New Turnitin Originality Service Coming August 11, 2020
Overview
In preparation for the fall 2020 term, Pepperdine will be adopting the new Turnitin Originality service! This new service comes with a number of improvements, including:
- Latest and greatest similarity checking platform from Turnitin
- Updated integration with the Assignments tool in Courses (Sakai)
- Expanded access to full ProQuest database
- New translation similarity checking functionality
- New computer code similarity checking (coming soon)
- And more!
When is the update scheduled?
The update is scheduled to occur Tuesday, August 11, 2020 at 4 AM (Pacific). This time was selected to ensure minimal impact on the current summer courses and the upcoming fall courses. At that time, Courses will be restarted to remove the old integration and apply the new Originality service. The system update should take less than 30 minutes.
What do instructors need to do?
For fall 2020 classes, we recommend that instructors wait to enable the Turnitin option in their class assignments on Courses until Wednesday, August 12. If you have already created your assignments in Courses, then please be sure to edit those assignments after August 12 and review the Turnitin settings to be sure that they match your goals.
For summer 2020 classes, we recommend that instructors schedule Turnitin-based paper deadlines for no later than Friday, August 7 so that you have plenty of time to review Turnitin reports and grade the assignments by August 10. After the August 11 upgrade, you will be able to access the student assignment uploads in Courses, but you will not be able to access the Turnitin reports for the submissions through Courses. For any papers due after August 11, we recommend setting the open date to August 11. Otherwise, be sure to direct students to wait until after August 11 to upload their work, else they will need to resubmit their documents after the switch to generate Turnitin reports with the new service.
Are there any settings that have changed?
Yes. If you plan to store papers in the Turnitin paper repository, the option is now called "Index all submissions" (instead of "Submit papers to the repository"). Otherwise, the interface is streamlined with the most common options enabled by default.
Will I have access to older Turnitin reports from previous semesters?
Yes and no. After the upgrade, instructors and students will not be able to access old reports from previous semesters via Courses. There is another way for instructors to access the old reports until December 31, 2020, however. If you are an instructor and you need to access an old Turnitin report, please reach out to techlearn@pepperdine.edu for additional guidance. In addition, instructors can always ask students to re-submit papers after the cut-over date to generate new similarity reports under the new integration.
Does this upgrade impact 2PEP?
No. If you have any issues with 2PEP, be sure to contact the appropriate 2PEP help teams directly.
What if I have additional questions?
If you are a Pepperdine faculty member and have questions about Courses and Turnitin, please reach out to techlearn@pepperdine.edu.