Turn it in to TurnItIn in Moodle

Nothing makes me happier at work than a teacher getting more excited than me about something in technology. Last Thursday was a really happy day for me.

After a few weeks of silly errors and issues, I finally had our new TurnItIn Moodle Direct integration ready to deploy and was playing around with a TurnItIn rubric when a teacher looked over my shoulder and asked if she could watch what I was doing. This prompted me to explain my latest project - encouraging more people to use our TurnItIn subscription by letting them use TurnItIn from within Moodle. And her response was my favorite kind. Excited about this new prospect, she went directly back to her desk and not only created her own first TurnItIn assignment in Moodle, complete with grading form, but also told the rest of her PLC right away. And got THEM excited for it.

I thought I was going to have to beg people to try this. Apparently not.

So why do this? 

The reasons to use TurnItIn are numerous. Paperless assignments, originality checking, online grading, digital portfolios, and data collection are a few. Since I started using TurnItIn ten years ago, I have seen vast improvements to the GradeMark program, especially the new Grade Anything platform that allows teachers to grade any kind of file, presentation, performance, etc within GradeMark. The iPad app is something I would have loved eight years ago when I was lamenting my decision to collect essays only via TurnItIn, but was headed for a twelve hour car ride with no internet connection - with the iPad app, you don't need an internet connection once you sync a set of assignments. Easy. Lovely.

Now it's even easier to use here at CJ. No need for teachers or students to log into another account to use the main features of TurnItIn. For everyday use, they can simply create and upload assignments via Moodle... which is an essential part of almost every class here. Logging into TurnItIn will still be useful to gather data from GradeMark Reports, but it isn't necessary every day, nor is it needed by the students. 

From the reaction I've gotten from just a few teachers, I'm thinking this will be a good thing.

Resources:

• TurnItIn's Moodle Direct page containing...
• Instructor Manual
• Student Manual
• Training Videos
• FAQ
• TurnItIn Product Demonstration Videos

Turn in ANYTHING to TurnItIn?!

Since I'm not in the classroom accepting and grading assignments anymore, I don't venture onto TurnItIn much these days. When I was teaching English, I relied heavily on it for collecting assignments and checking originality, sometimes venturing into the GradeMark aspect and trying out the peer review system. I know that TurnItIn has made vast improvements to its system over the last few years including a new, more user-friendly GradeMark interface and a new iPad app that allows grading on TurnItIn without an internet connection (I would have loved THAT five years ago).

This morning I went to TurnItIn to check some stats from the administrative perspective. The homepage got me VERY excited:

Grade ANYTHING? I had to learn more. Apparently this was a new concept introduced earlier this month. According to the press release,

"The groundbreaking functionality appeals to instructors across the curriculum who increasingly are assigning student projects beyond the traditional written paper, such as presentations, spreadsheets, visual designs and calculations. In addition, instructors who need to evaluate student work that does not require a file submission, such as a live dance performance or musical recital, can use Turnitin’s new grading template to provide timely and meaningful feedback to students."

I broke out my headphones and watched every demo available when I clicked the "Learn More" button...

Grading PowerPoint presentations DURING the presentation on an iPad? AWESOME. Having math students submit their homework by taking PICTURES of their work? GENIUS. Use a special grading template to provide feedback for performances with no file submitted to TurnItIn? EXCELLENT.

I'm excited to explore this more with our teachers. Cor Jesu has had a subscription to TurnItIn for a long time and some teachers use it religiously.  However, it has always been seen as a tool for those teaching in the humanities, grading essays and other written work. This development gives me hope that teachers in other disciplines might be willing to explore it - especially after we integrate it with our Moodle system over the summer (finally). Updates to come...

Interested in exploring more? A few helpful links...

• Grading an assignment without submitting a file
• General page for Instructor Tutorials 
• TurnItIn for the iPad - Getting Started
• Using Statistics to Track Performance/Learning