UTU Instructions for Turnitin
Turnitin Feedback Studio and Similarity are used to support and develop academic writing at different stages of study. Turnitin helps monitor the use of sources by comparing text against publication databases and the internet. Turnitin is used within Moodle course areas.
When is a Turnitin check required, and which tool is used?
Turnitin check is carried out using Turnitin Feedback Studio and it is mandatory in the following cases:
- theses that are part of a degree
- dissertations/papers related to specialisation studies (e.g. ERKO)
- research plans prepared when applying for doctoral training
Turnitin check can also be used with Turnitin Feedback Studio (TFS) or Similarity (SI), for example for:
- journal articles and monographs (TFS)
- presentations and working papers (TFS, SI)
- assignments and take-home exams (TFS)
- learning journals (TFS, SI)
- tasks where the text is commented on directly (e.g. problem sets) (TFS, SI)
You can use both tools in the same Moodle course area: Similarity for weekly assignments, for example, and Feedback Studio for more extensive assignments.
Turnitin check for theses
The Turnitin check for theses is always carried out in a Turnitin Feedback Studio assignment (Turnitin Assignment 2). Note that it is advisable to use Turnitin assignment already during the writing process: the student can identify issues in their text and in their use of sources and correct them immediately.
The thesis title page must always include a statement about the Turnitin check in accordance with the following template:
”The originality of this thesis has been checked in accordance with the University of Turku quality assurance system using the Turnitin OriginalityCheck service.”
The Turnitin check for a bachelor’s or master’s thesis is approved using the electronic UTUKandi or UTUGradu form.
For doctoral theses, a Turnitin check certificate is issued either via the electronic form used to propose the pre-examiners or via a separate certificate (Tarkastustodistuksen lomakepohja | FairUTU Certificate). The certificate does not include a detailed assessment of the text; it only confirms that the manuscript complies with the general principles of good scientific practice and the University of Turku’s ethical guidelines for learning.
A. Order a Moodle course area with Turnitin Feedback Studio assignments
Order a Moodle course area with Turnitin Feedback Studio assignments using the course area order link. In the order details, enter the course name, short name, and category, and justify the order in the additional information field.
For the course category, select the faculty or administrative unit where you work or that organises the course. As the course short name, you can use the course’s Peppi identifier or another suitable designation. The justification for ordering the course area can be, for example, the submission of bachelor’s theses, UTUGradu, or Turnitin checking of doctoral dissertations.
The order form will notify you if any required information is missing. You will receive an email notification once your order has been approved. For thesis checks, you must use Moodle’s ready-made templates that include Turnitin Feedback Studio assignments.
The types of Turnitin templates are:
When you use Turnitin templates, they already include the necessary Turnitin Feedback Studio assignments. The course area contains two separate assignments:
- An interim check assignment (non-archiving), which the student can use to check their work during the writing process; and
- A final submission check assignment (archiving), which is used for a single submission of the final version of the work.
If your old course area contains material you want to transfer to the new one, you can do so, if necessary, using the copy function. Instructions can be found here: Copying course contents from an old course area to a new one.
It is recommended that the Moodle area intended for thesis submissions be renewed at least every two years to ensure data protection and the proper functioning of the Turnitin assignment.
B. Add a Turnitin Feedback Studio assignment or a Similarity activity to an existing Moodle course area yourself
More detailed instructions can be found on Moodle’s help pages: Turnitin Feedback Studio (Assignment 2) and Turnitin Similarity for teachers.
Make a plan for the continued use or updating of the course area’s guidance materials for next academic year’s course.
Hide the course area from view (Administration tools: “Hide course”). After this, an icon 
will appear on the course name row indicating that the course is hidden.
A Moodle course area is not suitable for long-term archiving because its lifecycle is short.
- Written coursework related to courses must be retained for six months and then deleted. Course materials must be available to students for two years from the start of the course. Responsibility for retention and deletion lies with the teachers who receive the submissions.
- The retention obligation for master’s theses (pro gradu), licentiate theses, and doctoral dissertations is permanent. The University Library is responsible for this in the UTUPub publication repository. The works are also stored in Turnitin’s UTU database (“Standard Repository”).
- The retention period for bachelor’s theses is 10 years. The Library is responsible for storage in the UTUPub publication repository (from 2024 onwards).
Turnitin Similarity Report
Turnitin identifies passages in texts that may indicate plagiarism, i.e., similarities with different sources. Similarities may result from:
- copying;
- multiple texts drawing on the same source; or
- established terminology and standardised practices used in reporting, in which case the similarities may be acceptable.
Plagiarism is the unauthorised use of someone else’s work, and it can occur as early as the information-gathering stage, for example if text is copied into one’s own notes. Copying text for private use is not a problem, but it becomes plagiarism if the text is published under one’s own name or incorporated into one’s own text without appropriate citations.
Plagiarism is avoided by adding precise references to source material, ensuring that any necessary permissions to use the material have been obtained, and integrating the referenced content or quotation into one’s own text as part of an argument and interpretation. This also fulfils the right of quotation as defined in copyright law.
Turnitin generates similarity reports based on material that has already been indexed. Its web crawlers collect millions of web pages and licensed e-publications into its reference database, but the check may not capture the most recent publications or content published in closed environments or in copy-protected formats. For this reason, a Turnitin report always provides only a partial view and does not replace the expert judgement of a teacher or supervisor.
Click the submission's similarity percentage shown for the student’s submission to open the Turnitin report view.
In the report’s top bar, you can see the submitter’s name and the file name. The top bar also shows any points awarded (e.g. 80/100).
Use the <-> navigation to move from one similarity report to another.
From the Active layers menu, you can choose whether grading/feedback and similarities are shown in the report at the same time or separately.
The Instructor feedback layer is marked in blue and includes the following tools: 1) QuickMark, 2) feedback summary (with voice and text comment), and 3) rubric. You can edit QuickMark sets and rubrics and create additional ones.
The Similarity layer is marked in red and shows a list of matching sources in descending order by percentage. You can browse the identified sources and peer-reviewed publications in the side panel. In the comparison text, Turnitin highlights passages that are identical to the text being checked. This two-way comparison helps to show how the writer uses sources. It can also help identify cases where both the writer and the author of the comparison text have used a third, shared source.
If you open the similarity report in Text-only mode, you will see a timestamp for the sources indicating when they were published online.
Using the buttons in the white/grey menu, you can download the submitted file, the Turnitin report, and the digital receipt to your computer.
Open the similarity view by clicking the red number that shows the text’s similarity percentage.
In the match overview, you will see a list of links to the comparison sources. Usually, matches of less than one percent consist of bibliographic information. Most similarity highlights are found in the publication’s bibliography and in footnotes. In the footnotes on the example page below, there are reference details from four different source publications, as well as quotations from the texts.
Below is the same document view with Source 1 (dokumen.tips) selected for closer inspection. By browsing the Full source text menu, you can see how the cited quotation is positioned within the source publication and how extensively and appropriately the source has been used. Curved arrow 1 indicates the beginning of the match between the text and the source text.
Gaps in a continuous highlighted (matched) passage (a gap = a different character string) may arise for several reasons. Curved arrow 2 indicates that, in the reference, the word l’Amazzone has been written together with the preceding word, but in the article being checked this error has been corrected. A gap may also result from hyphenation in the comparison text, particularly if manual hyphenation has been used. Sometimes, gaps can be a sign of broader copying of a reporting format: the unique result values of one’s own research design may not be highlighted, but the surrounding narrative structure may be highlighted because it has been copied from the source without an appropriate reference.
Primary attention should be paid to the consistency and clarity of source citation. Most errors resulting from carelessness or intentional misconduct are related to the marking of citations and references. Errors occur, for example, when a citation covers a narrower section of text than the source information used, or when the content of the source is altered by adding one’s own interpretation within a passage that, because it falls within the scope of the citation, may be read as source-based information.
Filtering the report
If a text has been checked at the drafting stage in an archiving assignment, the match to the stored (archived) copy may be 100%. By alternately excluding reference links using the filters, you can get a clearer picture of the text’s origin. You can also request the removal of an earlier archived submission from the Turnitin repository by emailing helpdesk@utu.fi. For more information, see: How exclusion filters refine the Similarity Report (Turnitin Guides).
Detecting text manipulation
The Turnitin system detects attempts to manipulate a text’s underlying code. It flags this with a red flag icon above the similarity percentage if the document contains, for example, text embedded in images or other code anomalies that affect the content. Possible manipulation methods include:
- replacing spaces with dots (usually white) that match the colour of the publication template, or with other punctuation marks. In this case, the code string is not directly comparable with sources;
- manual hyphenation in a narrow column, which can lower the similarity score;
- adding invisible code to the file; and
- transforming text using language tools. At its simplest, this may involve paraphrase generators added to a web browser: copied text can be reshaped while the factual content remains largely the same. More advanced methods include “rewrite” and “summarise” functions in language-model tools, as well as translating a text into another language and back into the original language. These approaches can be further combined with a second provider’s proofreading tools to help mask the language model’s “fingerprints.”
When you, as the instructor, comment on the use of sources, you can use bubble comments, inline comments, recording voice comments or text summary comments. In the example below, the instructor asks for the reason behind the changes in words compared to the original text. - The explanation for the differences may also be that Turnitin has found a reference for another historical edition.
You can attach a rubric or grading form from the Grademark options ("Launch Rubric Manager") to your Turnitin assignment. The templates of the forms are based on criteria for skill levels according to different standards.
With Turnitin’s graphing tools, you can effectively track student performance.
How to Use Turnitin AI Writing Detection and How It Works
Turnitin AI Writing Detection helps instructors determine whether a text has been generated, edited, or translated using a large language model (LLM). Like large language models, the detection system itself is based on a language model.
AI Writing Detection is available through Turnitin Feedback Studio and Turnitin Similarity assignments in Moodle. It currently works for texts of 300–30,000 words in English, Spanish, and Japanese.
Turnitin’s plagiarism detection and AI writing detection are two separate processes, but they appear in the same report view. When you open the Similarity Report, the AI writing detector is located in the sidebar. The AI detection report opens in its own tab within the same window from which the Similarity Report was launched.
The AI writing detection tool analyses text submitted to Turnitin in stages. First, the text is divided into several short, partially overlapping segments so that individual sentences can be examined with sufficient context. The model then evaluates each sentence and estimates how likely it is that the sentence was generated by generative AI (on a scale from 0 to 1, where 0 means unlikely and 1 means highly likely). Finally, the sentence- and paragraph-level assessments are combined into an overall assessment of the entire document, indicating what proportion of the text is likely to have been generated by AI. Turnitin’s AI Writing Detection system analyses only texts of at least 300 words to ensure that the findings are based on sufficient statistical data.
It is important to note that the result is indicative: it does not, in itself, prove fraud or misconduct, but serves as supporting evidence that must be interpreted in conjunction with other evidence and the context of the work. A high AI percentage primarily serves as a basis for follow-up questions and a guidance discussion, rather than as an automatic conclusion of fraud.
Sentences identified as AI-generated are highlighted in blue in the report. The detector displays one of three possible statuses:
BLUE (0–100%): The submission has been processed successfully. The percentage indicates what proportion of the assessed text the AI writing detector determines to have been generated by artificial intelligence. If the text contains lists or tables formatted with dashes or bullet points that do not consist of complete sentences, the detector does not process them. According to tests, the likelihood of false positives is higher when the overall score is low (1–20%). In such cases, the detector displays an asterisk (*).
GRAY (--): The AI detector cannot process the submission for one of the following reasons: the submission was made before April 4, 2023, when the AI detector was introduced, and reports for historical submissions require the text to be resubmitted; or the submission does not meet one of the following format requirements:
- The file must be less than 100 MB.
- The file must contain at least 300 words of prose.
- The file must not exceed 30,000 words.
- The file must be written in English, Spanish, or Japanese.
- The file type must be .docx, .pdf, .txt, or .rtf.
ERROR (!): Turnitin was unable to process the submission. Please try again later. If the file meets all the requirements listed above and the error message still appears, please contact the helpdesk.
More information on Turnitin guide pages: AI writing detection in the report view