Turnitin and e-assessment - a quick guide

Image courtesy of University of Sheffield Asset Bank

I initially produced this Turnitin guide for part of our regular Learning Technologists' Team meeting last week. However, I think that it's worth sharing this information (essentially a quick reference guide) with the wider world... hope you find it useful!


Quick Facts...

• First released in 2002
• 60% of Institutions use it through a VLE*
• In 2012 14% of matching text sources found by Turnitin had come from social media sites*
• In 2010 The number one site for matching text sources found by Turnitin was...Wikipedia*
• Turnitin is not a plagiarism detector. An academic is. (It is a text matching service)
• Turnitin does not support second marking at present
• Turnitin does support anonymous marking
  
  

The three e’s

e-submission

What does this mean?
It means students submit their work online into Turnitin which then means:

• Students do not need to print out copies of their assignment,they are all held in the “Paper Repository”, which is Turnitin's huge database of student submissions

• The student's work is given added plagiarism protection by being held in this resource as all future submissions are checked against the current Paper Repository.
  
  

e-marking

What does this mean?
This means marking student submissions on-line through the Turnitin interface. Marking online is completed using a particular function in Turnitin called “GradeMark”. GradeMark enables the marker to use the following:

• Quickmark sets: A set of commonly used marking terms as well as creation of custom terms
• Feedback area: Allows the instructor to provide free text and more in-depth feedback as required
• Score: Instructors can return a mark on the piece of work submitted
• Rubrics: Interactive grading forms or criteria can be assigned to any assessments, these can also be made available to students
• Anonymous marking: Parameters of an assessment can be set to prevent markers from seeing student names when marking
  
  

e-feedback

What does this mean? 
The ability to give feedback to students on a piece of work online. In this case “GradeMark” is again used as a mechanism to give student feedback. This then means that:

• Feedback is more legible
• Feedback is more personal: GradeMark has an audio feedback feature
• Create feedback is easy: If using audio you just need a mic and you can record up to 3 minutes of audio.
• Students know when feedback is given - via notification on their assignment inbox
  
  

Peer review

What does this mean?
Peer Review is the evaluation of students work by other students. This is a formative exercise designed to improve the students critical thinking, reflection and self reflective skills. In Turnitin a peer review exercise can be undertaken using “PeerMark” as the method of reviewing and marking the exercise. This means that:

• The administrative side of the peer marking process is easy to set up and control
• Staff can control the number of papers to be reviewed by students and the type of criteria to be used by students when reviewing

• Staff can also comment on and grade the peer reviews
• Peer review information is clear and easy to read
  
  

Designing plagiarism out

What does this mean?
It means designing assessment in such a way that it minimises any perceived need for students to resort to unfair means to complete an assessment. Turnitin’s “Originality check” functionality can be used in a formative way to assist in designing out plagiarism. For example:

• Students can practice submission to see what their Originality Score might be. The Originality report will highlight any matching sources found.
• Interrogation of Originality Reports can highlight areas of unintentional plagiarism: Paraphrasing, summarising, incorrect referencing/citation

  
  

James

*Rowell, Gill (June 2012),“What I did with Turnitin on my holidays. Ten years of policy and practice in Turnitin use in UK Institutions”, presentation given to the ASKe Plagiarism conference 14 June 2012