All papers submitted to Turnitin are checked in a matter of minutes against three constantly growing databases of content:

• a current archive of all publicly accessible Internet content (more than 5 billion pages updated at a rate of 40 million pages per day)
• millions of published works, including the ProQuest library research databases and tens of thousands of electronic books
• millions of student papers from around the world submitted to Turnitin for other courses - including those submitted by Iona students

• In a course, open the Content Area where you want students to access the assignment

• Click 'Assessments'
• Pick 'Turnitin Assignment' from the drop down menu
• The menu for your Turnitin assignment will show up
• Three choices will appear - Paper, PeerMark and Revision Assignment. Most often, you will chose Paper Assignment, but you should chose whichever best fits your needs.
• Click 'Next Step'
• You will now see a menu for creating a new assignment. Type in an 'Assignment title'. Fill in a Start date, Due date and Post date (the date when students will be able to login to their Turnitin accountsand see their GradeMarks).
• Be sure to click on 'Optional settings' to expand the settings menu. Check that these options suit your needs.
  
  Note: We recommend that you change the first option, "Allow submission after the due date?" from 'No' to 'Yes'. The system tracks the date and time of submissions, so you will still know when/if a student turns in his/her paper late.
• Click the 'Submit' button, and you're done
• Go into the 'Grade Center' and check that there is now a column for the Turnitin assignment you just created.

Note: Remember to tell your students in which Content Area you created the assignment link. This is where they will submit their paper.

Aside from integrating with BlackBoard's Grade Center, allowing students to submit papers online, and creating the Originality Report which is Turnitin's main function, the tool offers online grading (GradeMark) and peer review (PeerMark) which help instructors provide better feedback and engage students in the writing process.

"Only the course instructor can see a student's paper. If a match is found between the student's paper and another student's paper, the instructor can request the matching paper from the other student's instructor. The instructors decide whether to share the matching paper depending on the circumstances.

The only exception to this rule is in the case of peer review assignments. Students using PeerMark will be allowed to view the text of the papers they are assigned to review from within the context of the peer review assignment, though the instructor can choose to distribute the papers anonymously." Read more »