Category Archives: Turnitin

[Resolved] Turnitin AI detection interruption of service

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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

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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

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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.

Timestamp column in Turnitin Feedback Studio

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Turnitin has resolved a formatting issue that was affecting the display of information in the assignment inbox. This improvement has resulted in the removal of timestamps from the ‘uploaded’ column. Submission timestamps are now visible only when hovering over the submission date or by downloading the Grade Report from the assignment inbox.

Please note that late submissions will still be highlighted in red.

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

 

New Turnitin support centre

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Turnitin has released a new Turnitin Help Center. Users will be able to access past cases through the old support centre until 20 September 2024. After this date, access to the old support centre will no longer be available.

If you have any questions about this change, or would like to know more, please refer to Turnitin’s Frequently Asked Questions page, or contact us at digital.education@bristol.ac.uk.

Turnitin AI writing report updates

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Turnitin has informed us that, from 16 July, two new improvements will be added to the AI writing report:

  1. Turnitin has increased the maximum word count limit for submissions from 15,000 words to 30,000 words for AI writing detection. This means that any submitted document with less than 30,000 words will now generate an AI writing report.
  2. Additionally, Turnitin will no longer display an AI score for documents where their algorithm detects less than 20% AI writing, to avoid potential incidents of false positives. When AI writing is detected below the 20% threshold, it will be reported with an asterisk (*) and no percentage will be attributed.

These changes apply to new submissions only and will not retroactively affect existing submissions.

If you have any questions about these updates, please email us at digital.education@bristol.ac.uk.

New Turnitin AI paraphrasing detection [Updated]

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On 16 July, Turnitin will upgrade its AI writing detection feature to include a new paraphrasing detection capability. This enhancement will help identify instances where paraphrasing tools have been used to modify AI-generated text in student submissions. The detection will run automatically for all assessments submitted to Turnitin LTI assignments. Therefore, there is no need to update your reassessment submission points to have access to the AI paraphrasing detection tool.

How does it work?

Student-submitted content that may have been modified using an AI paraphrasing tool will be flagged as likely AI-generated in the AI writing report. The report will highlight text that Turnitin’s model predicts was likely written by an AI tool in a different colour from content that was likely AI-written and subsequently modified using an AI paraphrasing tool, to distinguish between them.

Turnitin will not differentiate between likely AI-paraphrased matches and likely AI-generated text in the AI writing report. However, as Turnitin continues to develop and improve this feature, their aim is to include such differentiation in the future.

Will it detect grammar-checking tools?

Turnitin’s paraphrasing detection tool is not designed to target grammar-checking tools like Grammarly, which modify spelling, grammar, and punctuation, but rather other AI content written by large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-3.5.

Information for students

The University has produced guidance that has been made available to students about Contract Cheating, Academic Integrity, and Using AI at University. Furthermore, it is important to reassure students that ‘Turnitin evidence is always interpreted by academics and used in context, to supplement judgement rather than to replace it’ (Turnitin’s artificial intelligence detector tool).

Contact us

We will update this blog with additional information as soon as the supplier releases more resources. In the meantime, if you have any questions about this new development, please refer to the Turnitin AI Writing Detection Capabilities or email us at digital.education@bristol.ac.uk.

Additional resources from Turnitin

Turnitin has released additional resources to learn more about the new AI writing detection features in the classic report view:

[Open] Turnitin error: ‘Invalid or missing state’

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We are aware that some users are seeing the error message ‘Invalid or missing state’ when trying to access Turnitin. This issue has been reported to Turnitin; the following workarounds should re-enable access.

If using Safari or Firefox, we recommend that users try accessing Turnitin via Chrome or Microsoft Edge in the first instance.

If the error persists, we ask that instructors edit their Turnitin assignments to open in the same tab as the Blackboard page. To do this:

  • Click on the chevron next to the Turnitin assignment and select Edit
  • Scroll 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.

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

[Resolved] Turnitin long loading times

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We are pleased to advise that service has been restored: Turnitin long loading times now resloved.

Due to an unexpected service incident, users of Turnitin and Turnitin UK may have experienced slowness when navigating the service, when logging in, uploading submissions, and accessing Similarity Reports. Users accessing these services via an integration may also have been affected.

The incident occurred between the following times:

BST: June 18, 09:20 – June 18, 12:20
PDT: June 18, 01:20 – June 18, 04:20
AEST: June 18, 18:20 – June 18, 21:20

We regret any inconvenience this may have caused if you were impacted by today’s incident.