Creating a Student Writing assignment

This guide helps instructors create a Student Writing assignment in Turnitin Clarity. You’ll learn how to set up assignment details, enable AI tools, manage reports, and schedule grading and feedback.

In this guide:

• Creating your assignment
• Assignment Recommendations
• Copy an assignment
• Assignment Details
• AI Tools by Turnitin
• Report Access
• Scheduling
• Grading and Feedback
• Submission Settings

Creating your assignment

1. After you select to create a new Turnitin assignment from your class, a modal will appear that will allow you to select the type of assignment you want to create.
2. Select the Student Writing assignment tile with the “New” label in the top right corner.

Learn more about Turnitin's assignment types by viewing our Assignment types guidance.

Assignment Recommendations

For Turnitin Clarity to work optimally, we recommend a minimum word count of 300 words and a maximum of approximately 2,500 words.

• The assignment will still work for shorter or longer submissions, but longer assignments may be more challenging to review due to the volume of data.
• If AI writing detection is enabled, submissions must be between 300 and 30,000 words.

Copy an assignment

Instructors using Turnitin via an LTI 1.3 integration can use the Assignment Copy tool to copy existing assignments from previous classes instead of creating them from scratch. 

For details and steps, see Using the Turnitin Assignment Copy tool in Feedback Studio with LTI 1.3.

Assignment Details

Some assignment details are required, while others are optional but recommended to help tailor the assignment to your needs.

To create your assignment:

1. Follow the steps for accessing the Student Writing assignment.
2. Add the Title (required).

   1. This field corresponds to the title in the grade book and is visible to students.

      For Moodle only: be sure to toggle the Edit Mode setting at the top right corner of the course screen.

3. Add Instructions for the assignment (recommended).
   1. Instructions are visible to students before they begin the assignment.
   2. Any formatting applied in the instructions box will also be visible to your students.

      • Formatting includes:

        • bold
        • italics
        • underline
        • bulleted lists
        • numbered lists
        • hyperlinks
        • left, center, and right indentations

        When pasting text, use Ctrl+Shift+V (Windows) or Command+Shift+V (Mac) to remove formatting. If that shortcut isn’t available, paste it into a plain text editor first, then copy and paste again.

4. If you provide instructions or attach a rubric in Assignment Details, the AI Assistant can reference them to respond to the student’s requests in the AI chat.

Scheduling (required)

1. Select a Start date and Time: the date students will be able to start submitting the assignment.
   1. The start date is when students can begin working within the writing space.
   2. The Time field defaults to 12:00 am.
2. Select a Due date and Time: any submissions made after this date and time will be marked as late.
   1. The student’s writing is submitted automatically on the due date.
   2. The Time field defaults to 11:59 pm.
3. Select a Feedback release date and Time: the date that any grading and feedback is visible to students.

   1. This does not affect when similarity scores are provided to students.
      

      Remind your students that their work is not submitted until they select the Submit (or Resubmit) button. If they don’t, you will not see their writing.

Max points

1. Enter the maximum amount of points possible to achieve for the assignment.

AI Tools by Turnitin

Turnitin Clarity offers three AI tools, enabled by default, designed to support students during the writing process. These tools are only available within the Clarity assignment.

In the Clarity settings, instructors can enable any/all of the AI tools for each assignment at any point during the assignment.

When you select a language from the dropdown, the student's experience is affected in the following ways:

• Chat replies: The chat replies in the language selected in the AI Tool language dropdown.
• Expected writing language: This setting also indicates the language the student is expected to write in.
• Starting language: The chat starts in the language currently set in the LMS interface.
• Instruction and writing language: If the assignment instructions or the student’s writing are in a different language, the assistant may adapt its tone, examples, and guidance to match that language, especially when the dropdown language isn’t consistently reflected in the content.

For a full list of available tools and supported languages, you can reference this chart.

Enable AI chat

Students can have a chat-style dialogue with Turnitin Clarity’s AI Assistant by

• typing questions.
• selecting text for feedback.
• using one of the suggested prompts.

To learn more about the AI Tools for Student Writing assignments, view the AI Tools with Turnitin Clarity guidance.

Enable grammar check

Students can run a grammar check at any time before the due date. It provides suggestions to improve punctuation, grammar, and mechanics, with no limit on the number of uses.

Enable citation check

Students can run a citation check any time before the due date. The check reviews in-text and reference citations for proper formatting based on the style guide chosen when the assignment was created.

Student access to the report

Set whether or not students can view and access a copy of their Writing Report. 

• This does not affect a student’s access to the Similarity Report.
  • To set the availability of the Similarity Report, view the Rubric and Report settings for Student Writing assignments guidance.
• Report access does not affect a student's access to feedback or grading.

Grading and Feedback

Attach Rubric (optional, but recommended)

Attach a rubric in the Grading and feedback settings.

Hide student details for anonymous grading

• Selecting this hides student names within the assignment when anonymized grading is required.
• Once the feedback release date has passed, all student names will be automatically revealed.
• If it is necessary to reveal a student's name before the feedback release date, the option to reveal their identity is available from the options menu at the end of the student’s row in the submission list.

Submission Settings

Clarity assignments supports late submissions. This setting allows students to submit their work after the due date.

Allow late submissions 

Clarity assignments requires late submissions, which allows students to submit an assignment after the due date has passed. 

• Only one late submission is allowed if the student hasn’t already submitted before the due date.
• Students can use the AI chat until the due date. If they haven’t submitted by then, the chat remains available until they make their one late submission.

Learn more about late submissions for students in Turnitin Clarity

Allow resubmissions 

Clarity assignments supports resubmissions. This allows students to submit their work multiple times before the due date.

Students can make up to three submissions in a 24-hour period.

Report settings

The Report settings pertain to the Similarity Report that will be generated after submission.

Store student submissions for comparison

Select whether or not to store submissions to the assignment to a repository to be used for comparison against other submissions. The options available to you will depend on your institution’s account settings.

• General Turnitin repository - submissions are stored in a general Turnitin repository and can be used for comparison against other submissions from your institution and others.
• Private institutional repository - submissions are stored in a private repository that can only be used for comparison against other submissions within your institution.
• Do not store the submitted papers - submissions are not stored in a repository and will not be used for comparison to other submissions within this assignment or anywhere else in Turnitin.

Compare submissions

Select the repositories that submissions will be compared against when generating their Similarity Reports. All options are enabled by default and at least one option must be selected to create an assignment.

• General Turnitin repository - compares a submission to previous submissions in Turnitin assignments across institutions.
• Private institutional repository - compares a submission to previous submissions in Turnitin assignments unique to your institution.
• Internet content - compares a submission against archived and live publicly available internet pages. Tens of thousands of new pages are added daily.
• Periodicals, journals, and publications - compares submissions to third party publications, including many major professional journals, periodicals, and business publications.

Generate report

Decide whether Similarity Reports are generated at the time of submission or on the due date:

• Time of submission - Similarity Reports will generate immediately after being uploaded to the assignment.
• On due date - all submissions’ Similarity Reports are generated at the same time on the due date.

Can the time of report generation affect the similarity score?

It can, yes, but it depends on whether the assignment is also set to store submissions into a repository.

• If submissions are added to a repository
  • Generate reports immediately - with this setting, the Similarity Report for each submission will be generated immediately without comparison to other submissions within the assignment. On the assignment due date, a new Similarity report and collusion check will be run. This process indexes all submissions to the selected repository and compares them to each other. As a result of this refresh, some similarity scores may change.
  • Generate reports on due date - all submissions will enter the repository on the due date and will be used for comparison against each other.
• Submissions are not stored in a repository - the submissions within an assignment cannot be used for comparison against each other, so the time of report generation has no effect on the similarity score.

Report access

Set whether or not students can view and access a copy of their Similarity Report. This will not affect their access to any grading and feedback.

Translated Matching 

Can’t see a Translated Matching setting? Translated Matching may not be included in your institution’s license. Reach out to your administrator for more information.

If students submit work written in a non-English language, Translated Matching generates a second Similarity Report based on an English translation of the submission. Check out our guidance on Translated Matching to learn more.

Exclusions

Exclude elements of written work from potentially inflating a similarity score:

• Bibliography
• Quoted text
• Matches that are smaller than a set number of words.

Learn more about exclusions and their parameters from its dedicated guidance.

Finalizing assignment creation

1. Review the other available settings categorized within the tabs to customize your assignment to your requirements. View our guidance on Rubric and Report Settings for Student Writing assignments.

2. When ready, select the Create Assignment button.

   For Canvas only: Publish the assignment to make it visible to students.

Learn more

• Rubric and Report Settings for Student Writing assignments
• AI Tools with Turnitin Clarity

Resources for your students

These student resources complement this instructor guide and can help support your students' use of Turnitin Clarity.

•  Starting your Clarity assignment