Administrator Training
Glossary of Turnitin Terminology
Account - a Turnitin account allows instructors to use products purchased from Turnitin.
Account ID - the numeric dentification number for a specific account or sub-account.
Account Join Password - an account-specific password which allows instructors to self-join an account when used in conjunction with the Account ID.
Active Students - the number of unique student users enrolled in at least one active class on an account
or accounts. Active student counts do not include students who are joined to more than one course using the same student user profile.
Administrator - the controller of a specific Turnitin account. This user type is able to activate or deactivate products on an account, change account settings, and add or remove instructors from account access.
Assignment - Submissions to a class on Turnitin are made to an assignment. Each assignment can allow only a single submission per student user who is enrolled in the class.
Available Active Students - the number of student users available on an account. This number is the difference between the active student and student limit numbers for an account.
Class - to allow students to submit files, an instructor must create a class for their students. A class requires a name, a class ID, and a class enrollment password.
Class ID - a unique numeric identification number for a specific class created by an instructor on Turnitin.
Class Enrollment Password - an instructor-created authorization password for a class on Turnitin. Both class ID and enrollment password are required for students who will be self-enrolling in a class.
Consortium Account - an account type which is the parent for multiple institutional accounts. Consortium accounts do not allow instructors to directly join. Instructors must be added to an institutional or departmental account.
Criteria - criteria are a part of the Rubric Scorecard feature in GradeMark. Criteria describe the requirements for a submission to meet specific areas of the grading scale.
Departmental Account -
Departmental accounts are created for specific departments within an institution to use Turnitin products. Instructors are able to join departmental accounts or be added by the departmental administrator.
Download (file) - transmission of a file from Turnitin to the computer of the user selecting to download file(s). Some users may need to enable file download due to security considerations on the web browser or computer being used.
Downtime - a period of time during which Turnitin will not be available or have extremely limited availability to users.
Expired (class) - in the class context, an expired status indicates the class is no longer available for the instructor to create new assignments. Students will not be able to submit any new files. Existing submissions can still be viewed or downloaded. A class can be reactivated from expired status by the instructor from the class update screen.
Expired (account) - in the account context, an expired account is no longer available to create new sub-accounts or any instructor or student usage. Currently existing information will still be available for viewing. Expired accounts will need to contact a Turnitin account representative for renewal. Expired accounts on Turnitin will become inactive after a period of 180 days.
Export (GradeMark libraries) - saving and downloading a copy of a specific GradeMark rubric or QuickMark set locally to the computer of the user.
Export (stats) - downloading a copy of account statistics in a Microsoft Excel® format to a user’s computer.
Feature - a part or aspect of a specific product, such as discussion boards which are a feature of the Turnitin product as a whole.
GradeBook - a product which allows instructors to place grades on student submissions to Turnitin. Tracks and calculates grades for students across multiple assignments as well as providing statistics for the class or assignments for the instructor.
GradeMark - a online grading product offered by Turnitin which allows instructors to place comments and QuickMark editing marks on a submission for students to review. This product also includes standardized rubric scorecards and the ability to share QuickMark standard editing marks and rubric scorecards between instructors on an account via export or via administrators using the libraries sharing feature of the GradeMark online grading product.
Homepage - the default login page, which is different based on the selected default user type of the user profile being accessed.
Inactive (account) - an account which has expired longer than 180 days previous and is now inaccessible for reactivation or viewing.
Inactive (class) - a class which belongs to an inactive account. Information contained within inactive classes is no longer available and cannot be viewed by instructors or students.
Inactive (product) - a product which has not been purchased or has been deactivated for a specific account or course.
Individual Account - this type of Turnitin account is limited to a single instructor user. Individual accounts receive limits to the number of Originality Reports and (if available) GradeMark digitally graded papers that can be generated.
Institutional Account - this type of Turnitin account is designed for an institutional location and can be separated into sub-accounts at the departmental level.
Instructor - the term used for teachers, tutors, or other student assisting users added or authorized to join as instructors on a specific Turnitin account. A single person may be joined to multiple Turnitin accounts or sub-accounts using one user profile or separate user profiles. Users may fill more than one user type role on Turnitin.
Libraries (assignment, peer review) - these library types allow instructors to easily, quickly copy or replicate existing assignments or peer reviews from one class to another.
Libraries (rubric) - the rubric library available from the instructor class homepage allows an instructor to create, review, edit, or delete the marking rubrics available for a peer review. Peer review rubrics are completely separate from GradeMark libraries of QuickMark editing and rubric scorecards.
Libraries (rubric scorecard, QuickMark) - the rubric scorecard or QuickMark scoring marks created by a particular user. These libraries allow a user to create, edit, apply, copy, move, or delete rubric scorecards or QuickMark editing sets. These libraries can be shared to section classes by a master class instructor. An administrator can share these libraries to all instructors on a specific account.
Log In - the act of an authorized user entering the e-mail address and personal password created for a user profile to enter Turnitin as the user associated with the e-mail address entered.
OriginalityCheck™ - this product is Turnitin's plagiarism prevention solution. OriginalityCheck compares student papers to Turnitin's content database to determine the percentage of unoriginal content in the paper. It allows instructors and students to easily determine any problems in citation or referencing and assists instructors in determining the originality of a submitted work.
Originality Report - the Originality Report is a flexible document that allows students and instructors to review matches between a submitted work and the databases scanned by Turnitin. Citations, quotations, and bibliographic material are all scanned against Turnitin’s databases to determine an overall similarity percentage as well as specific matches to similar text.
PeerMark® - this product allows students to anonymously or with attribution review submissions made by other students within the course. Students reply to topic questions selected or created by the instructor as well as metric scoring questions. A PeerMark assignment must be based on a normal Turnitin assignment where the student papers are initially submitted.
Product - a specific service, feature, or group of features offered by Turnitin as part of the purchase of a Turnitin license by an educational customer.
QuickMark Comment - standard editing or correction marks provided by Turnitin which can be augmented
by additional marks created by an instructor.
Rubric Scorecard - a scorecard which allows instructors to easily grade students based on a scaled assessment of the submission meeting certain criteria set for an assignment. The rubric scorecard automatically totals a grade for the submission based on the boxes checked on the scorecard.
Scale - a series of descriptors by which a student’s submission is categorized on a rubric scorecard. Default scale entries are headed “Poor”, “Fair”, and “Good”. Scale headings are customized by instructors creating or editing a rubric scorecard. Descriptions can be entered for instructor guidance at every point where a criterion meets a scale. Ex: The description where the Grammar criterion intersects with the Good scale may indicate ‘Above average understanding of word usage.’
Secure Socket Layer - A security protocol available on many web browsers. The standard acronym for Secure Socket Layer encryption is SSL. SSL connection to Turnitin is on by default.
Student - a user type able to enroll in courses created by an instructor user. Student user profiles can only submit to assignments created by an instructor in a class they are joined to or have been authorized to join.
Student Limit - the maximum active student count available for an account or accounts based on the number of student licenses purchased.
Sub-account - an account created beneath a parent account. The Turnitin account tree allows for multiple sub-accounts created under each parent account. The number of institutional accounts created beneath a consortium account is determined by license purchases. Individual accounts may not create sub accounts.
Submission - a file or files uploaded by a student or instructor user into an assignment within a Turnitin class. Only a single file can be submitted to an assignment by a student user.
Submission (type) - Turnitin offers multiple submission types for students and instructors. Students are able to submit a single file at a time by either file upload or cut-and-paste submission. Instructors are able to submit files by file upload, copy and paste, zip upload, or bulk upload options. The default file type for a user to submit by can be viewed or changed in the preferences section of the user info page.
Total Active Students in Applicable Accounts - the number of active students in the selected account and any sub-accounts which are drawing on the selected account for student limit availability.
Upload (list) - sending a Comma Separated Values (CSV) or Microsoft Excel® document containing multiple sets of user information for bulk creation of student or instructor profiles. Also the bulk addition of users to an account or class.
Upload (file) - the act of submitting or sending a file into a specific assignment within a Turnitin for use with the Turnitin products selected for the class and assignment the file is being submitted to.
User Profile - the user profile is a set of user preferences and information associated with a specific ID within Turnitin. Each user profile requires a unique e-mail address. A specific e-mail address can only be used once within the Turnitin database. New attempts to create a profile associated with an e-mail address currently existing in Turnitin will not succeed.
User Type - Turnitin has three available user types: administrator, instructor, and student. A single user profile may have access to all three user types to fulfill different functions.
