How to request the removal of a submission from Turnitin’s repository

If a file is submitted in error, it may be necessary to request that it is removed from Turnitin’s repository. However, not all incorrect file submissions require such a request to be made. You only need to make such a request when two conditions exist together:

a student submits to the wrong Moodle assignment activity in the wrong course
where Turnitin is enabled in the wrong activity and the and the store student papers setting set to ‘standard repository’.

If this is the case, please skip to the section Student submits to the wrong Moodle assignment activity below.

Student submits the wrong file to the correct Moodle assignment activity

Students sometimes submit the wrong file to a Moodle assignment activity with Turnitin enabled. If a similarity report has already been generated for the submission, it is still possible for the incorrectly uploaded file to be replaced with a new file for submission and a similarity report generated, provided Turnitin has been set up within the assignment activity appropriately.

Both of the following scenarios presume that the Moodle assignment activity has been set up so that students can resubmit to Moodle until the due date and time (i.e. ‘Require students to click the submit button’ has not been enabled).

If the ‘Report Generation Speed' setting is set to 'Generate reports immediately (students can resubmit until due date)' or 'Generate reports on due date (students can resubmit until due date)’ then it is possible for a new file to be submitted and a similarity report generated up until the assignment due date. The same is true if you delete the student’s assignment and allow them to resubmit.

If the ‘Report Generation Speed' setting is set to ‘Generate reports immediately (students cannot resubmit)’ then it will not be possible for a new file to be submitted to Turnitin as similarity reports will not be generated for a new file. For this reason, we don’t recommend the use of this setting.

Student submits to the wrong Moodle assignment activity

There are also situations where the file has been submitted to the wrong Moodle assignment activity all together. If the assignment is also in the wrong course, and the student subsequently submits to the the correct assignment in the correct course, the latter submission will be given a 100% similarity score due to self-plagiarism.

To prevent such an eventuality, a paper deletion request must be submitted to remove the submission from the Turnitin repository before the student submits to the correct assignment. This MUST be done by:

Contacting eden.digital@lse.ac.uk
Citing the Turnitin ID for submission (found in the Moodle submissions table)

3. Providing a link the Moodle assignment activity to which the file was incorrectly submitted .

The Eden.Digital team will raise a ticket with Turnitin to request the removal of the initial file submission from their repository. Once this has been done, the team will let you that the student can proceed with submitting to the correct Moodle assignment activity.

What if the student has already submitted to the correct assignment?

If the removal request is made after the student submits to the correct assignment activity, you can generate a new similarity report after the incorrect submission has been deleted. To do this:

Open the correct submission in Turnitin Feedback Studio
Click the red filter icon to open the filter panel

Click ‘New Report’.