Turnitin

Turnitin is a PowerLink (plugin) in Blackboard Vista which checks students' work for improper citation or potential plagiarism. Files submitted to a Turnitin assignment dropbox are compared to an ever-growing database of web pages, newspapers, journals, books, and other students' papers. Each paper’s comparison results are displayed with a color-coded chart indicating where similar blocks of text appear in Turnitin’s database.

Turnitin also includes a grading tool called Grademark, which allows comments and feedback to be added directly to a student's submission. Instructors may also assign a grade to the student in Grademark, which automatically flows to the Blackboard Vista gradebook.

To set up a Turnitin assignment in your Blackboard Vista course, from the Build tab click the menu to Add Content Link, and select Turnitin Assignment. After supplying a title, you can then select options, including point values, start and end dates, and whether to allow students to see their own originality scores. Grading and viewing the originality scores is accessible by clicking on the created assignment link from the Teach tab.

For more information about Turnitin, please view the Instructor Quickstart Guide (PDF file) or the Student QuickStart Guide (PDF).

New Release

On September 4, 2010, Turnitin released an updated version. You can find out all of the updates by looking at the information page for Turnitin2.