Turnitin is a leading academic integrity tool that helps educators and students maintain originality in their work. It offers plagiarism detection, grading, and feedback solutions, ensuring that submitted assignments are authentic and properly cited. Turnitin supports academic excellence by promoting ethical writing practices and providing detailed reports to improve learning outcomes.
What is Turnitin's Draft Coach feature?
The Draft Coach allows you to 'submit' your paper to Turnitin before actually submitting your work and will give you feedback and a plagiarism score on your citations, content, and grammar.
The Draft Coach is only available on the web version of Word.
Using the Draft Coach Feature
1. Open the web version of Word and open the document you would like checked.
2. On the upper menu, there is a tab called "Turnitin". Select this and then select "Draft Coach".
3. A pop-out menu will show on the right of the screen. Scroll to the bottom of the message and select "Get feedback now".
4. Draft Coach will ask you to accept their terms and conditions before continuing. Select the box saying you agree to the terms and conditions and then select "Continue to Draft Coach."
There are three different features you can use once you get into the Draft Coach: "Similarity", "Citations", and "Grammar".
Similarity Check
1. Select the similarity tab at the top of the Draft Coach pop-out. There are only three similarity checks allowed per document. Select "Run Similarity Check".
2. Draft Coach will want you to confirm that you're using one of the three similarity checks that you're allowed. Select "Confirm".
![The "Turnitin Draft Coach" window opened to the "Similarity" page, with the "Confirm" button highlighted](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/008/112/797/original/470584f0-385b-4384-9c25-ec5611aaef1a.png)
3. The feature will run, and might take a few minutes. Once it's done running, your similarity score will show up and you will have the option to see the whole report.
The higher the percentage, the more similar it is to sources found online.
![The "Turnitin Draft Coach" window open to the "Similarity" page, with a similarity report of 100% displayed](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/008/112/799/original/046f791f-0d53-4cbe-b9d3-a23397a571a3.png)
If you select "View Full Report" it will open a new tab and show you the sources that your document is similar to on the "Top Sources" and "All Sources" tabs.
Citations Check
1. Select the citations tab at the top of the Draft Coach pop-out. Select "Run citations check." This feature can be run as many times as needed.
![The "Turnitin Draft Coach" window open to the "Citations" page, with the "Citations" tab highlighted and the "Run Citations Check" button highlighted](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/008/112/803/original/f56eac42-8c48-4908-a699-26efa9893e92.png)
2. It will run and give you a report on the citations found in the document. For this specific example, it has references but no in-text citations which the report is detecting and describing it as an issue.
![The "Turnitin Draft Coach" window opened to the "Citations" page](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/008/112/805/original/4f5cf65f-c62b-41a1-89ae-230f9e8bc4d3.png)
![The "Issues" section of the "Turnitin Draft Coach" window's "Citations" page](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/008/112/807/original/fc77fd92-1428-4c4e-a04a-10eb5dcc279c.png)
![The "All References" section of the "Turnitin Draft Coach" window's "Citations" page](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/008/112/809/original/8f08622a-cc1d-45ad-9130-6e10993df3fe.png)
Grammar Check
1. Select the grammar tab at the top of the Draft Coach pop-out. This feature may be run as many times as needed. Select the "Run grammar check".
![The "Turnitin Draft Coach" window open to the "Grammar" page, with the "Grammar" tab highlighted and the "Run Grammar Check" button highlighted](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/008/112/811/original/ee414878-f27b-4e4a-b095-a56f6be08ceb.png)
2. It will run and then give you a summary of the issues it found. It will then go into depth and highlight and name each issue throughout the paper so it can be easily found and fixed.
![The "Turnitin Draft Coach" window opened to the "Grammar" page, displaying the issues it found](https://media.screensteps.com/image_assets/assets/008/112/813/original/4a4df88e-f746-4ad1-a823-9fba8a2523f6.png)
Utilizing this feature will help you write original papers and make sure that your information is cited correctly as well as fixing grammar mistakes.