Turnitin Draft Coach is a tool that helps students improve their writing by providing feedback on similarity, citations, and grammar through an easy-to-use Microsoft Word add-on. The guide explains how to access and utilize the tool, offering detailed instructions for running similarity checks, citation verifications, and grammar suggestions, while also highlighting potential limitations and the importance of reviewing the feedback carefully.

Overview

Turnitin Draft Coach is a Turnitin tool that helps students improve their academic writing and research skills by providing instant feedback. This tool provides three types of feedback:

similarity, citation, and grammar. Turnitin Draft Coach is free to all instructors and students. It can be accessed through a Microsoft Word Add-on. 

• Similarity: Access Similarity Reports directly within Word Online to ensure proper research and understand where to revise their writing prior to final submission. 
• Citation: Find any missing references and citations. 
• Grammar: Highlights grammar mistakes and provides explanations to help students edit and deepen their understanding.

Please note, Turnitin Draft Coach provides a quick way to provide feedback to users. However, there are limitations to the tool. Users are highly recommended to:

• Review similarity reports to ensure they are accurate. Frequently quoted source material or common phrases can erroneously appear on similarity reports as plagiarism. 
• Ensure drafts of student material are not added to databases used for similarity reports. This will trigger the final draft to appear mostly plagiarized. 
• Review the citations for accuracy and correctness. Updates to citation styles aren’t always added quickly to databases, and instructors may ask for versions other than the most recent edition. Also, some citation styles have more than one version (such as Chicago), so be sure drafts are being reviewed for the correct version and style.

Recommend students review grammar suggestions before accepting them and bring questions to their instructor or the Writing Center. Not all suggestions are grammatically correct, and I will sometimes recommend making a change that shouldn’t be made.

Instructions

• Objectives

By following the guide, you will be able to:

1. Log into OneDrive with your PFW account
2. Add the Turnitin Draft Coach Add-on
3. Utilize Turnitin Draft Coach on your Microsoft Word documents

Part 1. Log into OneDrive with your PFW account

1. Go to https://onedrive.live.com/, and select Sign in at the top of the page. 
2. Enter your @pfw.edu email address and click Next.
3. Provide your PFW Credentials in the Casprod window. 
4. Once you verify your identity, you are all set. 

Part 2: Add the Turnitin Draft Coach Add-on

1. Open an online Microsoft Word document.
2. Select Insert and then Add-ins.
3. From the Office Add-ins modal, select Admin Managed and then Turnitin Draft Coach. *If the add-in does not appear, you may need to refresh your page and try again. If it does not appear after refreshing the page, contact technical support. 

 

4. The Turnitin Draft Coach panel will appear on the right-hand side of your document. *If the panel fails to appear and an error message appears instead, ensure pop-ups are enabled in your browsers settings and try again. 
5. Turnitin Draft Coach is now ready to help. Select Get Feedback Now to get started.  

Part 3: Utilize Turnitin Draft Coach

1. Open an online Microsoft Word document. [If you do not have an existing online Word document, click the New button to create one or click the Upload button to upload one Word document from your computer.]

 

2. Ensure Home is selected on the menu bar, and then select Turnitin. Draft Coach is now listed as an option beneath the menu bar. 
3. Select Draft Coach. The Turnitin Draft Coach panel will appear on the right-hand side of your document. 
4. Turnitin Draft Coach will now provide Similarity, Citation, and Grammar feedback. 

Similarity Check

1. Add Draft Coach to document.
2. Select the Similarity tab at the top of the panel or the Similarity Check card in the middle of the panel.
3. Select Run Similarity Check.
4. You will be shown how many reports you have left to run. Select Confirm if you would like to continue. Or select Cancel if you would like to continue working on your assignment. *Please do not alter your text while the Similarity Check is running.
   1. It is normal to receive some matches in a well-referenced paper and it doesn’t always mean that it is plagiarism. 
   2. You can seek help from the Writing Center on interpreting the scores and improving your writing based on the feedback.
5. If you have made changes to your assignment and would like to run a new report, select Run New Similarity Check. Draft Coach will tell you how many checks you have left to use. 

Citations Check

1. Add Draft Coach to your document.
2. Select the Citations tab at the top of the panel or the Citations Check card in the middle of the panel. 
3. Select Run Citations Check.
4. You will now have your Citations Report. 
5. If you made changes to your assignment and would like to run a new report, select Run New Citations Check. * You will be able to use as many Citations Checks as you like. 

Grammar Guide

1. Add Draft Coach to your document.
2. Select the Grammar tab at the top of the panel or the Gramar Guide card in the middle of the panel. 
3. Select Run Grammar Check.
4. You will now have access to your Grammar Guide.
5. If you made changes to your assignment and would like to run a new report, select Run Grammar Check. 

*You will be able to use as many Grammar Guide checks as you like. 

*For any particularly long documents, Grammar Guide will only provide a report for the first 100,000 characters. If your document exceeds this and you would like to utilize Grammar Guide fully, we recommend splitting your draft into separate documents. 

Need Technical Support?

If you need technical support, please submit a Help Desk ticket.

Faculty and Staff: For pedagogical consultations, please book a one-on-one consultation with a CELT consultant.

Writing Center Support

The Writing Center is a student-centered resource that helps with writing and public speaking assignments for PFW Campus classes and academic-related events (this includes assistance for IUFW students!). The consultants provide both virtual and in-person consultations to help students with compositional questions and concerns, like developing and supporting your thesis, understanding the rhetorical situation, organizing ideas, citing sources, improving clarity, incorporating peer and instructor comments, and more. Think of us like coaches, working with you and offering you tools to succeed!

To get in-person or virtual support, please visit the Writing Center Website for details.

 

Still need help?  Click the 'Purdue IT Request' button to start a ticket.