Guidance for students collecting marks and feedback from Turnitin

Owned by Chris F
Feb 12, 2024
3 min read

This page contains annotated screenshots and information about accessing your grades and feedback from Turnitin. Your tutor will let you know if they will be grading submitted work online.

To enlarge images, click them.

On this page:

Step 1 - locate the submission

  • Navigate to the relevant Moodle course and locate and click on the Turnitin assignment you made a submission to. This will open the submission inbox.

To access feedback:

  1. Click on the blue pencil icon in the Grade column, or on the assignment title link in the Submission Title column.

  2. The document viewer will open in a new tab or window. You may need to enable pop-ups: look at the advice for your browser: Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari,

Step 2 - engage with your feedback

Students tell us they want more feedback on their work. Accordingly assessors are putting increasing amounts of time into giving feedback, and Turnitin lets them know whether or not a student has accessed it. Please do engage with your feedback - read it, act on it, or raise it in discussions with your tutor.  

Your marked paper will look a bit like the numbered screenshot below. It may have different combinations of comments and feedback - not all assessors will use all of these. Assessors will let you know what to look out for here.

It may include:

  1. Annotation on your text.

  2. Bubble comment linked to a criterion - click on bubble icon to view comment.

  3. Bubble comment - click on bubble icon to view comment.

  4. Quickmark comment (pre-existing frequently-made comment).

  5. Details of your submission (dates submitted and graded, number of comments, &c).

  6. Download your work with or without comments, download a submission receipt.

  7. View Originality Report (where used).

  8. View feedback.

  9. Summary comments.

  10. Rubric or grading form/criterion (where used).

  11. A numeric mark (where used).

image-20240212-161242.png

If your assessor is using a Rubric to show assessment criteria, clicking the View Rubric button (see 10. above) will display something like the screenshot below:

  1. Criteria.

  2. Levels of achievement for each criterion.

  3. Your level displays shaded.

  4. Comments linked to each criterion.

  5. If the rubric is for feedback only i.e is not generating a numeric mark.

image-20240212-161250.png

Step 3 - understand/interpret your Similarity report (if used)

The similarity report highlights where similarities have been found in the text you submitted and other pieces of work that Turnitin compares it against. The report is colour and number coded and any similarities will be highlighted.

There are a number of things to be aware of when interpreting your Similarity report. 

  • Turnitin doesn't 'detect plagiarism', and the score that you receive and any matches found in the report are not the same thing as plagiarism. For example, if you have included quotes in your document, these may show up as matching the original sources and count towards your Similarity score. However, as long as you've included enough of your own original thoughts and writing, and have appropriately cited and referenced others' work that you have used, this is valid academic writing. 

  • If your document includes references, it is very common for them to show as matches and count towards your similarity score, simply because another source has used the same reference as you. Again, simply having references that are the same as those used by other sources does not indicate plagiarism. 

  • There is no particular Similarity score to aim for. A high score does not necessarily indicate plagiarism and a low score does not necessarily indicate original work. Do not try to aim for the lowest score possible, instead aim to make sure that you are using your sources appropriately and giving credit to others whose work you use.  

  • Some short pieces of text (a few words) may show as matches just because they are particularly well-used or common-sense terms in your subject. This isn't plagiarism - but if you think that it may be a cliche or hackneyed term with no particular disciplinary relevance, then try to rewrite using fresher language.

The following links may also be useful:

If you do find matches in your document: 

  • Check that you have referenced and cited work accordingly. For additional guidance with academic writing, please see the Turnitin Similarity Checker (Formerly known as the Plagiarism and Academic Writing course)..