Turnitin Case Study

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be presenting a number of case studies where technology is being used in line with teaching goals at York St John.

In our fourth case study, Tiffany Bisby-O’Rorke discusses her use of Turnitin.

Summary of approach/tool

Turnitin is an assignment submission and marking tool and plagiarism checker. It has functionality which allows tutors to provide highly detailed and meaningful feedback to students and helps students to improve their academic writing by self-identifying and correcting issues with their paraphrasing and citations.

 

Member of staff: Tiffany Bisby-O’Rorke

School: Education

 

What was the issue/need you were trying to address with the use of this approach/tool?

Clarity of feedback to students and how it is received and acted on by the students.

What did you do? For how long? With how many students?

I’ve developed a traffic light system of highlighting sections of their work – pink for actions to be addressed e.g. incorrect spelling or citation; yellow – point needs support or the thought needs developing ; green – good point but needs wider support or could be further developed or critiqued; blue – direct quotations – only if they use a lot. I believe that this visual element helps them to see overall how well they have done and can highlight to them whole sections that lack support or lots of direct quotations.

How did it go?

Overall, students liked it.

What were the benefits?

Students are clearer on where they can improve.

Did you face any challenges?

Students and colleagues unfamiliar with Turnitin.

Do you have any tips for other people using this tool?

Get the rubric sorted and link comments to rubrics. Customize your own comments with useful links for each module.

Any other thoughts?

I am wanting to pilot the Audio feedback aspect as I feel students hear the feedback better rather than just focusing on the negative aspects in written feedback.

 

Watch this video to see some of the Turnitin features you can use to provide detailed feedback to students.

Turnitin Feedback Studio Walkthrough from Turnitin on Vimeo.

If you need help using Turnitin or would like to start using it, please get in touch with the TEL team.