June? July? 2024
The Centre for Pedagogical Innovation is announcing changes to Turnitin service at Brock University. No action is required by instructors, staff, or students, and overall impact will be minimal.
Contents
Turnitin Originality
The primary tool that instructors use, Turnitin Similarity Check, remains and will function exactly the same. The new version of the product (which exists under the umbrella of “Turnitin Originality” as opposed to “Feedback Studio”) offers a more refined experience and simply removes extra features that were previously included but not utilized by the Brock community.
These changes have no impact on typical usage of Turnitin: how it is enabled in Brightspace Assignments and how it generates reports with student submissions remains the same.
Originality Check retains…
The Similarity Report and all of its details, with source matching, flagging, exclusion options, etc.
The same paper repositories (including Brock’s internal repository) and related options.
The Brightspace integration via Assignments.
Single sign-on (SSO) direct access to the instructor tools within turnitin.com.
Originality Check does NOT have…
PeerMark (a feedback tool that must operate outside of Brightspace and was never used in 2023-2024).
CPI has suggestions and guides on various options for facilitating peer-evaluation while making use of Brightspace and other educational technology tools.
QuickMarks (grades and comments within Turnitin as opposed to Brightspace).
The Brightspace evaluation options for Assignments (as well as Quizzes and Discussions) are relatively easy-to-use and already contain many options for instructors. These are explained in detail within our guide for Grading Assignment Submissions.
The existing annotation tool in the Brightspace Assignments provides for a streamlined grading process where graders can make notes, highlight, and comment all without having to download the submitted document. Further information and a preview is available in our article on Assignment Annotation Tools.
Rubrics and Grading Forms (also within Turnitin as opposed to Brightspace).
The Brightspace Rubrics tool is feature-rich and provides a fulsome, structured mapping and grading experience for instructors and teaching assistants. More information can be found in our article on using the Rubrics tool to set standards and increase efficiency.
eRater Grammar (a built-in grammar check).
Two features that Brock was already not using:
Draft Coach (an MS Word integration to check originality and an AI coach).
Artificial Intelligence detection.*
*Brock elected to not engage with Turnitin’s AI tools for a variety of reasons, namely the inability to test and configure the tool in any way and concerns over its transparency and overall efficacy. Brock has strengthened its stance on the usage of Generative AI detectors (in all forms) from “cautioning against” them to their use being “not institutionally condoned” (notes, dates?).
https://hai.stanford.edu/news/ai-detectors-biased-against-non-native-english-writers ?
What is Turnitin?
As a reminder, Turnitin is a similarity and phrase-matching tool that can be used to scan submitted assignments. It is a learning tool that plays a role in supporting academic integrity and preventing academic misconduct. The Similarity Check does not itself detect plagiarism and both its use and the reports it generates should be examined critically and with an open mind.
As always, guidance and recommendations are available from Brock’s CPI staff (edtech@brocku.ca) and Academic Integrity Manager (acassamali@brocku.ca).
Refer to CPI’s documentation and guidelines on Turnitin’s implementation within Brightspace Assignments.
New interface/view
The update came with an optional new report interface that functions almost exactly the same as the current one. Most changes are stylistic and structural and all of the old features exist. Match information can be displayed in a few new and different ways.
It is possible to toggle back to the Classic View using the button in the top-left corner of the screen. This View retains all current features.
The New View does not currently provide options to view matching sources in full. Immediate access to papers within the Brock local repository is not possible and the ability to request access to papers submitted to external repositories is missing.
Switch to the Classic View to use either of these options.
