On Thursday, 16th September 2021, our Moodle site will be upgraded to version 3.9.10 and the latest version of the Turnitin plugin will be released. Moodle will be in maintenance mode from 1:00am to 2:00am and you won’t be able to access Moodle or Turnitin during this time.
Here is a short summary of the changes and bug fixes you might notice when using the new Turnitin plugin:
Turnitin classes now expiring along with a Moodle course
Turnitin now synchronises dates in Moodle with the Turnitin database. When your Moodle course end date is over a year old, those classes also expire in Turnitin. This will free up the active student count for those classes. Important: Turnitin classes older than one year expire and cannot be edited unless they are re-activated.
Draft submissions will not stick in pending status
A bug had caused some draft submissions to stick in ‘pending’ status and not generate a Similarity Report. This bug has now been fixed and draft submissions will generate Similarity Reports if enabled.
Change in default activity tracking Moodle setting
A bug had prevented users from being able to alter the default activity tracking setting within Moodle when Turnitin was also enabled. This bug has now been fixed, and you can use this feature alongside Turnitin without error.
Submit button no longer visible after the due date
The submit button will no longer be shown to students who have already submitted to the assignment when the due date has passed. The current functionality will remain for users who have not already submitted.
Deleting parts without errors
The option to delete a part will now only show after there is more than one part used. When there is only one part, we’ll no longer show the deletion option to prevent the assignment from potentially breaking.
Creating or accessing Moodle assignments when Turnitin is disabled
If Turnitin is disabled for an assignment and Turnitin is unavailable by having the wrong configuration options or being under maintenance, then an error message would be shown. This bug has been fixed, and Turnitin being unreachable will no longer impact your ability to create or access your content.
Moodle Course name sync
Changes to the Moodle course name will be reflected everywhere in Turnitin. When a Moodle course title is changed, this will now be updated in Turnitin too. This will include the digital receipts students receive when they submit their paper.
Grades removal
When a grade is removed from Turnitin, this removal will also be reflected within Moodle as the submission being ungraded.
Turnitin icon display in Moodle assignment
In Moodle assignment, the Turnitin similarity report now has an updated Turnitin icon.
Many colleagues will already be familiar with the ABC sprint workshops for programme and module (re) design. During the high-energy 90’ workshop, academic teams work together to create a visual ‘storyboard’ showing the type and sequence learning activities required to meet the module’s learning outcomes and also how these will be assessed. Over 1000 UCL colleagues have now participated in ABC workshops since we started in 2015 and report it is particularly useful for new programmes or those moving to an online or more blended format.
The storyboard represents the learner journey and is constructed from pre-printed cards representing six types of learning.
The learning types are derived from the highly respected ‘Conversational Framework’ model of adult learning developed by Prof Diana Laurillard of the Institute of Education, UCL.
Video: Prof Laurillard introduces the Conversational Framework (Only the title is in Italian!)
The ABC cards list ‘conventional’ and digital examples activity associated with each of Prof Laurillard’s learning types, but teams are able and encouraged to add their own activities to the cards. Extensive testing at UCL and elsewhere has showed the creative hands-on, analogue format of the workshop stimulates a wide-ranging discussion. This includes the purpose of the course or programme, teaching methods, alternative technologies and assessment methods and above all the student experience. Even if you are not able to organise a ‘full’ ABC learning design event for your team, the cards themselves can help you identify digital alternatives to current activities.
Image: Example activities from the ABC cards.
Video: Prof Laurillard introduces the six learning types (2′) Note: ‘Inquiry’ is used here instead of ‘Investigation’.
How can the six learning types guide us to consider digital alternatives to ‘conventional’ teaching and learning?
Acquisition
What learners do when they read books and articles, listen to lectures and podcasts, watch demos or videos. In this way learners acquire new concepts, models, vocabulary, models, and methodologies. Acquisition should be reflective as learners align new ideas to their existing knowledge. Conventional methods often include face-to-face presentations, demos and master classes.
Moving acquisition online: reading multimedia, websites, digital documents and resources listening to podcasts, webcasts watching animations, videos. Online quizzes can be used to check learner progress.
Encourages the learner to take an active and exploratory approach to learning, to search for and evaluate a range of new information and ideas. Students are guided to analyse, compare and critique the texts, data, documents and resources within the concepts and ideas being taught.
Moving investigation online: in many disciplines using digital resources and analytical tools are already part of students’ activities.
Enables knowledge to be applied in context. The learner modifies actions according to the task and uses feedback to improve. Feedback may come from self-reflection, peers, the teacher, or from the activity outcomes. Practice often includes significant face-to-face components including labs, field trips, placements, practice-based projects and face-to-face role-play and groupwork.
Moving practice online: The most challenging of the six activity types, some activities are hard to substitute without losing important learning outcomes. Videos of methods, simulations, models, sample data sets, image and video banks, online role-play and case studies may be used to address some of the learning aims. Online quizzes can be used to test application and understanding.
Requires the learner to articulate their ideas and questions, and to challenge and respond to the ideas and questions from the teacher, and/or from their peers. Conventionally this is achieved through face-to-face tutorials, seminars and class discussion.
Moving discussion online: There are a number of good online options, including Moodle discussion forums which can be real-time (synchronous) or run over an extended period (asynchronous). Online forums can be even more productive than conventional tutorials as more students may contribute. For a richer discussion, Blackboard Collaborate can be run as a synchronous session.
Requires students to work together in small groups to achieve a common project goal. Building on investigations and acquisition it is about taking part in the process of knowledge building itself. Learning through collaboration therefore includes elements of discussion, practice, and production.
Moving collaboration online: Some parts of group and project working lend themselves to digital communication to help discussion and planning of project outputs. The practical elements depend on the discipline but in some areas it will be possible to build a joint digital output and complete the task entirely online.
How the teacher motivates the learner to consolidate what they have learned by articulating their current conceptual understanding and reflect how they used it in practice. Production is usually associated with formative and summative assessment and can cover a wide range of items; essays, reports, designs, performances, articles, models etc.
Moving production online: In some disciplines, digital representations are already common such as presentations, videos, slideshows, blogs and e-portfolios.
During the ABC workshop, assessment is usually addressed as a part of the (re) design process. Online formative assessment can be included in the learner experience using many of the tools and approaches listed above, such as Moodle Forum and Moodle Quiz. Online summative assessment is more complex and separate guidance is being prepared.
The Digital Education team is running two new training courses, Hands on with Turnitin Assignment, and Hands on with Moodle Assignment. Each session is practical, from a staff and student perspective you will experience the process of submitting, marking, returning marks, engaging with feedback and managing records. Both courses are applicable to Tutors and Course Administrators new to online marking or needing to refresh their knowledge.
UCL participated in the 2017 Jisc Digital Student Tracker Survey as part of a consortium with the Bloomsbury Learning Environment (BLE) made up of SOAS, Birkbeck, LSHTM and RVC. 74 UK institutions ran the tracker with their students collecting 22,593 student responses, while 10 international universities collected an additional 5,000 student responses
We were the only consortium to participate in the survey and had come together as a result of institutional surveys, such as the National Student Survey, meaning that the time available to run it independently was short (a month) and we therefore felt that our individual sample sizes would be too small. We treated the survey as a pilot and advertised a link to it on each College’s Moodle landing page as well as some promotion via social media and the Student Unions. The survey generated 330 responses, which given our constraints was much more than we expected.
The survey comprises five broad areas: Digital access, digital support and digital learning. Most questions were quantitatively recorded, but there were four open questions, which produced qualitative data. We were also able to choose two additional questions to the survey and we selected e-assessment, since that was a previous shared enhancement project (see www.bloomsbury.ac.uk/assessment) and Moodle, since all members of the consortium use the platform for their Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
Once the survey closed and we had access to the benchmarking report we ran a workshop for representatives from each of the Colleges in July 2017 whereby the results corresponding to the survey’s open questions were analysed in institutional groups, which facilitated interesting discussions over commonalities and potential implications.
Sarah Sherman, the BLE Manager and myself, have been working to produce a report which will examine our collective responses to the survey in comparison with the national survey population with a recommendation that individual Colleges independently analyse their own results in more detail. For confidentiality, each College will be presented with a version of this document, which contains the relevant data for their institution only and not the complete BLE data set. A disadvantage of the consortium approach was that we were not able to benchmark individual Colleges to the survey population as the resources would not allow for this. In the future, the participating Colleges may wish to run the survey individually rather than as part of a collective as it was not possible to conduct deep analysis with this data set.
Although the sample size collected by the Bloomsbury Colleges was small and not statistically viable, there is much we can extract and learn from this exercise. For the most part, our collective responses tended to fall within the margins set by the national survey population, which means we are all at a similar phase in our student’s digital capability and development.
You will have to wait for the full report for more information on the UCL data collected but just to whet the appetite you can see the key findings from Jisc in this 2 page report: Student digital experience tracker at a glance .
Finally, you can see this collection of case studies, which features the Bloomsbury Colleges consortium, here.
Please get in touch with me if you would like to get involved (moira.wright @ ucl.ac.uk)
A few months ago we alerted you to the fact that Turnitin will be moving all users to its new grading interface known as Feedback Studio.
At present, users can toggle between using Turnitin’s old interface – TurnitinClassic and its latest version Feedback Studio. From 1st August 2017, all users will have to use Feedback Studio to view originality reports, grade work and provide feedback.
Though a number of you have already moved to using Feedback Studio as it is the default version available on UCL Moodle, some staff have chosen to revert back to the Classic version. In preparation for the switch off of the ‘Classic’ version, we recommend that all Moodle users have a go at using Feedback Studio.
The 2-minute video below is a brief walkthrough of Turnitin Feedback Studio.
Trial Feedback Studio: Please note that not all functionality is enabled on this demo version. You can however enable feedback studio on assignments that you may currently be in the process of marking by clicking on the ‘Try Turnitin feedback Studio’ link located at the top of an open assignment.
For additional guidance on using Feedback studio see our user guides
Watch this video comparison between Feedback Studio and Turnitin Classic
From summer 2017 Turnitin will be moving all users to their updated viewing and grading tool, Feedback Studio. Most UCL staff and students are already using Feedback Studio so will not see any change, but if you’re still using the ‘Classic’ version of the tool you will no longer have this option from late July 2017. You’ll still find the functionality you’re used to, but with an updated look and feel.
So what does Feedback Studio offer? For a quick tour of the new features of Feedback Studio, and differences with the ‘Classic’ version, you can watch the short video above from Turnitin. (NB. Multiple markers feature will not be enabled initially, and the section shown 4:00mins+ is not relevant to Turnitin through Moodle.)
Beyond being able to view and navigate similarity reports, it also offers staff a variety of ways to mark – including audio comments, rubrics and saved re-usable comments. Most of this functionality has been available to UCL staff for some time, but Turnitin have been working on the design of their interface.
For instance, selection of the wide variety of tools Turnitin offers is now done by using icons set alongside the paper for easier faster marking. You may also be looking for a ‘Save’ button, but Turnitin now saves your comments as you move between papers using the arrows in the top right of the screen.
This new version also aims to be more accessible, with viewing and grading easier on a greater variety of devices using a responsive design, as well as for those using screen readers and keyboards for navigation.
If you want to try out the new version of Feedback studio, without logging in to Moodle and setting up an assignment, you can explore an interactive demo from Turnitin.
Universities across the UK will soon be making the change as well as UCL, and we had the opportunity to hear from colleagues at the University of Kent, in partnership with Turnitin, at the recent MoodleMoot.ie conference earlier this April. They spoke of their success in moving to online marking in conjunction with the move to the new Feedback Studio, with over 70% overall of all marks now returned online. Key elements in their success were offering guidance for both staff and students (ours can be found here for staff and students), and offering repeated reminders of the change throughout the summer, so that all staff had a chance to be made aware.
If you have any concerns or questions about this change, please consult the guidance, and email digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk with any issues.
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