Reviewing the Writing Report

In this guide, instructors will explore the Writing Report and its features that help provide insight into how a student developed their written work.

In this guide:

• Viewing the submission
• Flags
• Observations
• AI Chat Activity
• Writing process playback

Viewing the submission

Learn how to view a student’s submission in context.

View footnotes in the Writing Report

Footnotes appear in the Writing Report to help you understand when students added content, pasted text, or made other changes during their drafting process.

1. Select Go to Writing Report from the top of the page. The Writing Report opens and displays the student’s submission.
   
2. Look for the footnote indicators within the text. Footnote indicators are square, green superscripts that mark moments in the writing process.
   
3. Scroll to the bottom of the document to view the full footnote content.
   
4. To continue reviewing the work in Feedback Studio, select the Go to reports and feedback button. Footnotes created in Clarity also appear in Feedback Studio for consistent review.

Flags

Flags surface potential integrity concerns within the context of student writing, helping you quickly identify where closer review may be needed.

Writing process

• Writing process flags highlight unusual patterns in writing time or revision effort.
  • Writing time: Faster than average writing time relative to the document’s length
  • Shorter writing time than cohort: time spent writing was an outlier compared to other students in the cohort.
  • Minimal revision: Few changes were made to the document based on the ratio of typed words to final word count.

Reliance on pasted text

• Reliance on pasted text flags show how much a student relied on pasted content.
  • Pasted text in final document: Pasted words make up more than 50% of the final word count.
  • Significant pasting throughout writing process: Pasted words make up more than 40% of the total words added to the document during the writing process.

1. Open the Writing Report.
   1. For more information about how to access the Writing Report, view Accessing the Writing Report.
2. To view additional information about each flag, select the expand/collapse carat in the top right corner of the flag’s card.
   1. Once expanded, specific metrics are displayed.  
      
3. If a Reliance on pasted text flag occurs, each expanded finding card includes a See all pasted text link. Selecting this link navigates you to the Pasted Text section of the Observations tab for more details.
    

Observations

The Observations tab helps you quickly understand how the student crafted their submission.

Writing process information 

This section provides an overview of writing metrics, with details on how a student developed their final document.

• Final word count: final number of words in the submission; calculated by adding the total number of words pasted and the total number of words typed or manually inputted, minus the number of words removed throughout the process.
• Student writing time: reflects only the time the student actively engaged with the document through clicking or typing, not through passive actions like scrolling or idle time.
• Number of writing sessions: number of times the student started and stopped activity in the document by entering and leaving the writing space or by becoming inactive for an extended period.
• Cohort average time: the average writing time for an assignment is calculated when there are at least three students with submissions in the assignment.

  • The cohort average is provided in the instructor’s Writing Report only when three or more students have submissions.

Pasted text findings 

This section identifies instances where content was pasted into the document from outside the writing space.

Pasted text findings

• Are listed chronologically to show how pasted content shaped the document.
• Only include pasted content from outside the document.
• Are matched to points on the timeline, and the view of the document is updated accordingly when the paste is selected.
• Are included when text is pasted as a footnote.
  

Pasted text cards

• Show key details about each paste event, with matched sources drawn from Turnitin databases.
• Selecting a pasted text card automatically updates the document state to reflect the finding and jumps to that moment on the timeline.
  • Unchanged: text remained the same from the initial paste to the document’s submission.
  • Changed: text was edited after it was first pasted into the writing space.

1. To investigate a pasted text event, select the go-to-source arrow within the Source section of the card.
   
   1. Examples of sources you may see in the pasted text card Source section:

      • Source: No source detected (without Originality add-on): No source was found, or the text block was too small for detection or matching.
        

        Any pasted text from external AI will also show as no source detected if your institution does not have the Originality add-on with AI Writing detection.

      • Source: No source detected (with Originality add-on): If your institution has the Originality add-on with AI Writing detection, any pasted text from external AI will also show in a second source line, as % of this paste is detected as AI. 

        • If your institution has the Originality add-on with AI writing detection enabled, pasted text cards show AI writing results when a pasted block of 300+ words is likely written or altered by AI.

          

        • If an error occurs, please reload the page.
          
      • Source: Turnitin AI: Indicates content pasted from the AI Chat tab.
        
      • Without Originality add-on or with AI detection disabled: If your institution does not have the Originality add-on with AI Writing detection or if the detection is disabled, pasted text cards may also include AI writing detection is unavailable for this paste. 
        
        • Open the card to view additional information. You may see, “AI writing detection was disabled at the time of submission”.
          
2. Once the slide-out opens in the side panel, use the navigation arrows to move through matches and compare them to the original source.
   • You can navigate and interpret pasted text findings by viewing key source details, such as source type, authors, and matched word count.

   • Use the arrows to move between findings and explore how the student’s pasted content aligns with the original source.

     
      

     Source content mirrors what is available in the Similarity Report.

3. When viewing a source likely generated by AI, you’ll see:
   • The overall percentage of text estimated as AI-generated, bypassed, or paraphrased
   • A percentage breakdown for each category
   • Highlights showing likely AI-written or AI-altered text
     
     

• AI writing cards reflect what the system detects during the writing process, not the final submission. For example, if a student pastes 500 words generated by AI, the card will show that paste as likely AI-generated at that moment. If the student later edits or replaces that content before submitting, the final AI Writing report may not show the same section as likely AI-generated. Differences between the two reflect revisions made after the paste occurred.

4. To view complete AI writing results for the submission, open the AI Writing tab.

AI Chat Activity

This tab displays how the student interacted with the AI Assistant during the writing process. This tab is only visible if the assistant is enabled. If enabled but unused by the student, the tab shows, “No AI chat activity for this submission.”

• Here’s how the student used AI section: provides a holistic summary of the student's whole conversation with the assistant, and how it relates to their writing process.
• Full Chat History button: opens a comprehensive transcript of every request from the student and the AI Assistant’s response, sorted from most recent to oldest.
• Chat Themes section: organizes and summarizes the student’s chat to a corresponding stage of the writing process. 

• Chat Theme card: provides the theme, the number of requests related to it, and a bulleted summary of those requests. Expand or collapse to view theme details.

1. To expand the chat theme card, select the carat in the top right corner of the card.
   
2. Once expanded, the specific requests in the chat theme card are displayed with a category, time, and date stamp, a preview of the student’s request, and a go-to-chat arrow.
   
3. Selecting the go-to-chat arrow opens a slide-out showing the full chat at the exact date and time of the student’s request with the AI Assistant’s response.
   1. Student request: displayed in a blue box
   2. Assistant response: marked by a purple AI icon
      

For more information, view our AI Tools with Turnitin Clarity guidance.

Writing process playback

The writing process playback recreates writing activity and highlights key moments, like pasting.

1. As you view the playback, you’ll see the document marked up in real time.
2. Different markings indicate additions, pastes, and deletions.
   1. Additions are indicated by a green highlight over the newly added text.
      
   2. Deletions are indicated by a green strikethrough in the middle of the word/words removed from the document.
      
   3. A purple underline indicates pasted text.
      1. It will also include a finding number on the timeline and a pasted-text finding card in the Observations tab of the side panel.

• In this example, the student removed “[URL]” and pasted “https://www.aquariumcoop.com[...]” into the document.
  

Timeline

Use the timeline to explore how your writing developed over time.

• Play/Pause button: starts or stops the playback.
• Playback speed button: adjusts the speed of the playback and gives you the flexibility to navigate the writing process at your own pace.
   
• Pasted text finding number: pinpoints notable moments during the writing process.
  • Select timeline finding bubbles to jump directly to that moment and view the document in that state.
    
  • During playback, the timeline pauses automatically at each finding, giving you the opportunity to see how each finding fits within its original context in the writing process.
• Session number: identifies each writing session (e.g., Session 1, Session 2, etc.).

  • If the student wrote the entire submission within one session, the timeline will only show “Session 1” on the timeline.

    

Learn more

• AI-powered 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.

• Reviewing your Clarity submission and Writing Report