SimCheck Turnitin is a tool that can be used to prevent and check for plagiarism. This tool has replaced VeriCite in Canvas at Southwestern College.
The SimCheck Turnitin interface allows instructors to quickly, easily, and effectively check for any similarities between a student's work and the Turnitin database and/or the internet in Assignments (does not apply to Discussions).
Creating an Assignment
- From the left-hand navigation, select Assignments.
- Select the + Assignment button.
- Enter an Assignment name into the box provided and customize the: Points, Assignment Group, Display Grade as, Submission attempts, Group Assignment, Peer Reviews, and Assignment dates. These are steps 1 through 6 shown in the image.
Note that: Students can now submit group work to the Canvas Plagiarism Framework; each student in a group will receive an individual similarity score.
- To add the Canvas Plagiarism Review, change the assignment Submission Type to Online using the drop-down menu. This is step A shown in the image.
- Under Online entry options, select the File Uploads or Text entry check box. This is step B shown in the image. Keep in mind that SimCheck Turnitin is not available when Website URL or Media Recordings are chosen.
- Once either File Uploads or Text entry check box is checked, a new Plagiarism Review option will appear toward the bottom of your page. This is area C in the image. This should have drop-down menu. Select SimCheck Turnitin from the drop down menu.
- Customize the SimCheck Turnitin plagiarism settings. These settings can be found in area C from the image.
Submission indexing options
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When a submission is indexed by Turnitin, it is made available for comparison in future Similarity Reports. Who can match against a paper is based on your Turnitin license. On assignment creation, you can decide if papers submitted to your course will be indexed in this way or if you would just like them to receive a similarity report.
Use the check box to either choose to index all submissions or not. An unticked check box will still return a Similarity Report but the papers submitted to the course will not match against any future submissions.
Similarity Report exclusion options
Changing Similarity Report availability options
- Select Save & publish to publish this assignment. Select Save to save the assignment. This is area G in the image.
Accessing the Report
When a student makes a submission, a report is generated. This is done when SimCheck Turnitin checks a user's work against its extensive database. If instances are found where a user's writing is similar to or matches against a source this will be flagged for your review in the match overview.
The database includes billions of web pages: both current and archived content from the Internet, a repository of works students have submitted to SimCheck Turnitin in the past, and scholarly publications, which comprises thousands of periodicals, journals, and publications.
The report that is generated by SimCheck Turnitin is called the Similarity Report (More on this in the next tab)
A Similarity Report consists of a percentage score and color that are assigned for the submission by SimCheck Turnitin. The color is assigned based on the percentage as follows:
- Light blue: 0% matching text
- Dark blue: 1-24% matching text
- Yellow: 25-49% matching text
- Orange: 50-74% matching text
- Red: 75-100% matching text
The Similarity Report can be viewed by clicking on the percentage score in the SpeedGrader as shown in the image below.
The color generated by the report is also visible in the gradebook; as shown in the rectangle in the image below.
In the case of this example, yellow indicates that 25-49% of the text in the submission is a "matching text."
Note that clicking the percentage score or the color will open a new browser window redirecting you to an address that begins with: https://swccd.turnitin.com/ This new page displays the student submission on the left and the report on the right as shown in the next image.
The report and various options can be viewed on the right side of the page. In particular, the gear allows instructors to switch on various settings such as:
- Exclude search repositories:
- Exclude from Similarity Report:
- Bibliography
- Quotes
- Citations
- Small Matches
Also, clicking on the question mark symbol will open a menu with the options for instructor:
- Help
- View tour
- Display Paper ID: You will need this number when contacting support.
The Similarity Report
What is the similarity percentage?
The Similarity percentage is not a measure of the amount of plagiarism in a document. The Similarity percentage calculates the total number of matching words by dividing by the total number of words in a document.
Similarity scoring scenarios
A high similarity score does not always suggest that a piece of writing has been plagiarized, just as a low similarity score does not always indicate that no plagiarism has occurred. Consider the following scenarios:
- Submitting a document of considerable size could result in a 0% similarity score with a report that still contains matches. This is because the similarity score has been rounded to 0%, rather than being exactly 0%.
- You may have submitted multiple drafts of the same paper to your institution's private repository, meaning your final draft has resulted in a score of 100%. To avoid this issue, we advise that you only submit your final draft to the private repository.
- An individual within your institution has managed to acquire a copy of your document. They submit this document to the institution's private repository and receive a similarity score of 25%. You submit your original document a week later to the private repository but receive a 100% similarity score.
Human judgment should always be used to determine if this value is acceptable.
Student Submission
If your student is experiencing any difficulties, please share with the the following. Students submit assignments as usual. The only additional step required is to check the box next to the user agreement, this is shown within the rectangle in the image below.
A detailed process describing the submission process is next. Students:
- Find your course in the Canvas dashboard.
- From the Assignments tab, open your assignment. Alternatively, you may be able to find the assignment in the course summary below the syllabus in the Syllabus tab.
- Use the Submit Assignment button to get started.
- Use the Choose file button to find the file you'd like to upload. Alternatively, you may be able to copy and paste or type your submission right under Text Entry.
- If you haven't already, you may need to accept the SimCheck Turnitin EULA and verify that your submission is your own work.
- When you're done, select the Submit assignment button to upload to SimCheck Turnitin.
Note that a similarity report will generate for every file uploaded. Instructors can control whether you can see the report: immediately, after the assignment is graded, at a later date, or never.
More Resources
The list below contains links to helpful guides housed on the SimCheck Turnitin Website. The links below are provided to support instructors and students using SimCheck Turnitin in Canvas.
Helpful links for instructors
Below are helpful guides for instructors.
Insights
The Similarity Report
Helpful links for students
Below are helpful guides for students.
Note to instructors: please feel free to share these links with students in case they have questions about SimCheck Turnitin.
New Features
As a user of SimCheck in Canvas, you may have noticed a new feature recently. While SimCheck is primarily known as a plagiarism prevention and detection tool, Turnitin has recently added a feature to identify writing which may have been generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
This new tool has been made available to all non-student users of their products, including SimCheck. We have not been provided any information about this change; at this time we are not able to turn off this component, and we do not know how long this tool will be available in current form.
AI detection tools are very new and not perfect; they may not always detect AI-generated writing or may flag content that is not actually AI generated. When using SimCheck, it may be wise to consider it as one of several methods to support academic integrity.Please refer to the following resources provided by Turnitin to learn more:
Before you click "Next," please work through all the tabbed sections on this page.