myCSUSM
FAQs About Assignments and Turnitin
Assignments
- Can students submit as a group? Can students be graded as a group?
Yes, you can create a group assignment using the assignment activity. A group assignment means when one member of the group submits, the submission is applied to all group members. And when you grade, the grade and feedback is given to all group members. Turnitin Assignment does not yet have this capability.
When you set up the assignment, you will enable group submissions in the Group Submission Settings section. See the Group Submissions Settings section in our help guide on how to create an Assignment for more information. This must be done before any students submit. Once students begin submitting to the assignment, the group submission settings cannot be changed. You would need to delete the assignment and create the assignment again.
You will need to create the groups within your course before they begin submitting to the group assignment. Please see our help guide on how to Create Groups and Groupings.
- A student submitted to the group assignment and their submission was applied to everyone/the
wrong group members! How do I fix it?
If an assignment is set so that students submit in groups and the groups or groupings are not properly created, it can result in a submission being applied to every student in the course, or to the wrong group members. Unfortunately there is no way to resolve. You will need to make a duplicate of the assignment, fix the issue with the groups and groupings, and then have students resubmit to the new assignment (you can delete the broken one). - How do I allow a student a second attempt on an assignment?
Please see the section on how to Edit Submission Status in our help guide on how to Manage Assignment Submissions for your options. - I already graded my assignment but I want to change what it's worth (the max grade).
Can I do that?
Yes, you can change the max grade for an assignment that has already been graded.
- Go into the settings of the assignment (on your course homepage click the pencil icon underneath).
- Go to the Grade section.
- You will need to choose whether or not to rescale the existing grades. If you rescale the grades, the student grades will be converted. If you do not rescale the grades, the student grades will not be changed. For example, say you graded a student submission as 10/20. If you rescale the grades and change the max grade to 10, the student's grade will now be 5/10. If you do not rescale the grades and change the max grade to 10, the student's grade will be 10/10.
- Change the Maximum Grade.
- Save changes.
- My students say they can't see their assignment grade in the gradebook. Why is that?
Is the assignment hidden on your course homepage? If an assignment is hidden on the course homepage, it will also be hidden in the gradebook. From your course homepage, click on the three dots under the assignment and click Show. The grade should then be visible in the gradebook.
If it is visible on your course homepage, the grade might be stuck between hidden and visible. Go to the gradebook Setup page. For the assignment click Edit and then Hide. Click Edit again and then Show. Resetting the visibility it in this way should make the grades visible.
Turnitin
- Is Turnitin down right now?
To check if Turnitin is down for you and your students, visit the Turnitin Status page: https://turnitin.statuspage.io/ - I set the maximum grade to [#] but it has a different number in the gradebook. How
do I fix it?
Turnitin Assignments allow you to create multiple parts within one assignment. Each part has a separate grade. This means you have to set the grade in at least two places in the settings - the overall grade and the grade(s) for the parts. If you only have one part, the settings can be easy to miss. Go into the settings and go to the Grade Section. Make sure the Maximum Grade is correct. Then, go to Assignment Part 1 and make sure the Max Grade is correct. Save.
Unfortunately if you have already graded the Turnitin Assignment the max grade for the gradebook cannot be changed. To change there are two options:
- Create a manual grade item set to the correct amount, manually enter the student grades there, and set the weight of the original Turnitin Assignment to 0. Here is our help guide on how to add a manual grade item. Here is our help guide on how to manually enter grades.
- Create a category that uses Simple Weighted Mean for the Aggregation and has the max grade set to the correct amount. Put the Turnitin Assignment into that category. The category will convert the incorrect grade to the correct grade. Here is our help guide on how to create a category.
- I have graded the Turnitin but the grades aren't in the gradebook. How do I get them
in there?
If you see the grades when you click on the individual papers, but they aren't displaying in the Turnitin inbox you might need to refresh the submissions. Go to the submission inbox and for each submission click the refresh submission icon (located to the left of the trashcan icon). If this doesn't resolve the issue, contact us at cchelp@csusm.edu. Please include the course name and number and the name of the Turnitin Assignment. - Students say they can't see their feedback or grade. Why is that?
Students can’t view the feedback in Turnitin or see their grade in the gradebook until after the Post Date. To edit this date:
- Click on the Turnitin Assignment on your course homepage to go to the Submission Inbox.
- At the top of the page, click the pencil icon to the right of the current Post Date.
- Modify the date, then click in a blank area of the page to save.
- My students say the gradebook shows a Turnitin Assignment as Dropped. Why is that
and how do I fix it?
If you didn't set up the gradebook to drop the lowest score(s) then the grade is likely dropped because the grade item is hidden. By default hidden items are dropped from students' category and course totals.
Turnitin Assignment scores are hidden until the Post Date and time has been reached. Before this date and time the scores are hidden, so the gradebook will show Dropped for that activity for students. After the Post Date and time is reached, scores will be visible and it should no longer say Dropped. - Can I make a group Turnitin assignment?
Unfortunately Turnitin doesn’t support group assignments. So when a student submits on behalf of their group, the submission is not applied to all group members. And when you grade, the grade and feedback is only available to that individual student, not all group members. For other students in the group (who didn't submit) to see the feedback, the student who uploaded it will need to download the paper and share it via email. To grade the other students in the group you will need to manually override their grade in the gradebook.
An alternative would be to have both a Turnitin Assignment (ungraded) and a group Assignment (graded). A student from each group would submit their paper to both. The Turnitin Assignment would provide the Similarity Report, while the group Assignment would allow the feedback and grade to be applied and visible to all group members.
- My student submitted something, but there is no Similarity score and I can't open
it in Turnitin.
This error can be caused when Turnitin is experiencing problems, but it can also be caused if a student uploads an unsupported file type. If resubmissions are allowed and the due date has not passed, have the student submit again after converting to an acceptable file format (doc, docx, pdf). If resubmissions are not allowed or the due date had passed, either download the submission or have the student send you the submission via email. Convert to an acceptable file type. In the Submission Inbox delete their current submission and upload the new file.
- A Turnitin Assignment appears twice on the course calendar - once for the correct
date and once for an incorrect date. How do I get rid of the incorrect date?
First, make sure the incorrect date in the calendar is pointing to that specific Turnitin Assignment and not a completely separate Turnitin Assignment. If it is not connected to a separate Turnitin Assignment, next go into the settings of the Turnitin Assignment to verify the dates there are correct there. Don't forget to check if there is a "expect completed on" date enabled in the section Activity Completion as that can sometimes create a calendar item.
If you have verified it isn't another Turnitin Assignment and that the dates in the settings are all correct, then it might be that the incorrect date in the calendar is a phantom date held over from when the Turnitin Assignment was imported into the course. We do not recommend importing Turnitin Assignments as they can remain connected to the original Turnitin Assignment. Sometimes this manifests as phantom dates on the calendar, and sometimes it results in Originality Reports not being processed. To avoid this, we recommend creating Turnitin Assignments from scratch each term. To remove the phantom calendar dates, you can delete the Turnitin Assignment and then Restore it from the Recycle Bin. To delete, from your course homepage click the three dots underneath the Turnitin Assignment and select Delete. Wait about an hour. Then, from your course homepage, click the gear icon in the upper right to open the Course Administration and select Recycle Bin (near the bottom). Find the Turnitin Assignment you deleted and click the Restore icon. The Turnitin Assignment will then be restored, along with the correct dates in the calendar.
- My Turnitin displays this message "Notice: Duplicate copies of the same Turnitin assignments
were found...To fix this you should either delete the duplicate assignments or reset
the course where the duplicate assignments are." What do I do?
Did you import this Turnitin Assignment from another course? If so, this message means it is still connected to that other Turnitin Assignment. Unfortunately this can prevent students from being able to submit or prevent Originality Reports from being generated. To resolve you would need to delete this Turnitin and create it from scratch.
To avoid this in the future, we recommend creating Turnitin Assignments from scratch each term.