[Resolved] Turnitin delays in the generation of similarity reports

On Monday, 9 December at 11:38 AM, Turnitin resolved the issue causing delays in the generation of Turnitin similarity reports.

Students were not affected by this issue and were able to submit their work. The incident did not impact the upload feature or any other functionalities within Turnitin.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

[Closed] Turnitin delays in the generation of similarity reports

We have been informed that users may currently experience some delays in the generation of Turnitin similarity reports. However, students can continue to submit their work, as this incident does not impact the upload feature or any other functionalities within Turnitin.

The supplier is actively working to restore the service to optimal performance, and we are closely monitoring the situation. We will provide updates as we have them.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

[CLOSED] Issues accessing other tools via Blackboard

Update: Normal access to tools accessed through Blackboard has been resumed. There were issues between 07.44 and 11.13 today. 

There is a global issue creating intermittent issues with accessing other tools and services through Blackboard. This is affecting, for example, access to Re/Play, Turnitin and Marks Extract. The Blackboard engineers have identified the issue and are working on fixing it. We will provide an update on this blog as soon as we have one.

If you have any questions, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

Student access to Turnitin submission points – reminders for assessment period

Ahead of the assessment period, we would like to remind you of two issues that may interfere with student access to their Turnitin submission points:

  1. The “Open in New Window” setting in Blackboard for Turnitin submission points
  2. The use of Internet browsers with strict privacy settings (eg Safari with its default factory settings).

For Administrators: Blackboard ‘web link options’ for Turnitin submission points

We recommend that instructors and administrators edit their Turnitin assignments to open in the same window as the Blackboard page, as opening in a new window may be treated as a “pop-up” window and blocked by some browsers. To do this:

  • Click on the chevron next to the Turnitin assignment and select Edit
  • Scroll down to the Web link options section and change “Open in New Window” to “No”

  • Click Submit at the bottom of the page.
  • You will see a pop-up asking if you would like to change the Turnitin submission to open in a new window; click Cancel.

  • You will exit the Edit page; click on the assignment to check that Turnitin opens in the same tab.

For Markers and Students: Internet browsers with strict privacy settings

We are aware that people are sometimes seeing the error message ‘Invalid or missing state’ when trying to access Turnitin. This issue has been reported to Turnitin and is linked to the privacy settings of the users’ internet browser.

Please make the following information available to students and staff in your school, to assist them if they encounter this error.

If using Safari, we recommend that users try accessing Turnitin via Chrome or Microsoft Edge in the first instance, as Blackboard and Turnitin submissions have been successfully tested with these University-supported browsers.

If switching browsers is not a suitable solution or you, we suggest updating the browser’s security settings to enable JavaScript and third-party cookies. The ‘Invalid or missing state’ message comes up when launching a Turnitin assignment in a new browser window with third-party cookies and/or JavaScript blocked. This can be resolved by editing the browser’s Privacy & Security preferences so that it will not block any background scripts that Turnitin is trying to load.

Please follow the steps below for your preferred browser:

  • In Safari, select Safari > Preferences > Security > Web content > Enable JavaScript
  • In Firefox, select File > Preferences > Privacy & Security; if Strict is enabled, please change this to Standard
  • In Microsoft Edge, select Microsoft Edge > Preferences > Cookies and Site permissions > JavaScript > Allowed (recommended)
  • In Google Chrome, select Settings (you can open the Settings page by clicking the icon with three stacked horizontal lines in your browser’s menu bar) > Privacy & Security > Site Settings > Content > JavaScript > Ensure that the option ‘Sites can use JavaScript (recommended)’ is enabled.

If you would rather not enable JavaScript and/or third-party cookies in general, please instead add “api.turnitin.com” and “api.turnitinuk.com” to the sites that are allowed to use JavaScript / third-party cookies.

Once you have completed reviewing your browser’s Privacy & Security preferences, please close your active browser and re-open a new browsing session so that any changes can take effect.

If you experience any problems, please contact the DEO via digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

[Resolved] Turnitin AI detection interruption of service

Earlier this month, we discovered that some AI writing detection reports in Turnitin had not been generated. Upon investigation, Turnitin confirmed that this was due to an error at their end, and that the issue occurred between 31 July and 5 August.

Today, Turnitin engineers reported that they have regenerated the AI reports for submissions made during that period.

We have spot checked some of the affected submission points and can confirm that the AI reports have now been successfully generated.

We apologise for the inconvenience caused and are grateful for your patience while we were working to resolve this issue. If you have any queries, please contact digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

[Resolved] Turnitin service incident, 9 August

The service has now been restored.

Between 7 August at 21:00 and 9 August at 17:15, Feedback Studio users may have experienced intermittent access to Similarity Reports, encountered issues with downloading copies of the reports and/or digital receipts, or noticed that Similarity Reports were stuck in processing. Further information is available on the Turnitin status page.

If you have any concerns or questions, please contact us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk.

[Closed] Turnitin AI detection interruption of service

It has come to our attention that the AI writing detection reports in Turnitin LTI were not generated for submissions made between 1 August and 5 August. We are currently investigating this issue with the supplier and will provide updates as soon as we receive further information from their support team.

In the meantime, if your course has been affected and you need to regenerate these reports, please contact us at digital-education@bristol.ac.uk, providing a list of the affected courses and their respective submission points.