Turnitin Similarity Website for Discussion Board Responses: Home

The Turnitin Similarity website should be used in the specific use cases below:

• To upload one designated week's discussion posts.
  • Please Note: It is recommended that it be an early week but defer to your departmental leadership's guidance on requirements for submitting discussion posts through Turnitin.
• To review any further student submissions/posts that you also want submitted to the Turnitin Database.
  • Please Note: Most assignments are set up to automatically generate a Similarity Report and add a student submission to the database.

For any other Turnitin reviews that are outside of these use cases or a typical assignment review process, use the Student View for your course to submit items through the Turnitin Drafts feature.

There are some important considerations regarding the Turnitin Similarity Website.

• Submissions to this website are added to the Turnitin Database and will be referenced in all future similarity checks.
  • Please Note: It is recommended that this should not be utilized for Capstone assignment submissions.
• Only the faculty submitting the items will see the results.

Before following the steps below, you will want to:

• Copy and paste the students' discussion board posts into a Microsoft Word document and save the file(s)
• Log into the Turnitin Similarity website 

 

After logging into the Turnitin Similarity Website the dashboard will look like the screenshot below. Click the Launch button near the middle of the screen.

 

You will be taken to the My Files area. Here is it recommended that you create a folder for each course in which you use the Turnitin Similarity website. Click the Add Folder button.

 

Once you click the Add Folder button, a New Folder pop-up will appear. It is recommended that you name the folder using the following convention: "Term-Course-Section-CRN". Then click Add.

 

Once you click Add the folder will be visible in the My Files area. Click the name of the folder to navigate into it.

 

Once you are inside of the folder, it is time to upload the Microsoft Word document(s) that you have. Click the Upload button.

 

You will then be taken to the file upload screen where you can either drag and drop the files into the browser or you can click Select Files and add them.

 

In this example two sample submissions were uploaded.

1. Similarity/Processing Column: This column will either show the similarity score or have the word "Processing" in it if the upload is still processing.
2. Upload Popup: This popup indicates whether your upload(s) have completed or are still uploading.

 

Once your file(s) have finished processing you can proceed. The time it takes to process will depend on the size of the file. When all of your files have finished uploading, you can navigate away from this screen and return later. 

1. Similarity/Processing Column: This column in this example has the color indicators and the similarity score.

• The colors of the Turnitin icon indicates the similarity score of a paper, based on the amount of matching or similar text when checked against the Turnitin database and the internet.
  • Light Blue: 0% matching text
  • Dark Blue: 1-24% matching text
  • Yellow: 25-49% matching text
  • Orange: 50-74% matching text
  • Red: 75-100% matching text
• Sample Submission 1 had a 0% match so the indicator is Light Blue whereas Sample Submission 2 had a 99% match so the indicator is Red.
  • Please Note: The score is simply a starting point and there is not specific score that indicates plagiarism.

2. Word Document Title: Click the name of the submission to launch the Similarity Report of that file.

 

The Similarity Report functions like the similarity report within Canvas. The submission is on the left-hand pane whereas the Sources Overview is in the right-hand pane.