Advanced assignment settings

When creating a paper assignment, you may select to view and change any of the advanced assignment options. These settings allow you to alter the similarity and grading settings to better suit your assignment's need. To access them, select the + Optional Settings button at the bottom of the main assignment settings modal.

Assignment

Enter special instructions

Use this space to provide students with details, instructions, or requirements for this assignment. This will be displayed to the student when they navigate to the specific assignment.

Allow submissions after due date?

Select whether students will have the ability to submit to the assignment after the set due date has passed. Selecting Yes will allow students to submit after the due date if they had not previously submitted. These submissions will show a red submission date in the assignment inbox and will be labeled Late. When set to No, if the due date has passed, any students yet to submit will be unable to do so.

Similarity Report

Generate Similarity Report for submissions?

Select whether a Similarity Report is generated for submissions to the assignment. When set to Yes, consider the following Similarity settings.

If the assignment is set to accept any file type, Turnitin will only generate Similarity Reports for the following file types:Microsoft Word; PowerPoint; WordPerfect; PostScript; PDF; HTML; RTF; OpenOffice (ODT); Hangul (HWP); Google Docs; Slides; and Sheets (submitted via the Google Drive submission option); and plain text files.

Generate Similarity Reports for student submission

Select from the drop-down list when the Similarity Report is to be generated. The three options are:

  • Immediately (first report is final) - Similarity Reports for all submissions will be generated immediately. Students cannot resubmit papers. Submissions must be deleted by the instructor to enable resubmission.

    If an instructor chooses to create a Grading Template and the Immediately first report is final is selected, students will not be able to submit to the assignment.

  • Immediately (can overwrite reports until due date) - Students may resubmit as often they need to until the due date. Similarity Reports for the initial submission, and the next three resubmissions, will generate immediately. Any submissions thereafter will generate a Similarity Report after 24 hours. No resubmissions are allowed after the due date and time of the assignment. Once the due date and time is reached, all submissions will receive one final Similarity Report to check for collusion or newly added sources to our database. This option is typically used when students are self-reviewing and revising their submissions and able to view the Similarity Report.

    Resubmission attempts are shared between you and your students. If you attempt to resubmit on their behalf, one of their attempts will be used.

    Only the latest submission is available to the instructor or student. Previous versions are overwritten.

  • On due date - Similarity Reports will not be generated for any submission until the due date and time of the assignment. Students may resubmit as many times as needed until the due date and time without receiving reports. Resubmissions may not be made after the due date and time of the assignment.

Exclude bibliographic materials from Similarity Index for all papers in this assignment?

Select whether you would like text appearing in the bibliography, works cited, or references sections of assignments to be excluded from being checked for matches in the Similarity Index when generating Similarity Reports. This setting can be overridden in individual Similarity Reports.

Exclude quoted materials from Similarity Index for all papers in this assignment?

Select whether you would like text appearing within quotations to be excluded from being checked for matches in the Similarity Index when generating Similarity Reports. This setting can be overridden in individual Similarity Reports.

Exclude small sources?

The exclude small sources feature works by excluding sources in the source list that are below a set word count or percentage threshold. For example, if the threshold is set to 3%, any 1% or 2% match would be removed from the current report's source list (Match Overview or All Sources). With this feature, you have greater control over sifting out smaller sources, allowing you to focus on larger, more problematic and suspect sources within Similarity Reports.

Once yes has been selected, a yellow box will appear allowing you to set the source exclusion threshold.

Allow students to see the Similarity Reports?

Select whether you would like students to view their similarity score and access their Similarity Report. If No is selected, students will never have access to the report.

Enable Translated Matching?

If enabled for this account, select whether a separate report will be generated based on English translations of a student's non-English submitted paper. Find out more about Translated Matching here.

Exclude assignment template

If you have provided a template document for your students to follow, these can now be excluded from the Similarity Report by uploading the template or copying the text into the Create Custom Template field. Once a student has made a submission to the assignment, this feature can no longer be edited. Find out more about excluding templates here.

There are some requirements which must be met for a successful template exclusion. They are:

  • Uploaded file templates must be less than 100 MB. If your file exceeds 100 MB, you can reduce its size by removing any images or save the file as a rich text or plain text file. You could also copy the text from the file and paste it into the Create Custom Template text box.

  • Accepted file types for upload: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, WordPerfect, PostScript, PDF, HTML, RTF, OpenOffice (ODT), Hangul (HWP), and plain text.

  • Templates must have at least 20 words of text.

Once a student submits to the assignment, this setting will be disabled and cannot be edited. You can remove template exclusions from individual similarity reports from within the report itself.

Enable anonymous marking?

Select whether student names and any other identifiable information is masked from you. If this assignment option is not available then anonymous marking is disabled for your institution. Contact your Turnitin account administrator to enable anonymous marking.

If at any point during marking you identify a problem with a submission, you have the ability to reveal the student's name from the Assignment Inbox. When you reveal a student's name an audit trail will be created. You will be required to enter a reason for unveiling a student's name in order for any issues to be properly investigated.

This setting is permanent. If you disable anonymous marking for a student, you will be unable to reactivate it for that student during that assignment.

Submit papers to:

This setting is now a core Turnitin setting and can be found at the top of the assignment creation page.

Search options:

The search options setting allows you to select which Turnitin repositories students' submissions will be checked against when processing Similarity Reports for papers. This allows an instructor to disregard a source type if the comparison against this type of source is not needed. The similarity index percentage may decrease if a repository option is deselected.

The options are:

  • Student paper repository - compares current submissions to previous submissions in classes and assignments in Turnitin across institutions.
  • Institution paper repository - compares current submissions to the repository of student papers unique to your institution.
  • Current and archived internet - compares current submissions to a repository of archived and live publicly available internet pages containing billions of pages of existing content and tens of thousands of new pages added daily.
  • Periodicals, journals, & publications - compares current submissions to third party periodical, journal, and publication content including many major professional journals, periodicals, and business publications.

Online Grading

Attach a rubric/form to this assignment

If you would like to use a rubric to grade the papers submitted to the assignment, you may use the rubric list drop down menu to select a previously created or imported rubric, or you can launch the rubric manager by clicking on the Launch Rubric Manager link and create a new rubric to attach to the assignment.

ETS® e-rater® Settings

This feature provides instructors with the option to enable the e-rater grammar and spelling check for all submissions to the assignment. When enabled student submissions receive detailed grammar feedback automatically through the e-rater technology. Select yes to enable the e-rater engine for the assignment. If this assignment option is not available then the e-rater grammar check is disabled for the account. Contact your Turnitin account administrator to enable the e-rater grammar check for the account.

e-rater grammar and spelling check comments are shown immediately to your students.

Optional: Select the ETS handbook level from the drop down menu. The ETS handbooks provide students with in depth information about the grammar errors the e-rater technology finds in their paper.

You can select the dictionary used for the spelling check, too.

The Categories enabled by default option allows instructors to choose which categories of feedback are enabled when viewing assignment submissions in the report. The default is to show the feedback for every category.