Harmonize Clients to Detect AI-Generated Writing in Student Discussions through Turnitin Integration

Harmonize — a suite of discussion and collaboration tools used to power online courses — will leverage its integration capabilities with Turnitin — a global leader in academic integrity — to detect AI writing, including text produced by ChatGPT. Released in April 2023, Turnitin’s AI writing detection capabilities will be available to Harmonize customers with a Turnitin license.

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The recent release of Open AI’s ChatGPT and the rapid pace in which AI writing tools are being developed have continued to spark educators’ concerns over academic integrity. Turnitin’s AI Innovation Lab has been working on technology to detect these emerging forms of misconduct. That’s good news for users of Harmonize’s online course discussion tools. Clients with a current Turnitin license will have the AI writing detection capabilities integrated into their Harmonize workflow for a seamless experience — automatically running checks on every discussion submission, without having to leave their LMS environment or make any additional software installations.

Access to Turnitin’s AI writing detection capability will be included as part of the initial Turnitin license, and available to the majority of Turnitin customers across the following products: Turnitin Feedback Studio, Turnitin Feedback Studio with Originality, Turnitin Originality, Turnitin Similarity, Simcheck, Originality Check, and Originality Check+.

The initial release will consist of an AI writing indicator and a report. The indicator will show what percent of text contained in the document may have been generated by an AI writing tool. Only instructors and administrators will be able to see the indicator. The report will provide an overview of the findings and highlight at a sentence level, which segments have been detected as AI-written.

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“I love using Harmonize for my online discussions because it helps me create engaging and inclusive learning environments that foster critical thinking and creativity. And now with Turnitin’s new AI detector integrated with Harmonize, I can address any AI-generated text students might submit immediately, instead of suspecting but having lack of proof. In addition, this integration will afford me the opportunity to have a discussion with my students before they submit their work, giving them the opportunity to uphold the student code of conduct and academic dishonesty policy. It’s a win-win situation,” said Heather Brown, Senior Instructional Designer at Tidewater Community College.

“Our partnership with Turnitin reinforces our mission of supporting both academic rigor and trust in the online discussion environment,” said Marcus Popetz, Co-founder and CEO of Harmonize. “We were one of the first integration partners that allowed instructors to flag potential plagiarism posted in discussion boards, so we’re thrilled to bring Turnitin’s new AI writing detection capabilities to our institutional partners, another step toward ensuring the authenticity of student work.”
The first iteration of Turnitin’s AI writing detection technology has been trained to detect large language models including ChatGPT and other AI writing tool variants. Turnitin plans to expand detection capabilities in the future. Detection capability will work only for long-form writing in English at this time.

Turnitin is a global company dedicated to ensuring the integrity of education and meaningfully improving learning outcomes. For 25 years, Turnitin has partnered with educational institutions to promote honesty, consistency, and fairness across all subject areas and assessment types. Turnitin products are used by educational institutions and certification and licensing programs to uphold integrity and increase learning performance, and by students and professionals to do their best, original work.

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