Tag Archives: Turnitin

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.

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

Turnitin Now Accepts More File Types

The plagiarism detection/awareness-raising service Turnitin will now accept more file types as student submissions. As well as the previously-available, text-based submission types (Word documents, PDF files, text files), Turnitin will now accept PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, images, HTML code, even audio and video.

Whist Turnitin will not be able to run a text-for-text plagiarism check on, say, a submitted audio file, it will store that file associated with that student, and allow staff to make use of the GradeMark or PeerMark features in Turnitin to assess the submission.

More details on the new file types that can be accepted, plus some examples of how Turnitin and GradeMark can be used to assess submissions are available on this ‘Grade Anything’ page on the Turnitin web site:

http://www.turnitin.com/en_us/features/grade-anything

If you want to find out more, there’s a live Turnitin web cast you can join at 6pm (GMT) on Thursday, 10th April 2014. You need to sign up to attend, and the sign up form is here:

http://pages.turnitin.com/WC_140410_register.html

eLearning Forum Presentations, Plagiarism Quiz and Turnitin Question

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.

Turnitin – insightful perspectives on education

Each webcast is a half-hour and offers a fresh take on hot topics from experts in and around education.

January 16
The Future of Wikipedia in Education
Jake Orlowitz, Editor at Wikipedia

This webcast will explore how Wikipedia can be responsibly integrated into university courses for thinking about research, digital literacy, and critical thinking about the reliability of information.

January 30
How Instructors Respond to Plagiarism: Survey Findings
Jason Chu, Education Director at Turnitin

How do instructors respond when they encounter plagiarism and how do these responses change if plagiarism continues?

February 5
Responding to Student Plagiarism as an Educational Opportunity
Gerald Nelms, Academic Director for Developmental Writing at Wright State University

Investigating cases of student plagiarism must involve more than simply textual evidence of shared discourse and use or misuse of citation conventions.

February 13
Literacy is Fundamental: Leveraging Critical Reading to Improve Student Writing
Lynn Lampert, California State University Northridge

How has the immediacy, ready access to, and wealth of information online impacted student literacy?

February 27
Ghostbusting: Getting the Ghostwriter Out of Your Class
Dave Tomar, Author of “The Shadow Scholar: How I Made a Living Helping College Kids Cheat.”

How can instructors effectively identify bought papers and guide students away from using these services?