Learn more about Turnitin2:

• Comprehensive web page about Turnitin2
• Walk-through Video (8 min)
• Live Walk-through Schedule (pdf)
• Quickstart Guides for Instructors, Administrators, and Students

As part of the Turnitin2 changes that will be launched on September 4th, 2010, we included many feature changes that were requested by users through our Feedback Forum. These requests included:

A way to see the formatted paper in the Originality Report
This is one of the key changes to the Originality Report for Turnitin2, all of the formatting from the student’s paper will be preserved in the new report.

A way to see the matches from the Originality Report in GradeMark
This gets to the heart of the changes made in Turnitin2. The user can now see the services layered on top of one another. This allows users to see the Originality Report highlights while marking the paper in GradeMark.

An easy way to see other potential sources for the matches in the Originality Report
In the new Originality Report in Turnitin2, users will have the ability to select to “view additional sources” when they hover on a source in the Primary Source list (the list of sources in the default view of the report). This option will show all of the sources from the Turnitin databases that were found to match the highlighted section of text.

The ability to create rubrics outside of GradeMark
The rubric and QuickMark managers for Turnitin2 will be available through the “libraries” tab in instructors’ Turnitin accounts. Now instructors won’t have to wait until a paper is submitted to create rubrics or QuickMark comments.

The ability to add marks from the standard GradeMark QuickMark sets to the instructor’s own set of marks
In the new QuickMark manager, users will be able to add marks from the standard set of marks and from a shared mark set to their own sets. They will also be able to add their own custom marks to those standard and shared sets.

The ability to mark papers that are in landscape layout
The new document processing system behind Turnitin2 will handle a wide variety of page layouts and sizes. This includes landscape, letter, A4, legal and many others.

Clarification that the submission preview screen is text only so students don’t worry that their formatting was lost.
As part of the Turnitin2 submission process, students will see a notice on the submission preview and approval page telling them that the text is unformatted, and they will receive a copy of the fully formatted first page of their submission as part of their digital receipt.

Separate rubric score and paper grade
Rubrics have been changed to allow instructors to choose whether to apply the rubric score as the grade for the paper.

Show what filters the student has used on the Originality Report print out
The print view of the new Originality Reports will include notations on the settings for the Originality Report filters (quote exclusion, bibliographic exclusion, and match percentage/word count exclusions) at the time of the printing.

Current instructors and administrators can access the Turnitin Feedback Forum by clicking the ‘Feedback Forum‘ link in the top-right navigation bar when logged into Turnitin (next to the ‘Help’ and ‘Logout’ links). This is a great way to submit your ideas on what features the Turnitin team should add or consider, or to vote on other users’ ideas.

*special thanks to Tabitha, Turnitin’s Product Specialist, for moderating the Turnitin Feedback Forums and making sure your voice is heard.

Cath Ellis, an English literature instructor, blogger, and e-learning enthusiast, recently wrote on her blog about how merely checking for potential plagiarism is such a minor part of her use. She expounds on her use of GradeMark and the benefits of being quicker, better, easier, and retrievable. Her students prefer their papers being reviewed in GradeMark because of the confidentiality, accessibility, and convenience that Turnitin provides.

She goes further in explaining the analytical aspects of GradeMark including the rubrics and reporting that allow her to better target particular skills that need further development.

Read more of Cath Ellis’s thoughts on using Turnitin at her blog:
http://cathellis13.blogspot.com/2010/07/beyond-plagiarism-checking-exploiting.html

In it, they first look into two fundamental strategies on approaching plagiarism: proactively educate students on plagiarism, proper citation, and acceptable collaboration; and/or reactively catching and punishing instances of plagiarism. Both of these traditional approaches puts the onus of responsibility on the student. When an accusation of plagiarism occurs, the blame rests with the student rather than with the faculty or the institution.

Both methodologies work better together, but Hrasky and Kronenberg’s research is in search of identifying more holistic and proactive counter-plagiarism strategies that address aspects of curriculum design as a way to minimize plagiarism and share the responsibility for countering plagiarism across students, individual faculty, and the institution.

Download and read the entire paper or read the abstract

Hrasky, S. and Kronenberg, D. (2010). Curriculum redesign as a faculty-centred approach to plagiarism reduction. University of Tasmania. Retrieved from http://www.plagiarismadvice.org/conference/previous-plagiarism-conferences/4th-plagiarism-conference-2010.

What tricks do students try?

One trick is to replace a common character like “e” throughout the text of their paper with a foreign language character that looks like an “e” but is actually different (for example, a Cyrillic “e”). This method does not work because our algorithms replace such characters with the corresponding standard English character. The special character will still appear in the Originality Report; however, the word it is in will have been matched against words containing every character that looks like that character. This allows us to show you matches to words with both the special character and the standard character.

Another trick (touted by a video on the web) is to use Word Macros to disguise copied text. This method also does not work since Turnitin’s algorithms strip macros from Microsoft Word Documents for Word 2003 and below. When we strip a macro from a Word file, whatever character the student originally had in the file will appear. For instance, one of the videos recommends starting with a “~e” and replacing it with a standard “e” using macros. When we strip the macros the “~e” will appear in the paper. This means the “~e” will appear in the Originality Report, GradeMark, and the file available for you to download from the service. For Microsoft Word 2007, we don’t accept macros-enabled (.docm) files (we do accept the standard .docx files).

Another method consists of replacing all the spaces in a paper with invisible (white) text. This also does not work since Turnitin will not accept papers that appear to have this condition based on abnormal word lengths. In addition, the text-only Originality Report displays all text regardless of the color used by the student.

A fourth possible trick is to put quotation marks around the entire document. This does not work because Turnitin does not automatically exclude quoted material. Only the instructor can change the default setting to exclude quoted material from Originality Reports. The Originality Report would also show the quotation marks at the beginning and end of a paper in the same size text as the rest of the paper. If the instructor chooses to exclude quoted material, Turnitin displays a warning when a large percentage of a paper appears within quotation marks.

The Turnitin algorithms are updated on an on-going basis to make the Originality Reports more accurate and informative. As an instructor, your best defense is to ALWAYS review your students’ Originality Reports – even for Similarity Indexes shown as zero.  All of the “tricks” discussed here rely heavily on the idea that the instructor will not look at the Originality Report. All attempts to game the system become pretty obvious when the instructor examines the Originality Report. So make a quick scan of each Originality Report part of your standard practice when evaluating papers.

“Students generally understand what constitutes cheating, but they do it anyway,” said Kenneth Kiewra, professor of educational psychology at UNL and one of the authors of the study. “They cheat on tests, homework assignments and when writing reports. In some cases, though, students simply don’t grasp that some dishonest acts are cheating.”

Key findings of the study show:

• 89 percent said glancing at someone else’s answers during a test was cheating, but 87 percent said they had done that at least once.
• Sixty-two percent said doing individual take-home tests with a partner was cheating, but 51 percent said they’d done so.
• 23 percent said doing individual homework with a partner was dishonest, but 91 percent had done so.

The results suggest that out-of-class misdeeds are viewed less harshly than in-class cheating, Kiewra said—a dynamic that is likely caused by teacher monitoring in class, and, therefore, a greater risk of getting caught. Read the press release here.

WHAT’S THE POINT?

The presence of Turnitin Originality Checking is a front line deterrent from cheating for many students. It reinforces the instructor’s and institution’s position on academic integrity, and at the very least, makes them try a little harder.

References:

Kiewra, Kenneth. (May 11, 2010). Most High Schoolers Cheat — But Don’t Always See It As Cheating. Retrieved May 12, 2010, from http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-05/uon-mhs051110.php .

Turnitin Works to Reduce Unoriginal Content and Plagiarism

Research results reveal that when secondary schools and higher education institutions use Turnitin® consistently and over a period of years, students become better writers and researchers—they create work with more original content and learn appropriate ways to use and cite source material. With continued use of Turnitin, educators can reinforce appropriate ways to use information year after year, across all disciplines.

Today’s educators are struggling to promote academic integrity at all levels as they develop tomorrow’s writers and researchers. Independent research studies reveal that student cheating, fueled by heated competition and pressure, is pervasive. Turnitin helps motivate students to produce more original, properly cited work—giving teachers a powerful opportunity to teach about plagiarism. Download our effectiveness whitepaper.

Turnitin User Event – Denver, Colorado

The Turnitin User Event will bring together users at a variety of experience levels and will provide an opportunity to learn and connect with each other as well as the Turnitin team. This free 2-hour meeting will feature:

• panel discussions on best practices.
• brief presentations by “power users” on user-chosen topics.
• a sneak preview of our next-generation version of Turnitin.

This free event is scheduled for Sunday, June 27, 2010 (3-5 PM) in Denver, Colorado—the opening day of the ISTE Conference (formerly called NECC). If you are planning on attending ISTE or will be in the area, we want to hear from you! Please click here to fill out an interest form.

NewsBits

Singaporean Universities Choose Turnitin

Turnitin has been adopted by all four universities in Singapore. Turnitin is used across the universities’ curricula and is available to tens of thousands of educators and students at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore Management University (SMU) and SIM University (UniSIM). Read more…

Identifying Potential Plagiarism In Translated Documents

iParadigms announced that it has licensed Language Weaver’s automated translation technology, enabling Turnitin to identify plagiarized content that has been translated from English into other languages. This capability will be incorporated into Turnitin by the end of 2010. Read more…

Scheduled Downtime

All Turnitin services and related websites may be unavailable for use during scheduled maintenance times. Times for these scheduled maintenance windows are the first and third Saturdays of each month, 7:00 AM to 11:00 AM Pacific time.

Events

Fourth International Plagiarism Conference

June 21 – 23, 2010
Northumbria University,
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
iParadigms is a proud sponsor of this event that brings together the international educational community to share their experiences, expertise, and advice in creating a culture of honesty.
http://www.plagiarismadvice.org/conference

Turnitin User Event @ ISTE

June 27, 2010 @ 3:00pm (MDT)
Hyatt Regency Denver
Denver, Colorado
The Turnitin User Event will bring together users of all experience levels and provide them with an opportunity to learn and connect with each other as well as the Turnitin team.
http://turnitinusereventdenver.eventbrite.com/

ISTE 2010

June 27-30, 2010
Denver, Colorado
Visit the Turnitin booth (#2066) at ISTE 2010 to get a first look at what’s coming for Turnitin. ISTE 2010 (formerly NECC) is the premiere event for education technology professionals worldwide.
http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/2010/

View the original Turnitin Newsletter for May 2010

Instructors and students are most familiar with the Turnitin Originality Checking part of the service. The originality reports provide an opportunity for instructors to connect with students to show them proper citation, to identify motivations for improper citation, and to address academic integrity. In other words, it gives instructors a teaching moment.

The PeerMark peer review service allows students to evaluate and learn from one another’s work. PeerMark provides an opportunity for students to develop critical thinking and writing skills through collaboration.

The GradeMark paperless grading service empowers instructors to give students meaningful and legible feedback, not confined to red ink scrawled in the margins of a paper. By providing richer feedback, students can better apply that feedback to their writing.

With Turnitin, there are new opportunities to engage students, better ways to involve them in the writing process, better ways to help them internalize what they are taught. Learn more about engaging students through our WriteCycle Academy series of webinars. Sign up for a live webinar or download previously recorded sessions at:
http://turnitin.com/static/writecycle_academy.html

How do you engage your students with Turnitin? Share your story in the comments section.

Don’t have PeerMark or GradeMark activated yet? Talk to your Turnitin account administrator and let them know you want it!

“College faculty have embraced social media and a majority have integrated some form of these tools into their teaching,” said Jeff Seaman, Ph.D., co-director of the Babson Survey Research Group. “While some faculty remain skeptical, the overall opinion is quite positive, with faculty reporting that social media has value for teaching by over a four to one margin.”

You may be saying, “but I’m too old for this social media stuff.” Not true! There were only small differences in usage based on age, stage in career, gender, tenure status, or device ownership.

We’ve recently jumped into the social media scene ourselves. We launched a few Twitter accounts (@turnitin and @WriteCycle for instructors and administrators, and @WriteCheck for students) where we share relevant information related to Turnitin, PeerMark, GradeMark, and hot topics on education. We’re also developing an engaging user community, so stay tuned for updates.

References:
Chmura, M. (May 4, 2010). Sociable Professors. Retrieved May 5, 2010, from http://www3.babson.edu/Newsroom/Releases/socialmediafaculty.cfm.
Levy, J., Seaman, J., Tinti-Kane, H. (n.d.). Social Media in Higher Education: The Survey. Retrieved May, 5, 2010, from http://www.slideshare.net/PearsonLearningSolutions/pearson-socialmediasurvey2010.

For the first time, users will enjoy a solution with full integration of our three essential instructional support tools: OriginalityCheck plagiarism prevention, PeerMark peer reviewing and GradeMark paperless grading. This integration is a major step in providing a productivity-enhancing “all-in-one” perspective of students’ work.

With Turnitin2, you will:

• Work with a single, “all-in-one” view of a student’s paper in its original format, including styled text, graphics and photos.
• Save time and increase productivity with improved tools and a unified user interface.
• View feedback from all sources in one comprehensive, multi-layered view.
• Maintain academic integrity and engage students in their development as learners.

Current Turnitin and WriteCycle customers in English and Spanish will automatically experience the Turnitin2 improvements when they log in. Additional versions in our ten other supported languages are in development and will be announced as the dates become available.

Download the Turnitin2 Flyer for more details