TurnItIn Assignment Handling

10th February 2021

Turnitin – Downloading anonymous marks before the mark release date (Turnitin Post Date)

Irene Bailey Bb Grade Centre, Blackboard, TurnItIn, TurnItIn Assignment Handling

Turnitin assignment with anonymous marking enabled

When anonymous marking is enabled marks cannot be exported directly from Turnitin, names are revealed and the marks sent to the Blackboard Grade Centre only when the Post Date is reached.

Anonymous marking can be turned off for individual students and then their marks will appear and can be exported. For large numbers of students, this is time-consuming. The workaround is to hide the assignment marks from students before moving the Post Date to the current day. Follow the instructions below carefully to ensure that marks are not accidentally revealed to students.

Students have 2 ways to view their marks in Blackboard

Viewing their submission from the Assignment link on the Blackboard page
From the MyMarks tool

Hide the Turnitin Assignment from students

Find the link to the Assignment in Blackboard
Select the drop-down list to the right of the assignment title
- Either Make Unavailable.
- Or use adaptive release set the Display After date to the mark release date.

Hide the MyMarks tool from students

From the course menu select Tools* .
Select Hide Link next to the MyMarks** tool .

*Some courses will not have a Tools menu available to students so this step can be left out.
**Some courses may have a direct link to MyMarks from the course menu – hide the menu item.

Move the assignment Post Date to the current day*

*Marks can take some time to transfer to the Blackboard Grade Centre so it is recommended that you set the Post Date 3 hours from the current time in order to allow time for the transfer. See this link for more information on moving the Post Date.

From the Course Management menu Select Turnitin Assignments
Select the link to the relevant assignment.
Select the Edit assignment tab.
Change the Post Date to the current date and time (+3 hours).

Download marks from the Blackboard the Grade Centre

From the Course Management menu select Grade Centre/Full Grade Centre.
The Grades should appear in the corresponding assignment column, but they can take a while to arrive.

Once the grades appear in the Grade Centre column, select Work Offline/Download.

If you are only downloading one set of marks you can choose the single column to download. Otherwise, download all grades and delete the ones you don’t need from the spreadsheet.
Select the Comma-separated option.
With some editing, this spreadsheet can be used to directly upload marks to Banner Gradebook.

Ensure Marks stay hidden from students until marks are released

When the Turnitin Post Date is reached, the Grade Center column becomes visible – this needs to be re-hidden.

In the Blackboard Grade Centre, select the drop-down list to the right of the grade column title.
Select Hide from students (on/off).
The icon next to the column title will have a red line through it if the column is hidden.
You can then unhide the MyMarks tool so students have access to other marks in the course.
Once marks are released in Banner, the Blackboard Grade Centre column, and the assignment can be made visible.

27th October 2016

Which eSubmission service should I use?

Matthew Deeprose Bb Assessment, Bb assignments, Blackboard, TurnItIn, TurnItIn Assignment Handling

There are a multitude of possible methods to use to facilitate eSubmission. The most heavily used services are TurnItIn in Blackboard and the eAssignment service.

This flow chart may help you to choose which service is most appropriate for you and your students. Note that this flow chart relates to submission only and does not cover online marking and feedback. Further more detailed comparisons of available features is available in our Feature comparison of eSubmission methods in Blackboard

17th February 2016

Syncing Grades in Turnitin

Sam Cole Blackboard, TurnItIn, TurnItIn Assignment Handling 0 Comments

Do not open Turnitin in multiple tabs or browser windows. Only use one browser tab to interact with Turnitin.

The following guide explains how to sync grades between your Turnitin assignment and your Blackboard course. You shouldn’t have to do this too often, but every now and then this may be required.

Access Control Panel

1. From your course’s Control Panel, expand the Course Tools section and click on Turnitin Assignments.

Sync Grades for chosen Turnitin Assignment

2. Locate the Turnitin Assignment for which you wish to sync grades, and click on Sync Grades on the right hand side of the screen. *Important* Be very careful not to click on ‘Delete Assignment’, which is immediately below Sync Grades.

25th September 2015

Synchronising a Blackboard Course with Turnitin

Matthew Deeprose Blackboard, TurnItIn, TurnItIn Assignment Handling 0 Comments

Do not open Turnitin in multiple tabs or browser windows. Only use one browser tab to interact with Turnitin.

This guide explains how to synchronise your Blackboard course list with Turnitin so that all students are listed in the Turnitin assignment home page.

Access Control Panel

1. From your course’s Control Panel, expand the Course Tools section and click on Turnitin Assignments.

Locate Turnitin Assignment

2. Click on the name of the Turnitin Assignment in question. This should be an underlined link.

Roster Sync

3. Click on the Roster Sync link which appears on the right hand side of the page. The course list should now reflect the Blackboard course list.

25th September 2015

Viewing Submitted TurnitinUK Assignments

Matthew Deeprose Blackboard, TurnItIn, TurnItIn Assignment Handling 0 Comments

Do not open Turnitin in multiple tabs or browser windows. Only use one browser tab to interact with Turnitin.

How to view a list of files submitted to your Turnitin assignment.

Access Control Panel

1. From your course’s Control Panel, expand the Course Tools section and click on TurnitinUK Assignments.

Locate Turnitin Assignment

Locate TurnitinUK Assignment

2. Click on the name of the Turnitin Assignment for which you want to check submissions.

Turnitin Assignment Inbox

3. You will be taken to the Assignment Inbox, which will look similar to the screenshot above. Note that you will probably have more students listed on your course. If any of your students are missing you can click on the ‘Roster Sync’ link which appears on the right hand side of the screen. This will update the list of students according to the Blackboard course list.

Don’t worry if you can’t make out the detail of this screenshot, as the following steps show more detail.

Student List and Details 1

4. Each student on your course will have a row showing details for their assignment. If the student has not yet submitted, it will say –no submission–.

5. In the screenshot above, we can see the Author of the submission, the Title of the submission, and an Originality Score for each student. You should only use this percentage score as a guide, and should investigate the originality report further if required. There is a seperate guide explaining how to access Originality Reports. Note that if you have anonymous marking turned on for the assignment, the author name for each submission will be hidden.

More options appear to the right hand side of the options discussed above. These are covered in the next step.

Student List and Details 2

6. The right hand side of the screen shows some further information. Firstly there is a Grade column, which shows the mark for each student if you have used GradeMark to mark submissions. If you haven’t used GradeMark, or have yet to enter a mark, a pencil icon is shown.

Please be aware that if anonymous marking is enabled sorting submissions by grade will not work correctly. This is acknowledged by Turnitin.

The next column, Reponse, shows whether or not the student in question has viewed any feedback entered using GradeMark.

The File column provides a link to the original file as submitted by the student.

The Paper ID (which is the uniqe receipt number for each submission), and the Date on which the submission was made are the final columns available. Late submissions will have a submission date highlighted in red text.

Note that it is not currently possible to view submissions by student ID. This is because Turnitin does not currently use the student ID number. We (and many other Universities) have fed back to Turnitin that we would like to be able to view submissions by student ID, but there is no definite timescale for this feature to be introduced.

25th September 2015

Creating a Turnitin Assignment

Matthew Deeprose Blackboard, TurnItIn, TurnItIn Assignment Handling 0 Comments

Do not open Turnitin in multiple tabs or browser windows. Only use one browser tab to interact with Turnitin.

ADDITIONAL: Turn It In has recently updated the “Optional Settings” list to include an option to “Exclude assignment template” further information can be found on their help pages.

How to add a Turnitin Assignment to your Blackboard course.

Edit Mode

1. Check that Edit Mode is turned ON. This can be switched by clicking ON or OFF.

Choose a Content Area

2. Choose the Content Area to which you want to add a Turnitin assignment link. All the content areas work in the same way, if you have renamed or added content areas to your Blackboard course the screenshot above may vary from what you see.

Add TurnitinUK Assignment

3. Hover your mouse pointer over over Assessments and then click on Turnitin Assignment

Choose an Assignment Type

4. Choose the type of assignment you wish to create and click on Next Step. You will usually want to choose Paper Assignment.

Enter Basic Assignment Details

5. Enter an Assignment Title

6. Enter a Point Value (the maximum points which will be awarded for this assignment). If you do not wish to add a points value, you do not have to, simply leave this blank.

7. Select Start, Due, and Post dates and times for the assignment. The post date is the date on which comments entered using Grademark become available for students to view. If you do not plan to use Grademark, you do not need to worry too much about this setting, although it must be a date AFTER the due date. Note that changing the Post Date once you have entered marks and feedback may result in marks being temporarily hidden. In order to avoid this, make sure you only change the post date to at least THREE HOURS from the current date and time (from the point at which you are changing the post date). For more information, see Editing the Post Date in Turnitin.

8. Choose whether you wish to restrict submissions to filetypes that can be checked for similarity (text based files such as .pdf, .doc, .rtf, .txt, etc). Alternatively you can choose to allow students to submit any filetype. If you choose to allow students to submit any file type, they will be able to submit files which will not be checked for originality. This may include PDF files which have been created as images of text rather than selectable text which TII can read.

9. Click on Submit.

Choose Advanced Assignment Options

10. Enter any Special Instructions for the assignment. For instance you may wish to specify the maximum length of the assignment, or a special format for the title of the assignment.

11. Choose whether or not to allow submissions after the due date by selecting Yes or No in the appropriate dropdown. If you select Yes, students will be able to submit their work to the assignment link even after the due date has passed. Any submissions made after the due date will be highlighted accordingly.

12. If you wish to generate originality reports (these reports identify any sections of text which may have been copied from online sources) select Yes for the ‘Generate Originality Report for Submissions’ field.

13. If you have chosen to generate originality reports, you also need to decide when they should be generated:
–Immediately (First report is final) – Originality reports will be generated upon the student’s first submission. No further submissions will be permitted, and this originality report will be the definitive report used.
–Immediately (Can overwrite reports until due date) – Originality reports will be created immediately each time a student submits. However, students are permitted to re-submit work up until the due date, and upon doing so will overwrite the existing Originality Report.
–On due date – Originality reports will be created once the due date has passed. Students are able to submit and then re-submit during this time, but will only see an originality report once the due date has passed.

14. Choose whether you wish to exclude bibliographic materials when generating the originality report. Generally, you should leave this as No.

15. Choose whether you wish to exclude any text which appears in quotation marks when generating the originality report. Generally, you should leave this as No.

16. Choose whether you wish to exclude small matches from the Originality Report. Generally you should leave this as No.

17. Choose whether or not to allow students to see their Originality Reports by selecting Yes or No in the appropriate dropdown.

18. Choose whether you wish to reveal grades to students only on the post date. If you select Yes then grades entered in Grademark will only be pushed into the Blackboard Grade Centre on the post date, and will be unavailable to students until this point. If you choose No then any grades entered in Grademark will be pushed immediately to the Grade Centre in Blackboard, and will be available to students unless otherwise hidden manually through the Grade Centre. It is recommended that you select Yes.

19. Choose whether you wish to use anonymous marking. Note that you should only select yes if you intend to use Turnitin for the whole end-to-end assignment process, including online marking. If you wish to be able to view student details at any time during the assignment process, then you should choose No for this setting. If you intend to print submissions to mark offline (e.g. on paper) then we also recommend choosing No for this setting. Whilst it is possible to download anonymous submissions, this complicates the process of returning marks / feedback to the individual who submitted the work, since the downloaded files have no identifiable link to the author. Further information on anonymous marking in Turnitin can be found here.

20. Choose whether or not to allow other papers to be checked against submissions made to this assignment by selecting Yes or No in the appropriate dropdown. If you select Yes, any submissions made will be added to the Turnitin student paper database, and will therefore grow the system.

21. Choose which sources to check when comparing submissions. You can check against existing papers which have been submitted to the system, as well as a number of Internet sources.

Add rubric / grading form

22. If you have created a GradeMark rubric which you will be using to mark submissions online usimg GradeMark, you can add it by selecting it from the Rubric / form drop down list. Note in order to do this you must have set a rubric up already. If you are not planning on using a rubric in GradeMark, you can ignore this drop down list. For more information on rubrics, click here.

23. Click Submit.

25th September 2015

Anonymous Marking

Matthew Deeprose Blackboard, TurnItIn, TurnItIn Assignment Handling 0 Comments

Do not open Turnitin in multiple tabs or browser windows. Only use one browser tab to interact with Turnitin.

Official Turnitin Logo Turnitin allows instructors to mark work online using a tool called GradeMark. Turnitin also allows users to decide whether or not they wish to mark work anonymously. The decision of whether to mark anonymously will have implications on how staff are able to mark submissions.

You should read the following information carefully to help decide whether anonymous marking in Turnitin is suitable for your assignment, or whether an alternative solution should be sought. If you are unsure, please contact Serviceline for further advice.

What are the main implications of anonymous marking in Turnitin

Due to the way in which anonymous marking is currently implemented in Turnitin, if you wish to use anonymous marking you are required to complete the end-to-end submission and marking process online in the Turnitin / GradeMark environment. So if you wish to use anonymous marking within Turnitin, students will need to submit to Turnitin, markers will be required to mark using GradeMark, and students will then be required to access their grades through either the Blackboard grade centre, or through the normal Turnitin interface.

When an assignment is setup for anonymous marking in Turnitin, you will still be able to download submissions to the assignment (where previously this was not possible). The downloaded files will be given a filename made up of the submission ID for the submission in question, followed by the original filename of the file submitted by the student. It is therefore important that the student does not put anything in the filename which could be used to directly identify them (for instance their name). It is recommended that students put their Student ID number in their filename of the file they are submitting. The student ID number is routinely used in other scenarios for anonymous marking (for instance exam scripts).

Even though is is possible to download submissions for anonymous assignments, it is still recommended that the marking process is completed online through the GradeMark interface.

Once all marking has been completed and the post date has passed (thus revealing grades to students), student identification will be turned back on (e.g the student names will re-appear in the assignment inbox). The key date in this process is the post date – this is when marks and feedback entered during the marking process are ‘posted up’ for each student to see. Students will only see their grade, they will not be able to see grades for other students.

There will also be administrative implications for using anonymous marking in Turnitin. The primary implication is that academics and administrative staff will be unable to see who has and has not submitted their work. This is because the normal class list (where student names are shown) is made fully anonymous in order to implement anonymous marking. Turnitin is not currently able to use student ID numbers as an alternative way to identify students ‘anonymously’. As a result, using anonymous marking in Turnitin will mean that staff are unable to chase those individuals who have not yet submitted. Remember – anonymity in the class list will remain until all work has been marked and the post date has passed.

It is possible to ‘turn off’ anonymity for individual submissions if you wish. However, once you have removed anonymity for a submission it cannot be turned back on – what has been seen cannot be unseen! So remember that turning off anonymity for a given submission will reveal the name of the student who made that submission. The name will be available to anyone who looks in the Turnitin inbox for the assignment.

**Note** that if you choose not to turn on anonymous marking when the assignment is first setup, you will not be able to go back and change the setting later.

Will anonymous marking in Turnitin be suitable for my assignment?

– I have an assessment which should be marked anonymously, and all markers will mark online

Answer: If you wish to use anonymous marking and all markers wish to mark work online, then a Turnitin assignment with anonymous marking enabled is a suitable solution. You will need to complete the entire end-to-end process online using Turnitin and GradeMark. Remember, however, that you will be unable to see who has and has not submitted their work until the post-date has passed.

– I have an assessment which should be anonymous, and everyone will mark on paper

Answer: If you wish to use anonymous marking but you require all markers to mark offline (i.e. submissions will be printed out and distributed) then Turnitin with anonymous marking is discouraged, simply because of the overhead of distributing papers to be marked and then matching the marked papers with their students (which can only be done manually).

– I have an assessment which should be anonymous, some people will mark online and some will mark on paper

Answer: If you wish to use anonymous marking where some markers will mark online and some will mark on paper then Turnitin with anonymous marking is discouraged, since manually returning marks to students for papers which have been marked offline (e.g. on paper) is a manual process.

25th September 2015

Deleting a submission from TurnitinUK

Matthew Deeprose Blackboard, TurnItIn, TurnItIn Assignment Handling 0 Comments

Do not open Turnitin in multiple tabs or browser windows. Only use one browser tab to interact with Turnitin.

This guide explains how to delete a submission which has been made to a Turnitin assignment. Note that you may wish to first download a copy of the submission you are deleting for your records.

Access Control Panel

1. From your course’s Control Panel, expand the Course Tools section and click on Turnitin Assignments.

Locate Turnitin Assignment

Locate TurnitinUK Assignment

2. Click on the name of the Turnitin Assignment from which you wish to delete an assignment.

Locate Submission

3. Place a tick in the box next to the submission you wish to delete. A yellow bar should appear just above the list of submissions. Click on Delete.

Confirm Deletion

4. Confirm that you want to delete the submission by clicking on OK.

Submission Deleted

5. The student whose submission you have deleted should now have –no submission– listed against their name.

25th September 2015

Downloading files submitted to Turnitin

Matthew Deeprose Blackboard, TurnItIn, TurnItIn Assignment Handling 0 Comments

Do not open Turnitin in multiple tabs or browser windows. Only use one browser tab to interact with Turnitin.

It is possible to download files submitted to a Turnitin assignment. Note that if anonymous marking is turned on for an assignment, the downloaded files will not contain any identifiable information to link the files to the author (unless the author has put any such information in the body of the file itself).

Access Control Panel

1. From your course’s Control Panel, expand the Course Tools section and click on Turnitin Assignments.

Note that this option is not available when using Turnitin Assignments by Groups.

Locate Turnitin Assignment

Locate TurnitinUK Assignment

2. Click on the name of the Turnitin Assignment for which you want to download submissions.

Select submissions to download

3. Using the tick boxes, select the submissions you want to download. You can either select individual assignments, or you can click the very top box to select all assignments. Whether you are downloading a single submission or multiple submissions, Turnitin will create and download a zip file containing the selected file(s).

4. Click on Download.

Select which format you want to download

Select Original File

5. If you want to download the files which were submitted, choose ‘Original File’, or ‘Original File as PDF’ if you want the file to be downloaded as a PDF (this will take longer than downloading the original file types). If you have marked submissions online using Feedback Studio, and wish to download the marked version(s) of the selected paper(s), choose ‘Online Grading Paper’ (shown as ‘GradeMark Paper’ in the above screenshot).

Pop-up

6. You may see a pop up window asking if you want to continue. Click OK.

Your files are being compressed…

Choose Format

7. Your files will now be prepared and zipped ready for download. When the files are ready to download, you will receive a new message in your Turnitin messages area (see below).

Messages

Download

8. Keep an eye on ‘Messages’ in the top right hand corner of your Turnitin inbox. When you see a new message, click on Messages.

Save Link As…

Save Link As...

9. Right click on the new file which is ready for download (you can see which one it is by checking the date). Having right clicked on the link, you should select Save link as… which will allow you to select a download location for your zip file. This zip file will contain all of the files you have selected for download.

Note that some browsers may have slightly different wording for ‘save link as…’. The above screenshot is taken using Google Chrome.

25th September 2015

Editing the Post Date in Turnitin

Matthew Deeprose Blackboard, TurnItIn, TurnItIn Assignment Handling 0 Comments

Official Turnitin Logo The Post Date in Turnitin dictates the date and time at which marks and comments entered into Feedback Studio (previously GradeMark) are released to students and pushed to the Blackboard Grade Centre. Typically, you might set this post date to be 4 weeks from the point of submission, in line with standard marking targets at the University.

If you have marked all the submissions in a shorter period, you can edit the Post Date and release marks to students earlier than the original Post Date:

Important: If you wish to change the date and time of the Post Date to a nearer date and time, please be aware that you should allow 3 hours for marks and feedback to be transferred. For instance, if you wish to change the post date to be the current date and time, you should add at least 3 hours on top of the current date and time to the post date you set.

As an example, if it is currently 10am and you want to change the post date from two weeks in the future to 10.05am today, you are instead advised to change the post date to 13.05 at the earliest. This is to allow the marks to be moved across during the three hour window you have set.

Doing this should ensure that marks do not temporarily disappear whilst they are moved across to the new date and time. Instructors should also avoid changing the post date once and then changing the post date again immediately after

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