What an inspiring month of shared learning! From November 3-30, our customer community came together for a dynamic Summit experience filled with curiosity, insight, and collaboration—all centered on our key theme: AI’s transformative impact on education.
The event provided actionable strategies and forward-looking insights across six days of live programming and on-demand access to nearly 30 sessions, including keynotes, workshops, and product demonstrations.
We’re already hard at work on exciting new customer engagement opportunities for 2026. In the meantime, revisit the conversations, lessons, and innovations that defined the 2025 Turnitin Virtual Customer Summit and can help inform your strategy for 2026.
Community engagement on a global scale
Our valued customers brought this Summit to life! Your passion, ideas, and engagement made this global event one to remember. Here’s a snapshot of the participation.
- 3,745 registrants
- Representing 134 countries
Globally inclusive: Live sessions were split across two weeks to best accommodate time zones, with week 1 optimized for the Americas and Europe, and week 2 tailored to the Asia-Pacific region.
A dynamic program with something for everyone
- Executive keynotes & strategy: Turnitin’s executive leaders, including CEO Chris Caren, Chief Product Officer Annie Chechitelli, and Chief Customer Officer Zemina Hasham, delivered keynotes focused on responsible AI usage and driving customer success—highlighting Turnitin’s evolving service model to meet the new and emerging needs of institutions.
- Product innovation deep dives: Attendees received exclusive insights into Turnitin's major product enhancements for the AI era:
- Turnitin Clarity: Introduced as a new solution to promote writing transparency and ethical AI use, facilitating rich, formative conversations between educators and students about the writing process.
- Next-Gen Turnitin Feedback Studio: Showcased a smarter, more intuitive interface with an enhanced Similarity Report, streamlined feedback workflows, and flexible assessment tools.
- iThenticate 2.0: Detailed the essential upgrade for research integrity, featuring advanced AI writing detection, enhanced similarity checking, and improved collaboration for high-stakes research.
- Assessment and integrity solutions: Summit sessions were aligned to four content streams—academic integrity, course assessment, high-stakes assessment, and research integrity—allowing attendees to customize their event experience:
- Academic and research integrity: Focused on strategies for the evolution of writing and deterring AI misuse, highlighting the visibility into student work offered by Turnitin Clarity and new insights from the Authorship tool.
- Course and high-stakes assessment: Explored flexible solutions such as standards-based grading with Gradescope and optimizing ExamSoft question banks to create assessments that challenge critical thinking.
- Peer learning & best practices: A cornerstone of the summit was the peer-to-peer exchange, featuring customer-led sessions from institutions like Bridgewater State University and Auburn University College of Pharmacy, which showcased real-world best practices and strategies for immediate application using ExamSoft reporting to drive student remediation and curriculum innovation.
Top 5 attended sessions
- How Much Is Too Much? Navigating the Responsible Usage of AI | Annie Chechitelli
- Building a Bridge Between Educators and Students in the Age of Gen AI | Leah Stockstill
- Unlocking the full potential of the Next Generation of Turnitin Feedback Studio | Callan Rose and Ninya Victorio
- Innovation and Integrity and the Age of AI: What's next for Turnitin Feedback Studio | Marlen Rattiner
- Teaching, Learning, and Academic Integrity in the Age of AI | Patti West-Smith, Audrey Campbell, and Karen Smith
Key takeaways on AI’s transformative impact
Here’s a closer look at the insights that emerged from our top 5 attended sessions.
1. Students’ evolving roles and behaviors with AI
- As future professionals, students will be valued for their ability to be information managers; steering AI composition, evaluating AI output, and making decisions.
- Students’ current AI engagement can be explained by the following 3 pillars:
- Students are using GenAI as part of their learning process—most of the time without educator guidance.
- Students are interested in using AI but they may not understand all of its limitations and consequences.
- Students are concerned that their peers are misusing GenAI and putting them at an academic disadvantage.
- With AI as a partner, students will need to distinguish themselves in terms of what they bring to the table that AI does not. To cultivate their creative analysis and critical thinking, students need to understand and practice what that looks like separate to and beyond AI.
- Students are poised to take greater ownership of their learning—but they need guidance on how AI can enhance rather than replace their thinking, and it forms the basis for teaching AI literacy.
2. Mindsets, perceptions, and closing the AI divide
- There are intersecting—and at times conflicting—perspectives on AI, many of which can coexist simultaneously.
- 78% of survey respondents (admins, educators, students) feel positive about the impacts that AI is having on education*.
- 95% of survey respondents think AI is currently being misused in their college, university or institution*.
- 59% of students are concerned that an over-reliance on AI will reduce critical thinking skills*.
Source: Turnitin & Vanson Bourne, 2025
- An AI divide has materialised in terms of students wanting to demonstrate authentic learning and their educator’s ability to measure it across the classroom. The depth of transparency is not sufficient, leaving educators seeking more insight.
- The speed of AI has resulted in some erosion of the student-educator relationship. It’s time to reset and go back to a place of assuming positive intent and fostering trust.
3. Risks and challenges associated with unchecked AI use
- An emerging body of research demonstrates that unstructured use of GenAI is potentially doing cognitive damage to students, short-circuiting the learning process (see MIT preprint).
- GenAI tools often overstep in their guidance and even the most well-meaning students are susceptible, so the task becomes establishing boundaries between valid help and unhealthy overreliance.
4. What’s needed for ethical, informed, and supported AI use
- 86% of survey respondents agree that it is the responsibility of their institution, college or university to educate students on how to use AI ethically—but it’s difficult to teach something that’s not fully understood or visible.
- Turnitin Clarity offers unprecedented insight into the entire student writing process, not just the end product. With robust data points on how students construct work, educators can help students seize the power of AI without hampering their development.
Conclusion: Turning Summit insights into action
The 2025 Turnitin Virtual Customer Summit underscored one clear truth: the future of education is being shaped by how we integrate and guide the use of AI. The more visibility and understanding institutions have, the better equipped they are to ensure the change is positive.
As we look to the year ahead, the focus shifts to meaningful action—both in how Turnitin continues to innovate to meet the needs of institutions, and in how educators bring these insights into their classrooms to inspire students, uphold integrity, and foster trust.
The conversations don’t end here! Keep an eye out for more opportunities to learn, collaborate, and stay at the forefront of responsible AI in education.