Answered By: Robert Farmer
Last Updated: Sep 23, 2025     Views: 2381

When the first Turnitin assignment is created in a new NILE course, a corresponding Turnitin class is created for the course. This Turnitin class is applied to all of the Turnitin assignments in that particular NILE course and is set to have an expiry date that is either one year from the creation date of the class (i.e., the date on which the first Turnitin assignment was created in the course) or on the day of the final feedback release date for any Turnitin assignments in that class; whichever one of these is the latest date will be the expiry date of the Turnitin class. Once this end date is reached the class expires, and when the Turnitin class expires all the Turnitin submissions in the NILE course become read-only.

You will know if your Turnitin class has expired, as the following message will be displayed when you access any of the papers submitted to any of the Turnitin assignments in your NILE course:

 

Because Turnitin classes expire after a year it is possible to find that your Turnitin class has expired in your current NILE course. However, this is not a problem unless changes need to be made to the grades and feedback that have already been given to the papers submitted to an expired class.

While you cannot change any grades or feedback if your Turnitin class has expired, you can still: 

  • open submitted papers and view any grades and feedback previously entered;
  • download papers;
  • set up new Turnitin submission points.

And while students cannot submit assignments to Turnitin submission points in expired classes, they can still:

  • view previously submitted papers, including grades and feedback;
  • download previously submitted papers.

Reactivating an expired Turnitin class

Even though a Turnitin class has expired, this will not prevent you from setting up a new Turnitin assignment in a NILE course, because setting up a new Turnitin assignment automatically reactivates an expired Turnitin class. And because all of the Turnitin assignments in a NILE course share the same Turnitin class, once the class is reactivated all the Turnitin assignments in the NILE course will be taken out of read only mode.

Ultra courses

In Ultra courses, the only way to reactivate an expired Turnitin class is to set up a new Turnitin assignment and then to access the assignment inbox for the new Turnitin assignment. Once this has been done, the Turnitin class will be reactivated and all the Turnitin assignments in the course will no longer be in read only mode.

If the only reason to create the new Turnitin assignment is to reactivate the Turnitin class, then the new Turnitin assignment can be hidden from students.

Original courses

If you have an old Original course, the only way to reactivate the expired Turnitin class is to set up a new Turnitin assignment and then to access the assignment inbox for the new Turnitin assignment. Once this has been done, the Turnitin class will be reactivated and all the Turnitin assignments in the course will no longer be in read only mode.

If the only reason to create the new Turnitin assignment is to reactivate the Turnitin class, then the new Turnitin assignment can be made unavailable to students.