Turnitin

Please be aware that you need to leave enough time to submit your assignments through Turnitin. The minimum amount of time required to complete an upload to Turnitin is about 5 minutes, but larger documents and busier times may mean the process can take over 15 minutes.

If you have a slow internet connection, this can further delay the completion of a submission.

Even if you start the upload before your assignment deadline, your digital receipt may not be generated until after. This will be classed as a late submission.

Leave plenty of time to complete a Turnitin submission - don't wait until the final 30 minutes before the assignment deadline.

See: Time Management

Turnitin is embedded into your Blackboard Ultra module sites, in the Assessment section of your site.

This 5 minute video guides you through locating your Assessment area in Blackboard and submitting assignments to Turnitin. If you're only interested in how to submit to Turnitin, go to the 3.00 minute mark in the video.  

This 4 minute video explains how to access assignment feedback in Turnitin and why feedback is so important.

You may also find these Working with Feedback resources useful for developing how to turn feedback into feedforward to improve future assignments. 

Why not test your essay before submission via the Turnitin Test Area in Blackboard?

Most plagiarism happens accidentally, normally as a result of inaccurate referencing and attempts at paraphrasing that are still too similar to the original sources. We encourage you to use the Turnitin Test Area available on Blackboard to develop your citing, referencing and paraphrasing skills.

Just a reminder that Turnitin produces Similarity reports. These reports may well pick up on very small percentages  of similarity that reflect phrases that are commonly used in your subject area or short bits of text that match other student assignments. This doesn't automatially mean there is evidence of plagiarism, rather that that Turnitin has found some similarity. Use your judgement and don't panic. Check on your referencing and paraphrasing to work out whether it is a case of minor similarity and your academic integrity is still intact. Or, are the individual percentage scores that make up the overall score, showing substantial matches to other sources? If that's the case, this may well mean that you need to work on your referencing and paraphrasing. Remember there are tutorials, guides, webinars to help with referencing. Check out the Referencing and Avoiding Plagiarism page for more details.    

This 6 minute video guides you through locating the Turnitin Test Area and interpreting similarity reports.

Alternatively, if you prefer written guidance, follow the instruction and pdf guide below.

Go to the Institution page on Blackboard and scroll down to the Student Support section. Click on the Turnitin Test Area link.

You will need to Self enrol on the site.  You can then submit your work to get an Originality report, which you can use to identify incorrect referencing or close matching where you might not have paraphrased enough.  See the section on intepreting your originality report for more information. 

The Test area does not add your work to the database so you won't get a 100% percentage match when you submit it to the assignment gateway. But do remember to submit it to you assignment gateway as well.

Download the guide to accessing Turnitin test area

Narrated PowerPoints and other media files

There are some assignments that require you to create media files such as narrated PowerPoints, audio presentations or video presentations. These files are often too large to be submitted through Turnitin and may require you to submit the transcript, but then share the presentation with your tutors via your university OneDrive.

ALWAYS check with your tutor(s) if Turnitin will not accept your file because it is too large.

See Sharing Media Files for Assessment on the Sharing Files page for more information.

If things don't seem to be working correctly, when submitting to Turnitin, consider the following options:

Sometimes your web browser may be causing issues. The preferred web browser for Blackboard / Turnitin is Google Chrome. This is available as a free download for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and Linux: https://www.google.com/chrome/

There may be interference from another open page in your web browser. When submitting to Turnitin, make sure you only have one tab or window open in your browser.

Turnitin seems to freeze when using a Mac. If you are unable to submit using Safari on your mac and the page is hanging but gets no further, please use Google Chrome instead.

If the submission page seems to freeze or hang at the point of submitting, leave it a couple of minutes and then go back to the assignment inbox to see whether or not the upload has worked. If the upload has not worked, please log out of Blackboard and then try again using the Google Chrome web browser. 

Turnitin may be having an issue. Check the Turnitin Status page for the latest updates on Turnitin outages or planned maintenance.

Sometimes Turnitin is just running slow. At very busy times, Turnitin can run a bit slower than normal - always submit your assignments with plenty of time to spare.

If you are still having problems, please contact the IT Servicedesk.