Thanks for this Rob.

I'm not sure your point about the submissions being close together applies fully in this case, as one of the assignments the file I uploaded yesterday was based upon was submitted to Turnitin two weeks ago - surely that's loads of time for the paper to become 'searchable'?

I've used Turnitin before from submit.ac.uk but didn't have this problem so I wonder if it's something to do with Turnitin being integrated into a VLE?

At the moment Turnitin doesn't seem to be detecting collusion between students or self-plagiarism by a single student.  It's as if the assignments simply aren't going into the student database or, if they are, aren't being used as sources when more assignments are uploaded from the same institution.

If I sent you the file I uploaded yesterday, would you be able to upload it to Turnitin to see if it detects the paper in the student repository?  That way we'll know if it only happens to assignments uploaded in a single institution or not. (big ask at a very busy time of year, I know, but it might help bottom this one out).


Best wishes,

Ali
____________________
Ali Press
e-Learning Advisor | Education Enhancement Unit
Room 50 | Queen's Building
University of Exeter | EX4 4QH
t: 01392 263927 | e: [log in to unmask]


-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Bourne [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 09 October 2008 14:28
To: Plagiarism; Press, Alison
Subject: RE: Turnitin not detecting self-plagiarism??

Hi Ali

We experienced a similar problem with one or two of our assignment links (integrated through Blackboard Vista), but this was within the same assignment but differing students i.e. it was not detecting collusion within a cohort. The same principles should apply using the same student and two distinct links however.

At the time we put this down to the submission times being very close and the assumption being that there is a delay between submitting to TII and being 'searchable' in the student paper repositry database. You will probably find that when the assignment due date comes around the percentages in both links will leap up to 100%, due to that fact that TII will refresh all originality reports at this point. Or you could refresh the originality reports manually to see if they update with the expected percentage.

In terms of how you set the link up it all seems fine, and I'm sure you would not have set the later created link to a revision assignment of the first :)

Not sure it that helps in anyway!

All the best
Rob

P.S. We also had one case with an assignment that just did not detect matches to student paper DB in any way. That one was raised with the TII helpdesk but we never really got a clear cause of the problem.

Rob Bourne
Turnitin Administrator
School of Computing & Technology
  _____

UELconnect
University of East London
Romford Road
London E15 4LZ
Tel:  +44 (0)20 8223 6479
Fax: +44 (0)20 8223 2824
http://www.uel.ac.uk/uelconnect

The School of Distance & E-learning and UEL Extra amalgamated on 1st July 2008 to form UELconnect.



-----Original Message-----
From: Plagiarism [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ali Press
Sent: 09 October 2008 13:55
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Turnitin not detecting self-plagiarism??


I'm having the following problem with Turnitin:

We're using Turnitin via the powerlink in WebCT.  In one WebCT course I've set up two Turnitin assignments - both have the following settings:

*submit papers to standard paper repository *search student paper repository *search current and archived internet *search periodicals, journals, & publications

Using a test student account I've uploaded the same file to each of the Turnitin assignments and got exactly the same similarity score - 14%.
Surely Turnitin should have also picked up the similarity between the two uploaded files and not just just between the file and other external sources?

Also, the file was pretty similar to another file I uploaded (using a different test student account) a couple of weeks ago - again Turnitin didn't spot this similarity.

In another WebCT course, I have another Turnitin assignment set up with the same options as above.  I uploaded the file again and once again I got a similarity score of 14% - Turnitin had not noticed the file is identical to the one I had previously uploaded.

Turnitin doesn't appear to not be uploading files to the student paper repository.  It does appear to be checking the student paper repository as the file I uploaded had a 1% match to a student paper uploaded at Leeds Met.

Has anyone else had this problem?
or
Is there something I'm doing wrong?

Best wishes,

Ali

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