Allowing Students to Check Similarity Index for Drafts
This article outlines how to set up a Turnitin assignment that allows students to submit a draft and review it against the Similarity Index before its final submission.
There are two options to allow for student submission of a paper to Turnitin that allows them to see the Similarity Index score ahead of their final submission.
Option 1: Settings
The most common way to do this is to adjust the setting of a Turnitin assignment to allow for re-submission.
When creating the Turnitin assignment, click on the Optional Settings to access the re-submission settings. Scroll down until you reach the Similarity Report section.
To allow students to submit a draft and review the similarity index report, choose the second option in the drop-down menu: Generate reports immediately (students can resubmit until due date).
Note: The first three resubmissions will generate a new Similarity Report straight away. After three attempts, a 24-hour wait is enforced to generate Similarity Reports for all subsequent resubmissions.
Even if the assignment is set to Allow late submissions - if a student has submitted a draft ahead of the due date and failed to resubmit the final draft by the deadline, the student will NOT be allowed a late submission.
However, the student may email you the assignment, and you can upload it on their behalf.
If you would like to use these settings on all future Turnitin assignments, you can tick the Save these settings box.
When you are happy with all settings (including similarity score matching, rubrics, late submissions), click Submit.
Option 2: Separate Submission Inbox
Another option to allow students to review their drafts on Turnitin is to set up a Draft Submission Assignment.
It is ESSENTIAL that the following settings be followed to avoid submissions that appear to be self-plagiarised by students.
Set up the assignment as normal. Click on Optional Settings.
In the first settings area, Submission Settings, choose Do not store the submitted papers from the drop-down menu.
This prevents the paper from being checked against itself when it is submitted as the final draft.
Please note: Option 2 also prevents the papers from being checked again one another, student-to-student. If Student A in the module's paper is similar to Student B's paper, it will NOT be apparent using this method.
However, in the final submission inbox, the similarity will be identified when you choose to store them to the first drop-down option, Standard paper repository.
Then, as above, scroll to the Similarity Report area and choose the second drop-down menu option, Generate reports immediately (students can resubmit until due date).
It is NOT recommended that you tick the 'Save Settings for future use' box.
When you are happy with the other settings, click Submit.
You will later create a separate Turnitin Assignment for the students' final drafts. For that assignment, it is standard to store the papers to the repository, unless they contain sensitive information, in order to check for similarities from student to student.