Turnitin, a citation assistance and similarity service, is available for instructors and Moodle course owners to generate a Similarity Report of submitted works. Instructors can create their own Turnitin-enabled Assignment in a Moodle Projects space for submitting their own papers.

This article provides instructions on how to create a Turnitin similarity report for personal or administrative use by faculty and staff. For students, use the instructions in the "Using the Self-Service Plagiarism Report" article instead.

Creating an Assignment with Similarity Report Enabled

Before the assignment can be created, a Projects space must be requested and created. Create the Moodle Projects space using the instructions found in the "Creating a WolfWare Projects Space and Moodle Projects Course" article.

The directions in this article set up an Assignment activity in that Projects space without a due or cut-off date, unlimited submissions, no grade item, and the Turnitin plugin enabled. This allows for continuous submissions without impacting any gradebook setup in case the Projects space is used for course development.

To start, create the Assignment:

1. In the top right corner of the Moodle Projects course window, enable Edit mode using the toggle. 
2. At the bottom of any section, click the Add content icon (which looks like a plus sign).
3. In the drop-down menu that appears, select the Activity or resource option.
4. In the Add an activity or resource menu that appears, select the Assignment tile.
5. In the New Assignment page, enter a name for the Assignment in the Assignment name field.

After getting started creating the activity, adjust these settings to ensure the Assignment never closes:

1. In the Assignment settings page, find and expand the Availability section.
2. Disable each Enable checkbox in this section.

This will ensure that the Assignment can be submitted to at any time.

Then, configure and set up the Turnitin Assignment plugin:

1. In the Assignment settings page, find and expand the Turnitin plagiarism plugin settings section.
2. Set the Enable Turnitin field to the Yes option.
3. Set the Display Similarity Reports to Students field to the Yes option.
4. Set the Store Student Papers option to No Repository.
5. Set the Check against stored student papers to the Yes option.
6. Set the Check against internet field to the Yes option.
7. Set the Check against journals, periodicals and publications field to the Yes option.
8. Set the Report Generation Speed field to the Generate reports immediately. Submissions will be added to the repository immediately (if repository is set). 
9. Configure other settings in this section as desired.
10. At the bottom of the page, click the Save changes button.

This creates an ungraded Moodle Assignment activity, which allows for infinite submissions, and enables the Turnitin similarity report for each submission. 

Submitting to the Assignment

In order to submit to the assignment and create a Similarity Report:

1. Switch to the Student role using the instructions in the "Using Student View in Moodle" article.
2. Navigate to the newly-created Assignment activity.
3. In the Assignment's main page, click the Add submission button.
4. In the Add submission page that appears, upload the paper to the file locker using the directions in the "Uploading a File to a Moodle File Locker" article.
5. Click the Save changes button.
6. After it's finished processing, follow the instructions in the "Accessing Turnitin's Similarity Report" article to access the report.

To upload another file to the Assignment, edit the submission and upload another file.

After three submissions, Similarity Reports will process after 24 hours, instead of immediately. Duplicate the Assignment using the instructions in the "Duplicating an Activity or Resource in Moodle" article, then submit to the newly-copied Assignment for a faster report generation.

Additional Resources

Overview of Turnitin (DELTA Knowledge Base)

For additional assistance, please contact the LearnTech Help Desk at learntech@ncsu.edu or (919) 513-7094, or via the Get Help form on the DELTA Knowledge Base.