Dear Helen,
We do not have a standard cut-off score for Turn-it-in, as we have found that often the % score can be misleading. Instead we approach each individual submission and look at it holistically. For some subjects (anatomy, for example) there
are standard ways of using terminologies and these may increase the similarity score. A good review of the submission shows areas where the student has copied and pasted, or copied but then tried to disguise the fact. But we found in our School that other
than being able to discard clearly negligible scores of c.5%, pretty much everything else needed a cursory look, which could be done quickly. So we no longer just look at the score with a cut-off in mind.
What we did to ensure consistency was to have all large assessments (ie core written assignments for the whole year coort – anything over about 100 scripts) checked by a central team of a small number of people. This was onerous on them,
but did lead to better consistency overall, and you can check a collection of submissions fairly quickly, even for large modules of 300-400.
Also, in our School, we give students the chance to look at turn-it-in scores for formative work, but only after submission. We discussed this extensively, but felt that offering students the chance to submit work and check their Turn-it-in
report would only encourage them to take the approach of copy-and-pasting, and then making minor changes to disguise the fact, rather than promoting actual good academic practice (ie reading the source, making notes, then removing the source and writing original
prose).
As far as I know there is no standard University policy here at Cardiff.
Hope that helps a bit.
Best wishes,
Steve Rutherford
Dr S.M. Rutherford SFHEA
National Teaching Fellow
Deputy Director of Undergraduate Education,
School of Biosciences,
Cardiff University,
Museum Avenue,
Cardiff.
CF10 3AX
02920 870251
From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Helen Heywood
Sent: 20 February 2017 15:55
Subject: Using Turnitin/Electronic submission
Good afternoon,
We have been using Turnitin for the past 3 years and during that time I have been pushing for the following:-
1. Students to be allowed to submit work to Turnitin prior to the actual submission date so that they can receive an originality report, to check their level of plagiarism. They could then seek guidance on how to address this,
thus increasing their understanding of plagiarism.
2. For the University to have a clear policy of what constitutes an 'acceptable level' of originality? Some lecturers are failing students for having a 30% originality score, others a 50%.
Lecturers have been told to use their own academic judgement, but this has left the students somewhat confused by the marking associated with the varying levels.
I was wondering if any of you would be willing to share what happens in your Universities if you are using electronic submission, with regard to student submission, and if you have any policy documentation regarding originality reports.
Kind regards,
Helen Heywood
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