Category Archives: Turnitin

Turnitin

Turnitin are re-branding their product suite (Turnitin, GradeMark and PeerMark) as Feedback Studio. Feedback Studio is more than a re-branding as it also includes a modern, responsive design integrating Turnitin and GradeMark into a single interface — PeerMark is unchanged.

Here is the Turnitin marketing video for the product:

Note that until July 2017 when using Turnitin the current Turnitin/GradeMark interface remains the default with an option to use Feedback Studio:

TurnitinFS

Note the ‘Try the new Feedback Studio’ link which when clicked opens up the new integrated interface (Feedback Studio):

TurnitinFS1

When students view the originality report and feedback they are taken directly to Feedback Studio with an option to view Turnitin Classic.

A working demonstration of Feedback Studio can be accessed here:

http://turnitin.com/assets/en_us/media/feedback-studio-demo/

Feedback Studio will be available from Monday 29th August.

Turnitin: Email non-submitters

Turnitin have recently added a new feature to their product that appears to allow Succeed Module Instructors to email students who have not submitted to a Turnitin assignment. The purpose of this blog posting is to warn you that this new “Email non-submitters” option DOES NOT CURRENTLY WORK. Perhaps even worse, the new functionality does ‘appear’ to work.

When viewing Turnitin Assignment submissions in the Assignment Inbox area, a new option appears to ‘Email non-submitters‘ (circled in the image below):

email-non

When clicked the following form appears:

Email Non-Submitters Form

If a subject and message are added to the form, the ‘Include me‘ option is ticked and ‘Send‘ is clicked then the staff member will get a copy of the message as an email but the students who should also get the message WILL NOT.

Turnitin are working on a fix and hope to have a working feature before semester starts. If a fix cannot be found then the button will be removed.

In working condition such a feature would be particularly useful with anonymous assignments as it would allow a quick and simple way to alert students that they have missed a deadline (although it will not know about students that have been granted extensions).

Some background to this situation: Turnitin have two integrations with Succeed: ‘Basic’ and ‘Direct’. Stirling uses the ‘Basic’ integration and currently this is Turnitin’s favoured route for moving to their forthcoming integration (called ‘Next’, possibly arriving in Summer 2016). ‘Next’ will offer a host of improved features, including a modern interface. The ’email non-submitters’ feature does work with the ‘Direct’ integration. It is clear that Turnitin slipped up with their testing before releasing this feature.

Turnitin Spring Webcast – What’s the OSI (Overall Similarity Index) got to do with it?

The Turnitin Professional Development team have created a pre-recorded session which you can watch at your leisure, the first in a series of three new recordings this Spring. The title of this one is, ‘What’s the OSI (Overall Similarity Index) got to do with it?’ the blurb says, “Join us for an engaging session on best practices and strategies for teaching students how to best use their Originality Reports.”

http://go.turnitin.com/whats-the-OSI-got-to-do-with-it

Turnitin Webcast – Building Effective Peer Review Assignments

Turnitin Webcast – Building Effective Peer Review Assignments

The latest Turnitin Webcast, entitled, “Building Effective Peer Review Assignments” is being held next Thursday (20th November) at 21.00 (GMT). Members of the Turnitin Professional Development Team (Education Manager Kristin Brabec and Education Director Jason Chu) will provide an overview of how to use Turnitin to create effective peer review assignments. To join in with this Webcast visit the following web site:

http://go.turnitin.com/webcast/to-share-or-not-to-share

Again, a shiny ‘Certificate of Participation’ will be provided to attendees of the Webcast.

Turnitin Purchased by Insight Venture Partners

iParadigms, the company which owns and runs the Turnitin plagiarism detection/awareness-raising package, has been purchased by  Insight Venture Partners, “a leading global private equity firm focused on high-growth investments in the technology sector.” For more details on the deal, please visit this update on the Turnitin web site:

Acquisition of iParadigms for $752 Million Led by Insight Venture Partners

Turnitin to end IE8 Support

Turnitin will be ending support for the Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) web browser at the start of July 2014. After that they will no longer test or fix bugs found only in IE8. The Turnitin service will likely continue to work in IE8, but they can no longer guarantee full functionality for the long term. Turnitin recommend that IE8 users update to IE9 or use another supported industry standard browser such as Firefox, Google Chrome or Safari. Further details are on this page on the Turnitin web site.

Teaching Bites II

The next set of teaching bites are detailed below. They will all be in S10.

To sign-up go into Succeed and then to Learning & Development – My Learning, IT & Information Skills, Succeed Training. Also don’t forget to bring along your sandwiches!

These sessions will be available to remote campuses. To register for remote access please email Simon Booth.

2nd April: 12.00-13.00: Discussion Tool, Blogs and Wikis

This session will look at some of the collaboration tools within blackboard, these tools can be used to help build a sense of community in modules, can be used for group working, social interaction and the exchange of ideas.  The session will look at the discussion tool, blogs and wikis and give examples of where these might be used successfully within your succeed module.

9th April: 12.00-13.00: Turnitin

Turnitin offers much more than plagiarism detection. It has tools to facilitate peer marking (see Teaching Bites 23-April) and online marking (‘GradeMark’). This talk will demonstrate how to use GradeMark and discuss the positive and negative features of marking online.

 16th April: 12.00-13.00: Video (Listen Again, Lecture Capture, Screen casting)

This session will look at the tools available to allow you to incorporate video into your teaching at the University. These will include the Listen Again lecture recording service, producing video and audio podcasts, incorporating You Tube material into Succeed, using the ‘video everywhere’ tool  in Succeed, and recording and using material from TV and films.

23rd April: 12.00-13.00: Peer Marking

This session will  evaluate the use of an on-line peer/self-review tool (‘PeerMark’) available through the Turnitin.  Peermark distributes students’ work automatically,  allows the tutor to set feedback questions and word limits, and enables students to review each other’s work anonymously. Through  consideration of a recent case study, the preparation required for peer review, and the benefits and challenges will be reviewed. The session will demonstrate how to get started and some tips on its use.

 30th April: 12.00-13.00: Mind Genius – cancelled

This session will look at the software ‘Mind Genius. Mind Genius is mind mapping software that helps you capture, visualize and manage your ideas and information.  Mind Genius can be a useful tool for:

  •  Preparing  and planning essays and reports
  • Preparing presentations
  • Managing tasks
  • Brainstorm for innovation and generating new ideas
  • Plan strategies, projects, events, tasks & workload
  • Rapidly gather project requirements, risks, constraints & dependencies
  • Capturing the conversation and actions during meetings

 7th May: EDUFair (The University of Stirling’s annual learning and teaching conference)

14th May: 12.00-13.00: Resource lists – smarter working with your reading list!

The Aspire resource lists are dynamic so they tell the students where in the library a book is located.  Worried that the students are not reading key papers? Check the stats using the Aspire Dashboard feature.

21st May: 12.00-13.00: Copyright

Fundamentals of copyright for teaching and learning. In this teaching bites session we’ll help you to comply with UK copyright and point you towards the things the library can do to help.

How much do we use Turnitin?

Here are the University of Stirling statistics for use of Turnitin services (Turnitin, PeerMark and GradeMark) in the period February 2013 through to February 2014:

  • Total student submissions to Turnitin: 48,816
  • Submissions marked using PeerMark: 674
  • Submissions marked using GradeMark: 1,126

The University’s current Turnitin licence allows us to have up to 10% of our submissions graded using GradeMark with no extra cost to the university. At the current usage levels we could grade another three and a half thousand submissions via GradeMark without breaching our licence. So if you are interested in getting to grips with using GradeMark, watch Turnitin’s GradeMark demo video:

http://vimeo.com/30517572

…and then get in touch with your eLD representative to get started:

http://www.stir.ac.uk/is/staff/about/teams/aldt/#eld