Creating a Turnitin assignment
- After logging into Blackboard, select the Courses tab from the menu at the top of the page and switch Edit Mode on. This toggle can be found in the top right-hand corner.
- Select a course from the Course List.
- From the left-hand navigation, select Content under your course title.
- The Content page allows you to build content, create assessments or different tools to a module. To add a Turnitin assignment, select the Assessments drop-down menu, then select Turnitin Assignment.
- On the assignment creation page, enter an assignment title and an optional point value for the assignment.
Only alpha-numeric characters should be used when creating an assignment title. We do not support special characters and punctuation.
- Select start and due dates for the assignment. Specific times are also selected. Students are only able to submit once the start date and time has passed. After the due date and time, students will be blocked unless late submissions are enabled. In Blackboard, the post date relates to the availability of Online Grading papers only and has no bearing on when grades are posted to the Blackboard grade book.
- Each time you create a Blackboard Basic assignment, a class is created within Turnitin with an end date set to a fixed point in the future. This is automatically done so older students are not counted against your account's student limit. If you try to edit the start and due date to a time after the end of the class, an error will be shown letting you know about this date. If you do encounter this error, creating a new base assignment with a due date in the future will extend the end date of the class, allowing you to continue editing existing assignments.
Select whether the assignment will require Originality Reports for submissions or whether any file type can be uploaded. The default option is to Allow only file types that Turnitin can check for similarity.
For assignments that do not require Originality Reports instructors can select Allow any file type which allows instructors to leave feedback on every file type.
- Each time you create a Blackboard Basic assignment, a class is created within Turnitin with an end date set to a fixed point in the future. This is automatically done so older students are not counted against your account's student limit. If you try to edit the start and due date to a time after the end of the class, an error will be shown letting you know about this date. If you do encounter this error, creating a new base assignment with a due date in the future will extend the end date of the class, allowing you to continue editing existing assignments.
Choose where files will be submitted using the Submit Papers To option.
If the repository options are enabled for an instructor by the administrator, two or four options will appear within the Submit papers to dropdown list. Select from the dropdown list where you would like papers to be submitted to. The settings provide you with the ability to select whether papers are stored in a Turnitin standard paper repository, your institution's paper repository, the student's choice of paper repository, or no repository at all.
The benefit of submitting papers to the standard paper repository is that student papers submitted to the assignment are checked against other institutions' student submissions. However, by selecting to submit papers to the institution's paper repository, this means that the assignment will only be checked against other students' submissions within the institution. If you select no repository, your students' papers will not be stored in the Turnitin standard paper repository or the institution's paper repository, therefore meaning that the papers will not be checked for collusion between students of the same or different institutions.
- To see more options for the assignment, click on the Optional settings section. Learn more about Optional Settings.
- Modify any other assignment options.
- Click submit to add the Turnitin assignment to the course.
Attach a rubric to the 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.
Enable e-rater® grammar check?
This feature of assignment creation 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 in GradeMark 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 thee-rater grammar check is disabled for the account. Contact the Turnitin account administrator to enable thee-ratergrammar check for the account.
(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.
Select the dictionary used for the spelling check.
The Categories enabled by default option allows instructors to choose which categories of feedback are enabled when viewing assignment submissions in GradeMark. The default is to show the feedback for every category.
Changing Advanced Assignment Option Defaults
If any changes have been made to the advanced assignment options, an additional option will be available at the bottom of the options panel. The instructor is asked Would you like to save these options as your defaults for future assignments? Select yes to save these advanced assignment options as the default for all future assignments created within this course. These default advanced assignment options will not apply to new assignments created in any other course on the Blackboard
Learning System, but will be applied to all assignments created in the current course by any instructor.
The default settings can be changed at any time when creating a new assignment or updating an existing assignment.
Legacy API/Legacy Blackboard Basic assignment Limits:
- 1500 papers per assignment
- 100 assignments per class
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The guide