AUT students have access to a neat new tool that can help you check your writing – and has special relevance for PG students. Meet Turnitin Draft Coach!
How to use Turnitin Draft Coach
There are three key ways that thesis writers can use Turnitin Draft Coach. Read on for ideas.
1: Conduct an interim Turnitin similarity check
Want to check your Turnitin similarity score while drafting? Turnitin Draft Coach allows you to check a document up to 3 times as ‘practice runs’ before your final submission. You can review the results within the document, and fix errors as you see them. All this happens without saving your work to Turnitin’s database, so your work won’t ‘ping’ against itself during your final pre-submission Turnitin scan in PG_Me.
2: Cross-check your in-text citations against your bibliography (and vice versa)
Want to make sure that everything you’ve cited in-text is in your bibliography? And that everything in your bibliography is cited in-text? Until recently, that was a painful manual process taking many hours. Now, as long as you use either APA or MLA referencing, you can cross-check your references with Turnitin Draft Coach and skip the manual labour. This tool offers unlimited citation checks, so you can ensure that your citations are correct and consistent throughout your drafting process.
3: Check your grammar
Turnitin Draft Coach offers a powerful grammar checker that identifies issues with grammar, mechanics, word usage, and structure. You can see each issue highlighted in your own writing, read guidance on what the issue is and how to fix it, and then follow the guidance to improve your writing. As with any grammar tool, not all suggestions will be appropriate for your writing – so do use your judgement in deciding which suggestions to follow. That said, this tool is a great way to identify potential errors.
Using Draft Coach
This tool is available in Microsoft Word Online for AUT students via Microsoft 365. Follow the instructions here to get going. Don’t panic if the Turnitin menu doesn’t show up when you first load your document – it can take about 15 seconds to appear.
If you work in LaTeX or using a desktop version of Word, the link above gives instructions on how to open your document in Word Online.
