Turnitin Tools: A Full Service Pilot at FSC

AI-Plagiarism Detection, Draft Coach, and Feedback Studio 

Throughout Fall 2023, faculty will have access to the full suite of Turnitin teaching tools inside their Brightspace LMS Classroom. While Turnitin may be best known for its plagiarism detection tool, known as a similarity report, there are more tools available that faculty may consider using. 

This webpage provides: 

  • detailed information about each tool 
  • teaching resources that you can customize to meet your needs 
  • access to training sessions 
  • opportunities to join the conversation about which of these tools are relevant and valuable to your teaching and to your students’ learning. 

Some of the tools, like Draft Coach and Feedback Studio, offer new and exciting ways to help improve your students’ writing process and how you give them feedback.  

Other tools, such as Turnitin’s AI writing detection, will require careful consideration, active feedback from our faculty, and a consultative discussion with interested parties to help determine whether this tool is appropriate for our institution. 

It’s important for everyone to realize that Turnitin’s AI Writing Detection software is not perfect and may have a higher rate of inaccuracy than the company is reporting.  

Browse the links below to see more about each Turnitin tool, teaching resources in Brightspace, and a sampling of syllabi statements for faculty to review and modify if they wish.  

Where to Get Turnitin Training

SUNY and Turnitin offer a training calendar as well as 1-1 training appointments. If you’d like to get more hands-on experience with these tools, visit the SUNY Turnitin Event website and sign up for a training session of your choosing. 

AI Turnitin’s AI-Plagiarism Detection Tool 

AI Turnitin’s AI-Writing Detection Tool

Faculty using Turnitin to check student work for plagiarism will notice a new button on the similarity report page: The AI Detection tool.

Faculty using Turnitin to check student work for similarities will notice a new button on the similarity report page: The AI Detection tool. While the tool purports to be 99% accurate, it’s important to note that it is currently only capable of detecting Chat-GPT ai, and no other AI text generator. As a teacher, you will need to determine whether this tool is useful, how to manage violations with a sensitivity to the possibility, however remote, of false positives, and whether this service is useful as a teaching tool that you’d like to see in your Turnitin environment moving forward.  

Faculty are the best plagiarism deterrent: create a culture of integrity by discussing topics of academic integrity early and often. Incorporating scaffold assignments, such as preliminary outlines, annotated bibliographies, research notes submissions, and library research assignments can curb instances of plagiarism. In cases of suspected plagiarism, interviewing students about their work or asking them to draft a summary of their thesis and resources in-person can help to facilitate a difficult conversation. Turnitin has developed an assignment rubric and assignment checklist to help AI-proof your assignments and a guide for how to speak with students once an assignment is flagged for having AI-content.  

Please take a moment to review Turnitin’s Overview Video and FAQs as you evaluate whether this service is appropriate for FSC.  


 

 

Turnitin's Draft Coach

Turnitin’s Draft Coach

Turnitin’s Draft Coach is a tool that students download to sit on top of Google Docs or Microsoft Word online to offer students real-time insights on grammar, originality, citations, and style. Faculty will need to share instructions with students to add draft coach to their Google Drive Account or Office 365 account by copying these instructional slides and providing them to students. Faculty may consider putting a statement about using Draft Coach in their syllabus

Learn more about Draft Coach on the Turnitin Draft Coach Information page, or watch this informational video: Draft Coach Educator Video US 

Turnitin’s Feedback Studio

Turnitin’s Feedback Studio

Turnitin’s Feedback studio features a host of feedback tools at the Turnitin website that exceed those available in the LMS. Among the most attractive include: 

  • a highly functional peer review activity tool 
  • a bank of just-in-time grammar tutorials and explanations 
  • customizable quickmarks 
  • pre-set and customizable scoring rubrics that allow you to expedite feedback while providing specific performance notes to each student. 

These features are in addition to all of the feedback tools you’ve grown to know in Turnitin’s standard set of functions.  
 
Learn more about Feedback Studio by reading Turnitin’s brochure or visiting their informational website. 

Teaching Resources from Farmingdale State College 

Teaching Resources from Farmingdale State College 

The Office of Distance Learning, the Faculty Center, and campus faculty are building assignment templates that faculty can modify for their own use. Featuring culturally-responsive assignment addenda, real-world and authentic assessment activities, and best-in-class assessment practices and documentation, visit this Brightspace Discovery course site to see assessments designed to embrace ChatGPT use, prevent ChatGPT use, and to inspire your next round of assignment revisions. The repository of assignment templates will continue to grow. 

Have questions? Reach out to The Faculty Center and Distance Learning.

Faculty Resource Site - Brightspace Discovery Course

Sample Syllabi Statements 

Sample Syllabi Statements 

Provided below are three sample syllabi statements for faculty to modify in their own teaching. The examples are meant to serve as a starting point for faculty as they develop their own acceptable use policy for their classroom materials. Faculty at FSC are encouraged to invest in conversations within their departments about what penalties may be appropriate for initial and repeat violations of their classroom policies, as well as discuss the issues surrounding the use of AI in their classrooms.  

Sample Syllabus Statements Regarding AI
Acceptable and Unacceptable Uses of AI 
Use of AI is Encouraged and Permitted 
Use of AI is Prohibited 

 

 

For more information on using Turnitin in Brightspace please contact:

Distance Learning
(934)420-5300
dl@farmingdale.edu

For more information on using AI or Turnitin as a teaching tool please contact:

Jennifer Jaiswal
Director of the Faculty Center
(934)420-5775
Jennifer Jaiswal

Last Modified 11/15/23