What is Turnitin?

Turnitin is an online service which is widely used by universities, to enable submission and marking of assessments.  Submitted work is checked for similarity against a variety of sources, such as web sites and online sources (including Wikipedia), digital publications (including published articles and books), and against a huge database of all student submissions (current and archived) made through Turnitin at universities, including the University of Northampton.

Submitting

Your tutor will have asked you to submit your work electronically through the 'Assessment and submission' section of your course on NILE. You will need to ensure that your work is in an acceptable file size and format, and that you are using a supported browser. You will upload, check, and then submit your work - and once you have made a successful attempt, you will see an on-screen message and your submission ID. Depending on how your tutor has set up the Turnitin submission point, you may have the opportunity to have more than one attempt, each replacing the previous submission. You can find out more about submitting a paper here: Turnitin - Submitting a paper

• Word Files: You should normally submit the original Word document to Turnitin. Unless your tutor has asked you to submit as a PDF file (e.g. for redacted text), always submit the original Word document to Turnitin. To avoid problems with Turnitin, try to keep your Word file as simple as you can - sticking to text, headings and images where necessary, and avoiding complex formatting and highly decorative document styles wherever possible.
• PowerPoint Files: Turnitin sometimes has difficulty processing PowerPoint files, and even when it can process them it may slightly alter the layout during submission. For these reasons, unless you have been told not to by your tutor, it's best to submit PowerPoint files as PDF files (File, Save as, PDF).
• If you need to combine more than one document, use Adobe to merge PDFs.

Assignment Dashboard

Use the Assignment Dashboard to view the assignment information, such as Due date (deadline), Feedback release date, Grademark Rubric, and additinonal settings.

Turnitin Feedback Studio - Viewing your assignment information.

Similarity Report

When you submit your work, Turnitin will produce a similarity report. This will take up to an hour for the first 3 attempts, after which it may take up to 24 hours. The similarity report gives an overall percentage of matched sources, and links to those sources (e.g., to a book or journal entry, or to a web page, or another student's paper).

You can find out more about the similarity report here: Turnitin Feedback Studio - Similarity Report

Feedback and Provisional Grades

Once the deadline has passed and you have submitted your work, you will not be able to make further submission attempts. Your tutor will now use Turnitin Feedback Studio to grade and leave feedback on your work. Once the 'feedback release date' has been reached you will be able to access your feedback and provisional grade by clicking Gradebook in your Course.

For more information see Grades and feedback - Turnitin

How do I submit an assignment through Turnitin?

Log in to NILE.

From your list of Courses, click the module in which you are going to submit your Turnitin assignment.

From the Course Content, click 'Assessment and submission'.

(There may be a folder within this called Submit your Work, or you may find your submission points within the folder for each assessment.  If you cannot find your submission point in Assessment and submission, click the Gradebook tab (top-left in your Course), then click the Item name. If you still cannot find it, the assessment may not yet have been made Available - please contact your Tutor).

Click the title of the assignment, e.g. ES1 Essay:

The due date (and how many days until that is) will be displayed. Click Launch:

You will now see the following screen - click the  ?  icon to check the assignment information. 

Click Upload Submission:

Type the title of your submission into the Submission Title text box:

Choose the File you wish to submit, then click Upload and Review (bottom right):

You will see a message to tell you that your file is 'Uploading'.    

Once uploaded, you can choose to Preview, Cancel, or Submit to Turnitin:

After a few moments, you will see a message confirming that your submission has been successful. 

You will be taken to your Assignment Dashboard, from which you can check the date/time of your submission; your Similarity score (this can take up to 24 hours); you can resubmit; and Download a digital receipt.

Your Submission ID / Digital receipt is proof of your submission. If it is not available, your submission has not been successful and you will need to try again.

How do I resubmit / make another attempt?

Depending on the settings for the assignment, you may be allowed more than one attempt before the deadline; or you may be allowed one attempt after the deadline.

To submit another attempt, go to Assessment and submission, then click the title of the assignment, click Launch, and from the icons on the right, click Resubmit Paper:

Upload your file and confirm, as for a first submission.  This attempt will overwrite your previous submission, and you will have a different Digital receipt (Submission ID) number.