How do I create a Turnitin assignment in Moodle?

As part of our efforts to promote academic honesty among our students, we have installed the Turnitin Assignment plugin on our Moodle server. As its name suggests, the Turnitin Assignment plugin allows you to create a Turnitin Assignment in your course. When a student uploads his/her work to that assignment, the student document is compared to Turnitin’s database that includes work submitted at Bucknell, work submitted at all other institutions using Turnitin, and documents available on the Web (including the typical paper mills). Please note that the Turnitin database tends not to include articles from online journals that require a subscription to access those journals, so a low matching score does not necessarily rule out plagiarism. In general, the Turnitin Assignment is a good way to dissuade students from plagiarizing, and it catches the more obvious examples of plagiarism, but faculty members still need to trust their instincts when determining if a piece of student work sounds “too good to be true.” To add a Turnitin Assignment to your course:

1. Log in to Moodle, and navigate to your course by clicking on the appropriate link in the Current Course List block, on the right-hand side of the page:
    
   
2. If editing mode is not already on, click on the "Turn editing on" button at the top-right of the page: 
    
   
3. Scroll down to the topic area where you want to add the Turnitin Assignment, and click on the “Add an activity or resource” link:
    
   
    
4. You will see a grid of the Activities and Resources that you can add to a Moodle course in alphabetical order. Scroll down until you see “Turnitin Assignment 2,” and click on that button:
    
   
5. Type a title into the “Turnitin Assignment Name” box, which is the link students will click on to submit the assignment. You could also add a description in the “Summary” field, giving the students a sense of what you expect them to submit:
    
   
6. Scroll down to the "Assignment Part 1" section, which will allow you to select relevant dates.  The "Start Date" is when students can actually click on the link for the assignment.  The "Due Date" determines when the assignment closes (unless you change another setting that allows submissions after the due date).  The "Post Date" is when students can see any comments you have made (after the assignment was submitted), along with a grade.   Modify those dates as needed, keeping in mind that Moodle uses military time, so 3:00 PM would actually be 15:00:
    
   
7. If you want to allow submissions after the due date, you'll need to expand the "Similarity Report Options" just below the date selector and change the "Allow Submissions after the Due Date" option from "No" to "Yes":
    
   
8. When you have finished modifying these settings, click on the "Save and return to course" button at the bottom of the page to finalize the creation of the assignment:
    
   

Note that it's possible to create a hidden Turnitin assignment if you'd just like to check a paper or two, if you didn't create this Turnitin Assignment in advance to check all student submissions.

Questions about Turnitin can be directed to the DPS group.