Guide overview
This guide provides a brief overview of the Turnitin tool and outlines how to: first, check whether a formative / summative Blackboard submission point has Turnitin enabled; second, verify that it is configured to allow student access to the similarity report; and finally, view the report.
You will only be able to access the similarity report if the submission point is configured to allow student access.
Formative / summative Blackboard assignment submission points that have Turnitin enabled are not to be used by students to check draft copies of work. If you wish to check draft copies of work you can access the school’s Turnitin Tutorial course; Turnitin Tutorial course.
Please also see the following link for general guidance on submitting assignments; submission guide.
Turnitin is a third-party tool that generates a similarity report for submitted student work. The tool can be enabled on Blackboard Ultra standard assignment submission points. The report highlights areas of text that match existing sources, helping assess the originality of student work and proper use of citation. Turnitin compares submitted documents to its vast database of content (such as websites and academic journals etc,.). The similarity report provides a percentage indicating the level of similarity between the submitted work and other sources. Turnitin can help educate students about proper citation and referencing, and encourage original thinking.
Please note that the terminology ‘similarity’ and ‘originality’ are both used by Turnitin for the same report.
- Click on the relevant submission point.
- The submission point information will state if Turnitin is enabled.
- This will be stated under additional information.
- At the point of submission a prompt also appears asking you to review the Turnitin licensing agreement and accept it by selecting submit.
- After you have submitted your assignment, you can then check if permission has been granted for students to also access the similarity report. Click on the submission point again.
- Once a submission has been made, if students are permitted to view similarity reports, the text displayed under additional information will change accordingly.
- The modified wording will say ‘originality processing is in progress‘. If students do not have permission to view reports, this will continue to only say ‘Turnitin enabled‘.
- Once the report has finished processing this will say ‘originality processing is complete‘. You may need to refresh your view for this status to update.
- In the top right-hand corner, you can now navigate to your submitted work to view the associated report.
- The link to submitted work is under the heading marks / attempts.
- In the top right-hand corner of the submission preview there will be a Turnitin match percentage rating. Clicking on this rating will open up in a new tab the Turnitin similarity report. To view the report you may need to again confirm you accept the end user license agreement.
- The report will open in a new window.
This guidance is adapted from the Turnitin help site. Please access the following Turnitin help page to ensure you access the most up to date and comprehensive guidance; Turnitin similarity report guidance.
Overall similarity
The similarity rating at the top of the report provides an overall percentage that indicates the level of similarity between the submitted work and other sources.
The criteria that Turnitin checks against – and the resulting similarity report and scoring – depend on the settings configured during set up. The instructor view of the report will also not be modified based upon your view settings (such as you selecting/ unselecting sources, exclusions etc,.).
Highlighted matched text
Underneath the overall similarity rating the report findings are divided into four categories (match groups). These are based on the usage of in-text citation and quotation marks. Matched text is highlighted in the report.
The color and criteria for each match group is:
Not Cited or Quoted – text matches that are not written as a quotation or have no citation to their original source.
Missing Quotations – this text is cited, but the match is so exact that it may also require quotation marks.
Missing Citation – this text is written as a quote, but lacks a citation to its original source.
Cited and Quoted – This text contains a quotation and is cited to a source. You may want to review them for your preferred formatting.
Select one of the four match groups to bring matches with that criteria into focus in the right-side panel.
Sources
Each section of highlighted text has a source number which is indicated in the top row of its corresponding source card. Selecting highlighted text will bring its corresponding source card into focus in the right-side panel.
Source cards contain details about the highlighted match and its source material / full url. 
Underneath the overall similarity rating you can also select sources. Sources provides a list of sources organized in descending order by highest total similarity percentage.
Download a similarity report
Click on the download arrow option in the top right-hand corner of the report. A summary PDF version of your report will download to your device. This will include key information such as the overall similarity percentage rating, highlighted matched text and source information. The downloaded report will not alter based upon any current modifications in the browser view of the report (such as selected / unselected sources, exclusions etc,.).