Turnitin LTI: Hiding provisional Turnitin marks and feedback

This guide relates only to assignments created using the new Turnitin LTI assignment tool.

How to ensure that students cannot see marks and feedback until the desired date.

Why do I need to do this?

You will normally want to hide marks and feedback from students while marking and moderation is taking place. However when you create any kind of assessment in Blackboard, a column is automatically created in the Grade Centre, and by default that column is visible to students via the My Marks and Feedback tool, and Marks in the main Blackboard menu. This applies equally to Blackboard Tests and Assignments, and to Turnitin Assignments, but there are some additional considerations when using Turnitin.

Turnitin has a Feedback Release Date which specifies when students are able to view any feedback and grades you leave for them via GradeMark. You also need to apply an additional setting to ensure that students are not able to view their grade prematurely via the Blackboard My Marks and Feedback tool.

How do I hide grades and feedback until the Feedback Release Date?

When setting up a Turnitin assignment you need to set three dates:

Start date
the date from which students can submit work – normally just leave this as today’s date
Due date
the date and time by which students must submit work
Feedback Release Date
the date and time when marks and/or feedback will become visible to students through Turnitin.


For assignments with Anonymous Marking enabled, the Feedback Release Date determines when grades are posted to the Blackboard Grade Centre and when the author names are made available.

Otherwise, in Blackboard, the Feedback Release Date relates to the availability of Feedback Studio papers only and has no bearing on when grades are posted to the Blackboard Grade Centre.

What this means

if you enable Anonymous Marking on an assignment, student marks will not be transferred to the Blackboard Grade Centre until the Feedback Release Date
otherwise, marks will be transferred to the Grade Centre as soon as you enter them in Turnitin, and potentially be visible to students.

There is a simple step you can take to prevent students from seeing their marks prematurely.

From the submission point click on the grey chevron icon and select Edit from the contextual menu.

Showing how to enter the Blackboard Editor page for the submission point

On the Edit Web Link page change Visible to Students to NO.

This will hide the Grades Centre column from students. You will then need to manually reveal the column in the Grades Centre on the Feedback Release Date.

The Visible to Student selction button - select "no" so that the Grades Centre Column is hidden.