Supporting the Turnitin Community During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Updated March 2021

As we approach the one-year mark of remote and hybrid learning, we wanted to provide our Turnitin community with a fresh update on how we are continuing to support our global students, educators, and researchers as they manage ongoing COVID-19 disruptions.

In 2020, we hit record submission levels as institutions quickly transitioned to online learning. In an effort to ensure reliable, consistent service to new and existing customers, we are grateful and happy to share that we achieved an uptime of 99.9% or higher across all of our products.

Going forward, we will continue to focus on helping instructors, whether their students are in person, online, or both. We have evolved our brand identity and expanded our purpose from a focus on integrity in writing to empowering students to do their best, original work across all subjects and assessment types. And while the free access to Gradescope Complete ended in December, instructors can still access basic Gradescope functionality.

Additionally, we will continue to provide resources and information to help instructors uphold integrity in their remote classrooms and deliver feedback and assessments that ensure student learning even when instructors cannot be there in-person:

1. Check out our VidBits. Our pedagogy and product experts have partnered to create short videos that feature best practices for a variety of educational settings.
2. Discover our "Together While Apart" webinar and blog series, which highlights best practices for instructors and administrators when implementing instruction at a distance.

Also, don't miss out on our "Starting the Year" blog series that highlights key elements of delivering instruction, assessments, and feedback with integrity in person and online.

We acknowledge the past year and its challenges. Looking ahead to 2021, we will focus our efforts to meet the evolving needs of educators and students, as well as continue our commitment to customer service and to fulfilling the promises below.

Updated March 2020

The question we have received most in the last week is whether our systems can scale to meet demand should there be a surge in the use of Turnitin tools. We want to assure you that our infrastructure is designed with elasticity and scalability in mind.

Our recent modernization efforts to shift computing workloads to the cloud and run our services on clusters mean that we are able to handle significantly higher workloads as institutions move more activities online. We have also enhanced our monitoring systems and workflows so that we detect and respond to issues quickly. In short, we are committed to delivering reliable and consistent service to our customers across the globe who are now faced with new and unprecedented challenges.

We are providing free access to Gradescope Complete to all educators through December 31, 2020. Gradescope can help instructors adapt their paper-based, digital, and code assignments for remote learning and is available for individual instructors to adopt for free. To get started right away, visit Gradescope.

At the same time, we recognize that you may need to expand your Turnitin license for increased use during this period. If you need short-term access or additional licenses for any Turnitin products, your account manager can enable the requested service at no additional cost through June 30, 2020. If you are unsure how to reach your account manager, contact our support team at tiisupport@turnitin.com.

Over the coming weeks, we will share resources and information to help instructors uphold integrity in their remote classrooms and deliver feedback and assessments that ensure student learning even when instructors cannot be there in-person. Below are two resources that you may find immediately helpful:

1. Gradescope Blog: Updates to help with urgent remote assessment needs

You will learn about common remote assessment workflows as well as resources and FAQs for quickly adapting assessments due to closed campuses, canceled courses, and remote students. Also, Gradescope’s collection of short, video tutorials helps new users onboard quickly.

1. Turnitin Instructor Resource Hub: Supporting remote learners

As you move more activities online, you may experience a need for efficient instructor onboarding and tools to support teaching and learning remotely with Turnitin. Our instructor quick start guide is available to help instructors onramp and our instructor resource hub includes short videos and guides for delivering feedback remotely.

Subscribe to our blog or follow us on Twitter to be notified of additional resources as they become available.

As always, please reach out to your account manager or our support team with any needs that arise during this time. It is a challenge to be fully prepared for an unprecedented situation like this one, but we are here to help.