This guide for students provides an overview of Turnitin’s AI Assistant capabilities and offers recommendations for using them in Turnitin Clarity’s student writing assignments.
For any questions about your writing or submission, please contact your instructor directly.
In this guide:
- What is Turnitin’s AI Assistant?
- Accessing Turnitin’s AI Assistant
- Using Turnitin’s AI Assistant
- Using suggested prompts
- Suggested prompt content
What is Turnitin’s AI Assistant?
Turnitin’s AI chat is a free-form, open chat that students can engage with throughout the various stages of writing in a Turnitin Clarity Student Writing assignment.
The AI Assistant is a generative AI tool, powered by an externally produced Large Language Model (LLM). As a result, it may not always be accurate, up-to-date, or complete in its responses.
The AI Assistant is not a substitute for independent or additional research, instructor advice, or expert opinion. You should always verify and carefully consider the assistant’s suggestions and information before including them in your submission.
Accessing Turnitin’s AI Assistant
Turnitin’s AI Assistant is available from within the writing space. To access it, select the AI Chat tab in the side panel.
Your instructor must enable Turnitin’s AI Assistant. If the AI Chat tab isn’t visible and you know your instructor enabled it for the assignment, please contact your instructor directly.
Using Turnitin’s AI Assistant
It is important to note: Turnitin’s AI Assistant will not write your paper for you.
Turnitin’s AI Assistant can help refine your original work, encourage critical thinking, and assist you in brainstorming ideas. It was designed to support your growth as a learner and strengthen your own critical thinking and writing.
AI Assistant language
- The chat starts in the language currently set in your LMS.
- The chat replies in the language selected by your instructor.
- The assistant may adapt its tone, examples, guidance, and language.
You can interact with the AI Assistant in the AI Chat tab in two ways. You can ask questions or make requests in the chat box provided, or use one of our premade prompts to guide your interactions.
You can send up to 250 messages (including premade prompts) in the chat. Once you have 10 messages left, a notification in the chat will show how many messages you have left to send, counting down from 10 to 0.
Interacting via the chat box
Within the AI Chat tab, you can use the chat box to ask the AI Assistant for help.
- Select the chat box to start.
- Once you have typed your question or request, you can press the Enter key on your keyboard or select the Send icon button beneath the chat.
All of your interactions with the AI Assistant are logged and shared with your instructor after submission. We recommend following your instructor’s guidelines and your institution’s policies when using the tool.
Getting feedback on selected text
The AI Assistant can provide feedback on specific text selections from your assignment.
- Highlight the text you want feedback on within the writing space.
- You can select up to 1000 characters.
- After highlighting, the Selected text box above the chat box will turn blue, indicating that the AI Assistant knows you are enquiring about text from your document within the writing space.
If you do not select any text for feedback, the AI Assistant will look at the whole document within the writing space.
Using suggested prompts
To support your writing process, we’ve curated a set of prompts designed to guide you at every stage of your assignment, from ideation to final submission. You can use them when you need help with clarifying assignment instructions, brainstorming new ideas, drafting, considering counterarguments or organizing your thoughts, refining, or reflecting on your work.
We recommend using these prompts to strengthen your writing voice.
- Select the Suggested Prompts option at the bottom of the AI Chat tab.
- A scrollable box will open with a list of prompts.
- Select the name of the prompt to apply it to your selected text and/or to populate the chatbox with the prompt’s content.
- Once you select the content, it will appear in the chat box. You can either send it as-is or edit it before sending.
- To send, press the Enter key on your keyboard, or select the Send icon to the right of Suggested Prompts.
Suggested prompt content
Below is the list of available prompts with their title and descriptions that you can choose from in the AI Chat. While the prompt content is prewritten, you can always edit it directly in the chat before sending it as a message.
You can ignore any extra sentences in the prompt that explain how the chat response will be formatted.
Getting started
The Getting started prompts can help you understand your assignment, generate ideas, and build a strong starting point.
Summarize instructions
Give me a paragraph with a few sentences describing the assignment requirements, AI usage guidelines, and examples of how you can (and can’t) assist me with this composition.
If assignment context isn't available, don’t invent it -- instead, remind me to get the requirements from my instructor.
Brainstorm ideas
Based on my text so far, help me brainstorm additional ideas or alternative approaches to this paper, while keeping to the expectations of the assignment.
Suggest Thesis
Suggest a concrete and compelling central claim or thesis statement for my paper.
Make Outline
Based on my text, help me put together an outline for a complete paper. This may include and summarize what I've already written, and it may expand on it to describe a coherent whole from start to finish.
Strengthen Introduction
Based on this rough sketch or outline for my paper, suggest ways to strengthen and refine my introduction that sets up my main points.
Suggest Title
Suggest one or more compelling, catchy, or appropriate titles for my paper. Avoid mixing metaphors.
Drafting
The Drafting prompts help you by providing feedback designed to strengthen your content’s structure, flow, and alignment with the assignment’s criteria.
Prioritized Feedback
Identify one element of this assignment's expectations, or one rubric criterion, that I should address first for my paper. Give me a list of feedback aligned to this criterion.
Organization Feedback
Help me improve the organization of my whole paper, including the overall structure, flow of ideas, and transitions between sections. Do this as a handful of feedback comments about flow and organization, grounded in my text, based on the assignment's expectations.
Make Reverse Outline
Summarize this text as a bulleted outline. This will help both the instructor and me understand the whole composition, orient ourselves for feedback, and will allow us to quickly digest the text's overall structure, flow of ideas, and use of sources, if any.
Rubric Feedback
Give me a few formative feedback comments, grounded in quotes from my paper, based on one or more elements of this assignment's expectations or rubric.
Suggest Edits
Give me 2 or 3 targeted suggestions to improve my paper, each comment paired with a sentence or two of my original text, plus an example replacement for each.
Reflecting
The Reflecting prompts encourage deeper thinking about your assignment by asking tough questions, offering counterarguments, or suggesting different ways to explore your ideas.
Challenge Thought
Ask me a specific, engaging question that may make me reconsider my argument, rethink my position, or push me to dive deeper.
Check Understanding
Help me check my understanding by asking me a difficult question about this part of my paper.
Suggest Metaphor
Suggest an accessible but not cliché metaphor that illustrates my point.
Give Counterarguments
Provide counterarguments for the key statements in my text.
Proofreading
The Proofreading prompts help you polish your writing by making it clearer, more concise, and grammatically correct.
All proofreading and style feedback appears in the AI Chat tab of the side panel and not on the document itself. For in-line grammar and spelling feedback, select the grammar check icon on the editor’s toolbar.
Check Grammar/Style
Give me up to 5 suggestions for improving my grammar, language, formatting, and style. Pair each suggestion with a sentence or two of my original text plus an example revision.
Make Concise
Make my writing more concise, while keeping its core meaning and the most important details. If I haven't made a specific selection from my paper, pick a few passages that could improve with concision, and suggest appropriate revisions.
Rephrase Text
Help me phrase this text more clearly, while keeping my meaning and intent the same.
Follow-Up
The Follow-up prompts help you get clearer or more useful responses that better fit your needs.
Explain Response
Can you explain that in more detail, so I can actually use it to help my writing?
Simplify Response
I don't understand. Can you please simplify your response for me?
Try Again
Your response isn't really what I need. Please try again.