E-Learning Environments team blog

Turnitin is a text-matching service used to detect possible instances of plagiarism in written work. Many academics and students use the system at UCL via Moodle for submitting and grading assignments. Last week TurnitinUK, the company responsible for the Turnitin system outside of North America held a user group where they gave an update of their road map, and some exciting new features.
Although they did include dates, these are subject to change and so I won’t mention them in this blog post, instead I’ll simply include the quarter and year they should be released (although it is still important to note that this information comes from TurnitinUK and UCL has no control over whether they adhere to schedule).
New features fro 2013

The first announcement for spring 2013 is the release of a Turnitin iPad app which will be available for free from the App Store. This will facilitate offline marking of assignments, on the iPad device. Unfortunately there are no plans for offline marking on any other devices including Android, PCs and laptops. The Turnitin users, including UCL, have told TurnitinUK that offline marking would be highly value on other platforms.
Summer 2013 will see the release of a number of new features, this will hopefully mean that we can have them ready for the next academic year, however this depends on Turnitin releasing the updates on time so that we can test everything before installing it for tutors and students to use. Some of the features scheduled for summer 2013 release are PeerMark, which can be accessed through the document viewer like the originality report and GradeMark. It allows students to mark each other’s work as part of either formative or summative peer assessment.  Turnitin has also said it should be possible to bulk download anonymous assignments from summer 2013 as part of an upgrade. Another advertised new feature is the ability to see who hasn’t submitted and email them, although it was unclear how this will work with anonymous assignments.
Towards the end of 2013, or possibly the start of 2014 Turnitin have announced they will release a Multiple Grader feature, which would allow markers to create ‘review layers’ on assignments. This should mean that graders can choose whether to mark on top of an existing review layer, or to start a new layer, which would permit double blind marking. However as this upgrade is not scheduled until the end of 2013 it may not be possible to add it to the system until after Christmas, but possibly not until Easter.
Coming in 2014

There are also new features planned for 2014 already, again we will monitor their progress and review them on our own systems once they are released. One of the upgrades scheduled for next year is being referred to as ‘Formative’ ,  a feature that supports the formative use of Turnitin including remembering drafts and allowing drafts to be easily compared against one another or a final submission.
If you have any questions about any of the planned updates, or anything else relating to Turnitin or GradeMark please contact ele@ucl.ac.uk.

If you are interested in polling your students, but don’t have access to Electronic Voting Handsets (either installed in a lecture theatre or lent to students) you could use PollEverywhere instead.

PollEverywhere is an online tool that lets you set up polls that students can answer, either by sending a text message or using the Internet on their laptop or smart-device. It is free for  for up to 40 responses per poll, so for classes larger than this the free option may not be suitable. There are Higher Education plans available for those who need it.  Try it out here: www.polleverywhere.com

Online-only tools (with no text messaging capabilities) exist, but the ones I have looked at have several issues that would prevent me from using them myself or suggesting them to others.

[edit: list of systems to avoid removed]

If you are a UCL staff member you can contact E-Learning Environments (ELE) for further information about electronic voting.

The JISC RSC ME webinar entitled In Brief: Video and audio for assessment shared some interesting case studies, and technologies that might be useful when using audio and video to enhance learning. Although the title specified assessment, the webinar also covered the use of audio and video for formative learning and feedback.

Review, reflect and assess

Some particular interesting examples include using karaoke to encourage reflection or retention of knowledge by setting students the task of changing the lyrics of a song to reflect a topic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfDmOg4iayE&list=UUOJyXtr4HCykrNUbCQHUunA

Also the use of dance to get the blood flowing around students bodies (and to their brains0 at the start of a lesson, to replicate concepts and processes, such as those used in bio-mechanics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ8RXjCYQEA&list=UUOJyXtr4HCykrNUbCQHUunA

This written case study demonstrates how audio can be used to aid the learner in recalling experiences or knowledge. http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/node/25819

As well as reviewing and reflecting prior to assessment this JISC case study shows how podcasts can be used for assessment, in this case a 10 minute podcast relating to a research essay. http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/page/42428200/Student%20Produced%20Podcasts%20-%20Assessing%20the%20Pedagogy%20of%20Podcasting

Feedback

There were also some more traditional examples, such as the use of podcasts for quicker feedback. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=add3WyPb27Y&list=UUOJyXtr4HCykrNUbCQHUunA&index=34

A range of reports on feedback using audio and video can be found on the Teacher Training Videos website. http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/feedback.html

Tools

Voki – a free service that allows students to create speaking avatars. Which can encourage students who would not record themselves on camera to participate. http://www.voki.com/

Xtranormal – a free service that turns text into 3D animated movies. http://www.xtranormal.com/

Coach’s eye – is available as an Android and Apple app for mobile devices. It allows video analysis (including annotations and narration) as well as slow-motion review. http://www.coachseye.com/

Soundcloud – a free audio sharing site, basically put it is the audio equivalent of YouTube. https://soundcloud.com/

Have you ever wondered how Santa manages to grade the naughty and nice list so fast? Well the answer is technology! Just like many academic staff he uses Grademark, and very efficiently at that.

The text accompanying the video, posted by Turnitin on the video sharing site Vimeo, reads:

‘Every December, millions of children around the world write letters to Santa, explaining how they’ve been good boys and girls and letting him know what they want to see under their trees come December 25th.

Over the years, the number of kids sending him letters skyrocket. His mailbox was flooded and he found himself buried in letters, unable to respond to all of them.

One day, a little elf told Santa about Turnitin—how he could use it to accept submissions from the children, check the letters for originality, give immediate feedback, and even use rubrics to help determine if they’ve been naughty or nice. So he gave it a shot.

Share this video with your colleagues, especially the ones that look like they’ve been in an avalanche of essays.’

Watch the video and see how Santa does it.

How Santa grades millions of Christmas letters

The Assessment Design Tips seminar preceding the eAssessment Scotland Conference in 2011 was a hands-on workshop that revealed these valuable assessment design tips.

Assessment design: where to start?

1. Start by writing the assessment’s overall learning objectives and let the student know what these are.
2. For each question determine what it is you want students to demonstrate knowing.
3. When writing distractors (wrong answers) think back to common misconceptions your students have demonstrated in the past and see if you can capture these in the incorrect answers. You can then point them in the right direction in the feedback (if it’s a formative assessment).
4. Once you have finished writing, give the questions to someone who doesn’t know the topic and see if they can guess the correct answers. If they can you have probably made one of the mistakes mentioned below.

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As I’m unable to make my usual journey to eAssessment Scotland this year I’m very happy to learn that for the first time they will be delivering an online conference in the weeks surrounding the event. I would strongly encourage anyone interested in learning more about eAssessment to sign up to at least some of the online sessions. They run for between 30 minutes and an hour and there’s 21 to choose from between Thursday 23 August and Thursday 6 September 2012.

Otherwise if you can make the day conference on Friday 31 August 2012, I always find this a very informative and valuable event.

Useful Links:

• eAssessment Online Programme
• eAssessment Day Conference Programme
• Register for either online or day conferences here