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"Unrepentant humanists" may actually be the BEST weathervanes of the trends in academic zeitgeist, Alex ... The whole thread is interesting (and somewhat depressing) in highlighting the way that prioritising the TII similarity score has created something of a false target for students (and those institutions who are using it as a blunt instrument of policy). Clearly it can be a useful TOOL for those marking for quickly flagging up possible areas of concern, but there are too many anomalies to make it a simple or reliably robust measure. Focus on the score as a visible and important metric in the submission process only increases student anxiety about it. Creating this awareness of it as something that can be a "problem" for students can serve to deflect attention away from them actually concentrating on producing appropriately high quality pieces of work that use citation and referencing properly. Obviously students who are setting out to plagiarise and beat the system will deploy various strategies to try and do so, and letting them submit multiple versions and tweak them can only encourage this. One might also (entirely speculatively, of course !) conceive that TII could be carelessly deployed by less than rigorous or time-pressed academics who may feel that being led by similarity scores saves time and effort by contrast with having to diligently appraise the work they are marking. From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alexander Cuthbert Sent: 21 February 2017 16:32 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Using Turnitin/Electronic submission I've never heard that one before! Reminds of a similar urban myth doing the rounds a few years back about a PhD student who got rumbled after they had tried to submit a thesis several thousand words over the limit by using white text hyphen's to return a false word count in Word. Re. TurnitIn, this is a very enlightening thread and it has thrown up some really useful resources. For my part, I remain uneasy about students developing academic writing and editing skills in response to feedback generated by a database, attempting to achieve an arbitrary score, rather than editing their work to present a coherent communication of their understanding. I would prefer students were encouraged to write 'in the open' far more, during tutorial sessions, for peer-reviewing discussions, and writing collaboratively, but I fully accept that well-marketed digital plagiarism deterrents are very enticing and that unrepentant humanists, like myself, may not be the best weathervanes of the academic zeitgeist in any case. BW Alex Dr Alex Cuthbert PGCAP, FHEA, ADG Study Skills Adviser Study Skills Service, LT609 6th floor, Livingstone Tower, 26 Richmond Street, Glasgow G1 1XH 0141 548 4062/4064 [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> My usual office days are Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays (until 2pm) www.strath.ac.uk/studyskills/<http://www.strath.ac.uk/studyskills/> http://classes2016-2017.myplace.strath.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=19550 [sigpic] The University of Strathclyde is registered as a charitable body in Scotland, number SC015263. From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stapleford, Katharine Sent: 21 February 2017 15:12 To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Using Turnitin/Electronic submission This is probably an urban myth, but we were perplexed by a 0% score once and were told that if a student puts the word 'bibliography' really small and in white at the top of their work, it makes Turnitin disregard the whole piece (depending on the settings of course)! From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sarah Honeychurch Sent: 21 February 2017 15:08 To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Using Turnitin/Electronic submission I frequently see 0% as a score. It does disconcert some students and staff, but I just remind them that Turnitin (or Urkund, which we use) does not check *everything* that is on the internet. Best, Sarah Good Practice Adviser Learning Enhancement and Academic Development Service (LEADS) The University of Glasgow, charity number SC004401 +44 (0)141 330 3026 @NomadWarMachine From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rachel Forsyth Sent: 21 February 2017 14:56 To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Using Turnitin/Electronic submission I have actually been made aware of a 0% match. This similarity score appeared to have been achieved by liberal substitution of synonyms. As this made the assignment incomprehensible, we settled for the penalty of a very low mark, since proving academic dishonesty seemed impossible. Rachel R Forsyth BSc MBA PhD SFHEA Associate Head Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching 1st Floor, All Saints Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester M15 6BG [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> +44 (0) 161 247 1128 rachel.forsyth (Skype) @rmforsyth (Twitter) http://www.celt.mmu.ac.uk/ From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kim Shahabudin Sent: 21 February 2017 14:19 To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Using Turnitin/Electronic submission Echoing others' concerns about designating any sort of percentage for all the reasons previously rehearsed - though I'm afraid I'd also be very concerned about even suggesting as a joke that 0% was achievable - I'm sure we've all met the kind of anxious student that would take this seriously. And frankly, if you get 0% you're probably not using appropriate discourse for your discipline. Guidance here is that students (especially 1st years) should be allowed to submit a draft, and then a corrected final submission i.e. that they should be able to use Turnitin as a tool to develop their referencing practices. That's the theory - the practice is that some tutors only allow one submission and others allow an infinite number which results in some students attempting to 'tweak' their scores with small revisions, without a proper understanding of how, why or when references should be used in academic writing. It's frustrating. Where students are allowed to put through a draft before final submission, it's essential that they have guidance on how to use Turnitin as a development tool. We have recently published this guidance which includes links to other sites and a brief video tutorial: http://libguides.reading.ac.uk/academicintegrity/turnitin . Happy for others to link if they feel it might be useful, or to adapt materials with the usual acknowledgements. Best wishes, Kim ________________________________ Dr Kim Shahabudin, SFHEA, Study Adviser, Study Advice & Maths Support 1st Floor, University of Reading Library, Whiteknights, PO Box 223, Reading, RG6 6AE * 0118 378 4242/4614 * www.reading.ac.uk/library/study-advice<http://www.reading.ac.uk/library/study-advice> twitter: @unirdg_study Please note that I now work part-time and am not usually on campus on Mondays. ________________________________ From: learning development in higher education network [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Monica Behrend [[log in to unmask]] Sent: 21 February 2017 10:59 To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Using Turnitin/Electronic submission Hi, Great discussion and important points raised. Thank you. Yes ditto, 'what % can I have?' is a common question with research students with whom I work. I play devil's advocate and raise the stakes a little by letting them know that if they studied at the University of Hong Kong they would need to achieve 0%! (Sorry I do not have the reference to this anymore). I keep encouraging them to aim for substantial revision (see the work of Keck). I have found Keck's linguistic-based distinction between: near copy, minimal revision, moderate revision and substantial revision very helpful in education chats with research students. They 'get' it quite well with that type of explanation. Keck, C 2014, 'Copying, paraphrasing, and academic writing development: A re-examination of L1 and L2 summarization practices', Journal of Second Language Writing, vol. 25, 9//, pp. 4-22. Kind regards Monica Dr Monica Behrend PhD, BSc, Dip Ed, MA(Ed), GradDip (TESOL), GradDip(TheolEd) Lecturer in Research Education (International) | Teaching Innovation Unit | University of South Australia | 160 Currie St | City West campus | Adelaide Ph: +618 8302 2216 | Fax: +618 8302 7861| GPO Box 2471, Adelaide SA 5001|Internal mail code CWE-17 email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> URL: www.unisa.edu.au/ltu<http://www.unisa.edu.au/ltu> | CRICOS Provider Number 00121B From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Rod Cullen Sent: Tuesday, 21 February 2017 8:58 PM To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Using Turnitin/Electronic submission Hi All, I probably get asked for the "magic Turnitin %" more than anything else about assessment. As pretty much everyone else who has responded to Helen's question has pointed out there simply isn't a magic number. There are lots of reasons why original work might have a high % similarity and why a low % similarity might be reported for work that is not so original. I've screenshot a couple of slides from activities that I do in TII staff development sessions that illustrate some of the points that others have made. It often leads to some lively discussion as there is a lot of misunderstanding about TII in this respect. In relation to allowing formative submissions, the point that I would make is that TII is just a bit of technology. If students are simply provided with opportunities to submit work to TII as drafts before making formal submission of their work, and this is all they get, don't be surprised if they start to play the numbers game and simply tweak things to reduce the similarity number. An experienced tutor will spot this anyway and if it things are not cited correctly there is still an issues with the originality of the work. However, if originality reports on drafts are used as part of a dialogue between students and their tutors if can be a very powerful formative tool to help students develop effective referencing technique and to craft and improve their writing skills. The quality of dialogue between the tutor and students is so much more important than % similarity in this respect. Personally I'd quite like to be able to turn off the % number and only have the colour coded reports as this would prevent abdicating responsibility to an algorithm for what should be an issue of academic judgement. Like all learning technologies TII is only as good as the learning, teaching and assessment design that it supports. Rod [cid:image002.jpg@01D28D0F.D757D850] [cid:image003.jpg@01D28D0F.D757D850] ____________________________________________________________________ Dr W. Rod Cullen Assistant Head of Learning and Research Technologies (Learning Innovation) Tel: 0161 247 3356 eMail: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Skype: wrod.cullen Manchester Metropolitan University | Room E316 | All Saints Building | Oxford Road | Manchester | M15 6BH From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Hancock, Jessica Sent: 21 February 2017 09:54 To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Subject: Re: Using Turnitin/Electronic submission I very much agree that allowing students to 'check their level of plagiarism' before submission often leads to bad academic practices (so the need for students to understand and not be unduly worried about the system needs to be balanced against this), particularly as Turnitin doesn't actually look for plagiarism. It looks for word/ phrase matches which isn't the same thing. Similarly, it's therefore impossible to put a numerical rating on what is and isn't ok as the score is nowhere near the whole story. Interestingly, I'm currently doing a PGCert in HE and so recently submitted a project report through Turnitin. I got a 29% score, but when I took a look, this was achieved by a) all of my reference list coming up as matches (which is probably a good thing) b) quotes being matched c) matches on common phrases in different contexts (e.g. 'improve student learning', 'widening participation in HE'). None of these would concern me in any way if I was talking a student through their work, and I'm going to use this as an example of the issues with Turnitin scores in my teaching. My assessment hasn't been graded yet but I am assuming the markers will look at it in the same way. :) Jessica Dr Jessica Hancock Lecturer in Academic Development GCU London ________________________________ From: learning development in higher education network <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> on behalf of Stephen Rutherford <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Sent: 21 February 2017 00:26 To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> Subject: Using Turnitin/Electronic submission 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 [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Helen Heywood Sent: 20 February 2017 15:55 To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> 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. 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