Turnitin
Turnitin helps instructors check students’ work for improper citation or potential plagiarism by comparing it against numerous online databases. Turnitin is available to instructors and students through Canvas.
Georgetown offers two Turnitin tools in Canvas, both of which are enabled through a Canvas Assignment:
Plagiarism Review
Generates Turnitin Similarity Reports and spelling/grammar suggestions (if ETS e-Rater is enabled). The Canvas SpeedGrader is used to enter inline comments and grades.
Turnitin External Tool
Generates Turnitin Similarity Reports and spelling/grammar suggestions (if ETS e-Rater is enabled). Inline comments and grading are done in Turnitin’s Feedback Studio. Does not support Canvas group assignment submissions.
As of October 2023, Georgetown has turned off Turnitin’s AI writing detection feature in its similarity checks because of the main campus faculty executive committee and the Honor Council’s concerns about the tool’s accuracy and in the belief that the harms of false positives are worse than any advantages of the tool. Many institutions have done the same.
- “Turnitin AI Cheating Detector Accuracy.” Washington Post, June 2, 2023
- “Guidance on AI Detection and why we are disabling Turnitin’s AI detector.” Vanderbilt University, August 16, 2023
- “UNF & AI-Detection Software.” Center for Instruction and Research Technology, August 4, 2023
- “Turnitin’s AI Detector: Higher-Than-Expected False Positives.” Inside Higher Ed, June 1, 2023
- “Understanding False Positives within our AI Writing Detection Capabilities.” turnitin.com, March 16, 2023
- “University removes AI detection feature from Turnitin.” St. Joseph’s University, The Hawk Newspaper, October 4, 2023