June? July? 2024
Turnitin Originality
The Centre for Pedagogical Innovation is announcing changes to Turnitin service at Brock University. No action is required by instructors, staff, or students, and overall impact will be minimal.
The primary tool that instructors use, Turnitin Similarity Check, remains and will function exactly the same. The new version of the product (which exists under the umbrella of “Turnitin Originality” as opposed to “Feedback Studio”) offers a more refined experience and simply removes extra features that were previously included but not utilized by the Brock community.
These changes have no impact on typical usage of Turnitin: how it is enabled in Brightspace Assignments and how it generates reports with student submissions remains the same.
The new service retains:
The Similarity Report and all of its details, with source matching, flagging, exclusion options, etc.
The same paper repositories (including Brock’s internal repository) and related options.
The Brightspace integration via Assignments.
Single sign-on (SSO) direct access to the instructor tools within turnitin.com.
Originality Check does NOT have:
Peer-feedback (which was never used in 2023-2024).
QuickMarks (grades and comments within Turnitin as opposed to Brightspace).
Rubrics and Grading Forms (also within Turnitin as opposed to Brightspace).
eRater Grammar (a built-in grammar check).
Two features that Brock was already not using:
Draft Coach (an MS Word integration to check originality and “coach” mistakes).
Artificial Intelligence detection.*
*Brock elected to not engage with Turnitin’s AI tools for a variety of reasons, namely the inability to test and configure the tool in any way. Brock has also strengthened its stance on the usage of Generative AI detectors (in all forms) from “cautioning against” them to their use being “not institutionally condoned”.
https://hai.stanford.edu/news/ai-detectors-biased-against-non-native-english-writers
What is Turnitin?
As a reminder, this is a similarity and phrase-matching tool that can be used to scan submitted assignments. It is a learning tool that plays a role in supporting academic integrity and preventing academic misconduct. The Similarity Check does not itself detect plagiarism and both its use and the reports it generates should be examined critically and with an open mind.
As always, guidance and recommendations are available from Brock’s CPI staff (edtech@brocku.ca) and Academic Integrity Manager (acassamali@brocku.ca).
Refer to CPI’s documentation and guidelines on Turnitin’s implementation within Brightspace Assignments.
Communications channels
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