

Switching to TurnInIt Classic - In the TurnItIn documentation for Feedback Studio it states that users will be able to switch back and forth between Feedback Studio and classic viewer up to Dec 2017. In my testing this has been very bug ridden. In most instances it will throw an error (see below for screen shot). Is anyone else seeing this? It doesn't see to matter if I am viewing from instructor or student view. 

Print option not available in Feedback studio - In the classic viewer there was a print icon on the status bar. I don't see it in Feedback Studio. Am I missing it? See my documentation for the classical viewer screen shot here.

[tdelillo]

I had received an updated email from them saying the July 18th date for Feedback studio to become the default had been moved to August 8th. Maybe that's part of the problem?

[erinhmcmillan]

Her name was probably Erin. No, really. I met her too and she's super helpful.

[dhulsey]

Hi, Susan! The print function has been changed to a download function, but it does the same thing: generates a .pdf file that can be saved or printed. Clicking on the download icon on the toolbar opens the options for downloading. The current view option will generate a .pdf with the current view. If for instance, I have the grading and originality layers on, those layers will save to the .pdf. Here is a screenshot:

On the error, I think I have seen that a time or two after leaving my laptop idle while being logged into the integration. When it has happened, I shut down TII and relaunch the LTI from Canvas. It sounds like you are seeing it as you work though? I would try cleaning cookies and cache and maybe when switching browsers. If you still see the error while working, a bug report would be in order, I think.

[dhulsey]

Yes, she was nice.   I also had a long talk with a gentleman from the product team and another salesperson. They told me a number of interesting things, and once I catch my breath from Instructurecon, I plan to write up some of the more interesting bits I learned from the Turnitin reps.

[dhulsey]

Here is a fresh blog post about my conversation with Turnitin Reps at Instructurecon: Instructurecon 2016: A Turnitin Conversation​.

[snugent]

I discovered the what is causing the issue. In the support article linked below they mention Safari but it also happens in Firefox if the Tracking option is turned on. Once I unchecked this option the toggle worked with no problems.

public knowledge base - Integrations - "You have been logged out" message when accessing Turnitin th...

[dhulsey]

Thank you for the update, Susan!

[smedshammerm]

This page is a great resource. Thank you  @dhulsey     Is it possible for teachers to submit papers within the Turnitin integration on behalf of students? We have some faculty who would like to do this occasionally to spot check papers where Turnitin was not required. Thank you for any help. 

[jared_flaherty]

The LTI automatically knows what your role is based upon your course level role type that the user is enrolled into the course.      Therefore, the teacher role, or any custom role based off of the teacher role, will not allow for submissions.       I would imagine that a separate course is needed with the instructor enrolled as a student.      

[dhulsey]

At this time submitting on behalf of a student is not an option from the LTI app in Canvas, but Turnitin has said they are working on that feature.

In the meantime, using the quick submit feature on TII's website works pretty well:

Quick Submit - YouTube

I hope that helps!

[smedshammerm]

Thank you for this update,  @dhulsey ​

[dhulsey]

Turnitinn has released version 2.0 of their iPad app. The most notable feature of the app is that the 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.

[dhulsey]

Turnitin updated some interface elements last week for the LTI tool.  The process for uploading a paper now has clearer buttons. Also, papers in the instructor's inbox for the assignment appear in one list, not a paginated list. You may want to take a look and update tutorials for students, etc.

Have a nice Monday!

[snugent]

I'm in the process of revising our documentation for TurnItIn since the summer update. We are using the LTI tool for integration and I'm noticing some peculiar behavior on what students see once an assignment is graded. Just wondering if others are seeing this as well?

• If the instructor grades the assignment in TurnItIn grademark, the Canvas assignment details page will state there is no preview available.
• Before the assignment is graded and if the assignment is graded in SpeedGrader, the assignment details page will display similarity index score with a link to Feedback Studio. Student will also have access to the view feedback button that shows the SpeedGrader annotations.

Then in in instructor view on Canvas grades page the assignment that was graded in grademark loses the similarity index color in the cell for that assignment. Both grades are recorded in Canvas gradebook.

However, in the TurnItIn assignment dashboard the assignment graded in SpeedGrader will not display the score for the student.

Do you think this is bug or feature? I would prefer that the similarity index score show on the assignment details and grades page regardless of how the instructor grades the assignment.

[dhulsey]

Hey, Susan! I do all of my grading in Turnitin (as you probably already know). The copies of the submissions do appear for me in Speedgrader even after I grade in TII. The TII icons in the grade book are sporadic; they are there for some submissions and not others; I don't know why. The inconsistent icons would seem to warrant filing a ticket with Canvas and TII.

If you grade in Speedgrader, I don't think the LTI is designed to pull grades from the LMS to the external tool. I don't think that is a feature or a bug so much as maybe it didn't occur to the developers that grades would need to be pulled from the LMS, but I can see the benefit of having the grades sync both ways.

I hope that helps!

[snugent]

Thanks  @dhulsey ​, I filed a ticket with both companies. Hopefully they will fix these issues. This will definitely help give faculty and students a better experience.

[clong]

In my testing so far, I haven't found the need to make an available until date in Canvas for the assignment to initialize. Am I missing something,   @dhulsey 

"However, the instructor must set an available from date and a due date in Canvas to allow students to initialize an assignment."

[dhulsey]

Hey, Chris! If the teacher visits the Turnitin assignment, the start date is not needed because the teacher has opened the assignment for students by visiting it. When a teacher has not opened the assignment by visiting the Turnitin dropbox, then the start date is needed so that the instructor does not have to visit the TII dropbox to open the assignment.

This is mostly an issue if you load the LTI in a new tab or when copying courses. When you copy a course, the instructor previously had to visit each TII assignment to open the assignment on the TII side. Now, if the instructor sets the assignment with a start date, she does not need to visit the assignment. Instead, TII will automatically open the assignment when the first student visits the assignment.

If the open date is not there, students who try to submit a TII assignment that the instructor has not visited will receive an error message.

Lol! This is a tricky thing to explain. I hope it makes sense.

[clong]

Thanks  @dhulsey ​ - tricky, but your explanation perfect makes sense to me

[mmarvin]

As admins, we would like to adjust the Turnitin settings (due dates, rubric...) without having to enroll ourselves as a teacher. In addition the selection for dates and times is awkward. We are unable to set the due date time to 11:59 pm. It would be nice if the date selection worked like Canvas.

[dhulsey]

Hi, Maggie! If you set up your LTI tool as shown in the screenshot of the blog post, then dates will sync from Canvas automatically, including a due time of 11:59 PM.

As for administrative access to settings, that is something you would need to ask Turnitin about directly; I don't think it is possible now, but TII does take feature request on their Roadmap site.

I hope that helps, and have a great day!

[mmarvin]

I was told by our account rep that this is the place to gather these feature requests. We are currently unable to see the assignment or any settings including dates unless we enroll ourselves as a teacher.

[dhulsey]

Hi, Maggie. I am the author of this blog, but I do not work for either Instructure or Turnitin. I am an English Proffesor. You can make a feature request in the Canvas community, and you can make requests to Turnitin on their Roadmap site, but posting a comment on this blog will not register an official feature request with either company. It is true that posting links here to the feature requests you do make in regards to Turnitin is likely to help you gather support for your requests because many community members who use the Turnitin LTI read the comments posted here and are willing to vote for and comment on feature requests.

Having said that, you are absolutely welcome to post your questions and thoughts about Turnitin's integration to Canvas here.  

In regards to your particular question, I do know that the Turnitin LTI uses Canvas profiles and email addresses to facilitate login to Turnitin. If there is no profile in a course for the Canvas Admin, Turnitin cannot identify you as a user in that class and what role you have in that class. At least, that is how I understand the current tool to work. 

If you do have administrator level access to Turnitin, you can log into Turnitn's website and find the course, assignment, and settings for Turnitin assignments created in Canvas.

I hope that helps!