Tag Archives: Plagiarism

Turnitin: Email non-submitters

Plagiarism, Turnitin,

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?

Copyright, Plagiarism, Turnitin, ,

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

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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

Plagiarism, Turnitin, ,

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

Plagiarism, Turnitin,

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.

How much do we use Turnitin?

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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

New Guidance on Using Images

Copyright, Plagiarism, Succeed, ,

The Intellectual Property Office, the official government body responsible for Intellectual Property (IP) rights in the United Kingdom, has just updated its Copyright Notice regarding digital images, photographs and the internet. This excellent new guidance document helps users to understand copyright basics regarding images. It covers topics such as who owns the copyright for an image, when you require permission to use an image and the issues you need to be aware of if you wish to use images in your teaching which you may have found on the internet, taken on your camera phone or been sent by a friend or colleague. It’s an invaluable resource to make sure you stay on the right side of the law when using images.

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/c-notice-201401.pdf

eLearning Forum – Listen Again

e-Learning Forum, Electronic Marking, Listen Again, Plagiarism, Succeed, , , ,

Some presentations from the eLearning Forum on 23rd January 2014 are now available on the following Listen Again page:

http://listenagain.stir.ac.uk/media/2013/elearningforum/listenagain.php

This link and all the PDF versions of the presentations from the day are now also available in the ‘Learning and Development – My Learning’ course area in Succeed. You can find them all in the following folder:

> Course Content > IT & Information Skills > eLearning Forum > eLearning Forum Event – 23rd January 2014

eLearning Forum Presentations, Plagiarism Quiz and Turnitin Question

e-Learning Forum, Electronic Marking, Listen Again, Plagiarism, Succeed, Turnitin, , , , ,

This blog posting follows up from the eLearning Forum on Thursday, 23rd January 2014.

Presentations

These are now available to view in PDF format:

Plagiarism Quiz

The Plagiarism Quiz which Sarah Grayston has created is now available to view in the ‘My Learning’ course space in Succeed, to which all staff have access. You will find it in the ‘Assessments’ area of this course. If anyone would like a copy of this assessment added to their own module in Succeed then please contact Sarah sarah.grayston@stir.ac.uk to arrange this.

Turnitin Question

To clarify after the discussion relating to Turnitin: if the settings of a Turnitin Assignment are such that a student paper is not submitted to the repository, then Turnitin will still compare the submitted paper against student papers, web and electronic journal items in its database and generate an Originality Report. The only difference will be that Turnitin will not compare papers submitted under this assignment with other papers submitted to this same assignment. Therefore, plagiarism taking place within the module (one student copying off another) would not be spotted as the papers would not be in the repository.

Listen Again

Where staff have agreed to share their talks, we are working on making the presentations from the session available on the Listen Again service. We hope to have these ready for early next week and will do a further blog posting when they are available.

Plagiarism Quiz

Succeed, Turnitin, ,

A plagiarism quiz has been developed with the Stirling Management School. This includes seven questions covering topics presented in The Little Book of Plagiarism and The Little Book of Academic Misconduct. Students are allowed to view the books whilst answering the questions and the quiz can be set to allow multiple attempts with no time limit. If a student answers incorrectly they are given feedback that directs them to where in the little book they will find the answer.

The trial in the Stirling Management School involved advising students that they would not be able to submit their assignment in Turnitin unless they achieved at least 80% in the quiz. This served two purposes, ensuring students were aware of the guidelines regarding plagiarism and academic misconduct and also keeping a record of students who had been informed about these topics.

Student representative:

“I think it was a good idea, far better than just a list of the university’s policy on plagiarism with a tick box to accept the conditions.

It actually got students thinking about what plagiarism really is. There were a few students that were stressing out about it, but again, these were the people who left it till 10 minutes before the deadline to submit it.

Some of the questions were a bit vague, but then again it’s an important issue that students need to be aware of.”

The questions are now being reviewed to make them a little clearer and improve the feedback given for each response.

If you are interested in :

  • Using the quiz
  • Adapting the quiz for your own needs
  • Creating something similar
  • Releasing content to students based on test results

…then speak to your e-learning representative: http://www.stir.ac.uk/is/staff/about/teams/aldt.