The Center for eLearning has partnered with Turnitin to offer a suite of tools available in both BlazeVIEW and Microsoft 365 Online to ensure Academic Honesty and improve student writing. This page provides information and instructional guides to help faculty and students use these tools effectively.

Feedback Studio

Feedback Studio is a powerful tool in BlazeVIEW that foster writing excellence, promote academic integrity, and facilitate meaningful feedback. Using Feedback Studio helps ensure that academic standards are being upheld. The two primary tools in Feedback Studio are Similarity and Online Grading.

Instructors, review this video from CELT to get started with Turnitin: Create an Assignment and Enable Turnitin in BlazeVIEW 

Similarity

Turnitin Similarity does not check for plagiarism. What it actually does is compare submissions against the Turnitin database and highlight writing that is similar to one in the database. The Turnitin database includes billions of web pages: both current and archived content from the internet, a repository of works other students have submitted to Turnitin in the past, and a collection of documents, which comprises thousands of periodicals, journals, and publications.

The Similarity Report provides a summary of details, including the sources matched to the assignment submission, to use as a tool to determine if the matches are acceptable. When a Similarity Report is available for viewing, a similarity score percentage is made available.

The Similarity Score is the percentage of matched text your submission contains. Turnitin calculates this by dividing the total words in a submission by the amount of words matched to outside sources.

Similarity Resources

Online Grading

Instructors can also take advantage of the integrated Online Grading tools to add comments, inline text, and highlight sections in file submissions, directly from the Assignments tool. Learners can view Online Grading feedback in User Progress under Assignments, in Grades, in Assignments, in User Progress under Grades, and in Content.

Online Grading Resources

Draft Coach

Draft Coach puts the power of Feedback Studio directly into the hands of the writer to build writing and research skills early in the writing process. Draft Coach provides real-time feedback and guidance on similarity, citations, and grammar. Using this feedback, writers can address unintentional plagiarism, improve citation skills, and correct grammar mistakes prior to final submission. Draft Coach is available to all VSU students and employees using Microsoft Word when accessed through MyVSU. Instructor resources include guidance for using Draft Coach as part of classroom instruction.

Draft Coach Resources

PeerMark

PeerMark is a peer review assignment tool. Instructors can create and manage PeerMark assignments that allow students to read, review, and evaluate one or many papers submitted by classmates.

PeerMark Resources

Turnitin System Status

On the Turnitin System Status page, you will be able find real-time information about any outages affecting Turnitin availability, as well as updates about scheduled maintenance and past incidents. During a Turnitin outage, instructors may be unable to access Online Grading. For assignments submitted during an outage, instructors may need need to rerun Similarity Reports after the outage has been resolved.

Additional Resources

Academic Honesty

Visit these Academic Affairs pages for more information about academic honesty policies, procedures, and resources at VSU.

Writing Support

Visit these pages for tutoring and other resources to help improve your writing and research skills.