A Guide to Turnitin Coach

Turnitin Draft Coach gives you access to Turnitin Similarity Reports, Citations Reports, and Grammar Guide directly in Microsoft Word on the web.  
This means that students can draft their work in Word on the web and then use the information in Turnitin Draft Coach to help improve their writing prior to submitting a final copy. 
The Turnitin Draft Coach add-in is meant to help students navigate the issues of similarity, plagiarism, and grammar as students write and revise their assignments. 

Similarity Check: 

The Similarity Check is used to help students identify when their writing matches text found in other sources. 

• This check focuses on identifying when text matches the text of another source, whether that is from the Internet or Turnitin’s databases. 
• The Similarity Score quantifies how similar your work is to other pieces of writing, but you should consider acceptable forms of similarity, like quotations, citations, and bibliographic material when responding to this number. 
• As students draft their assignment in Word Docs, they will have three opportunities to check the similarity against Turnitin’s databases and the Internet. Use those three checks strategically. 

The percentage of the similarity score is based on the amount of matching text in a document. It is normal for an assignment to match against some databases. If students used quotes and referenced correctly, there will be instances where they will find a match and that is okay. The similarity score simply highlights any matching areas in their paper so lecturers can use this as an investigative tool to determine if the match is or is not acceptable. Each matching source is color-coded and listed numerically to make it easier to distinguish between multiple matches. 

There are two parts to Similarity Check: 

• Match – This is text that is very similar or the same as some text students have in their Word Doc. Matches are highlighted in their Word Doc and the colors will correlate with the sources listed in the insight panel. 
• Source – The source is where a particular match has been found. This can be a webpage, a student paper, or a published journal. Sources are listed numerically in the insight panel and it is possible to have multiple matches for each source. Selecting one of the sources will reveal information like how many matches were found for that particular source and where each match was found on that web page, student paper, or journal. 

Citations Check: 

The Citations Check is used to help students identify when their citations are missing references or when references are missing citations. 

• This check focuses on identifying matching pairs of citations and references that students include in their text. 
• This check does not currently assess the accuracy of the students citation format or whether they are missing citations or references based on the actual content of the text. 
• As they draft the assignment in Word Docs, they will have unlimited opportunities to check the citations. 

 The citations check will detect the number of citations, references, and the citation style that has been used in the draft. The number of citations should always be equal to or more than the number of references. 

There are two Issues that a Citation Check will list if they are found: 

• Citation with no reference – Every citation should have a corresponding reference listed within your bibliography 
• Reference with no citation – Every reference in your bibliography should have at least one corresponding citation within your draft assignment 

The citations check will not catch any sources that have neither a citation nor a reference. This would likely be shown in the Similarity Report as a match in Turnitins database. 

All References will provide students with a list of the references within the bibliography. With each reference, it will display how many citations are linked to it. If the number of citations is 0, a purple, lightening Issue badge will appear on the reference to draw attention to it. Citations with no corresponding reference will also be listed here, along with the page number of where it is located and an Issue badge. 

Grammar Guide: 

The Grammar Guide is used to help identify, edit, and learn from grammar mistakes. 

• This check focuses on identifying issues in grammar and providing guidance on how to address them. 
• Grammar Guide encourages students to edit grammar mistakes on their own with detailed explanations. Since the goal is for them to review and apply the feedback, Grammar Guide does not autocorrect any of the students writing. 
• As they draft their assignment in a Word document, students will have unlimited opportunities to use Grammar Guide 

Grammar Guide will detect any potential grammatical mistakes in the students writing. A summary will be shown, and a list of all issues will appear below. Select Show Details to reveal a summary of the issues.  
The four Issue categories that Grammar Guide uses to search against: 

• Grammar – The basic structure of language, in this case, US-English. 
• Mechanics – Language rules regarding the use of punctuation, capitalization, and spacing. 
• Usage – How and when to use words and their variations based on the context. Focuses more on the meaning of the word rather than the mechanics. 
• Structure – The arrangement of words, phrases, and clauses to make up a sentence. 

Turnitin Coach does not search for spelling mistakes but may detect some suspected typos 

Please note: Turnitin Coach does not take the place of submitting an assignment in Canvas.  It is a tool to be used to check work before it is submitted.