supporting multiple-administrators-and-markers-in-turnitin

Turnitin: Supporting Multiple Administrators & Markers

Martin King

Senior Learning & Technology Officer @ Royal Holloway, University of London

13.05.11 page 1 of 5

Background Turnitin supports a number of activities relating to assessment: electronic submission; originality checking; and in a growing number of courses, the online marking and feedback distribution of student assignments. All departments make some use of Turnitin, and over 36 000 assignments have been submitted to the service in each of the last two academic years.

There is increasing interest among tutors and markers in both the originality checking and online marking of student assignments. There is, among the academic departments, a diversity of demands and available resources.

Issues Most courses are taught and marked by a team of academic staff members, not just one. Turnitin has a somewhat rigid approach to access and ownership, and generally supports only one administrator and one Tutor / Marker per course. This lack of alignment can reduce the effectiveness, or even deter meaningful use, of the service.

There are a number of solutions to this problem, but most will add considerably to the administrative burden of the service. Departments administer and use Turnitin in a variety of ways, and any possible solutions and recommendations have to be appropriate to the resources available to administrators and tutors / markers.

Possible solutions; benefits & challenges

1. Use of Master Classes and Sections All departments that use the system with the help of their administrative teams have adopted this hierarchical approach. The Departmental Administrator creates a Master Class to which they have access. Within this area a Section is created. The students enrol upon this, while a single marker is assigned to it. This is where the assignments are created, submitted, viewed and marked.

The advantages of this approach are that this maps closely to traditional and persistent paper‐based approaches. In the interests of simplicity, there is only one area for users to visit. The Departmental Administrator can view the whole process from creation through to submission and from there to checking and marking.

2. Shared email addresses Where there are a number of Administrators supporting a department’s use of the service, and this is recommended given the importance of assessment, a shared e‐mail account, e.g. [email protected] is used. This allows a team approach to supporting staff and students in a department, especially when many administrators work part‐time hours.

Please note that in the age of identity management, accessing another user’s account does contravene RHUL Computer Centre guidelines ‐ http://tiny.cc/rhul‐cc‐guidelines (See section 2).

http://tiny.cc/rhul-cc-guidelines


Martin King


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The creation and management of a shared ‘marking account’ is not appropriate for more than two or three concurrent users as it could cause access issues and confusion during the time‐critical marking and feedback period.

3. Rotation of Tutors/Markers

Key 1‐3, 6: Departmental Administrator 4: Student 5: Marker

An additional advantage of the Master class / Section model is that it allows the owner of the Master Class (The Departmental Administrator) to quickly change, at any time, the owner of the section (the Tutor / Marker). This allows a controlled yet rapid response approach to assessment management.

The rotation of markers (Task 6) works well with allowing a non‐concurrent access to originality reports. However, this is limited where Turnitin is intended to support a team‐based approach to marking (through the Grademark tool).

1. Create Master Class

2. Create Section /

Assign Tutor

3. Create Assignment

4. Submit files

5. View files and

Originality Reports

6. Assign different tutor to Section


Martin King


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4. Presubmission workflow: Creating multiple sections to support teambased marking

1. Create Master Class

2. Create Assignment (with

post‐dates)3. Create Sections

4. Push Assignments to

Sections

5. Inform students of Section IDs and

Passwords6. Submit files

7. Check for originality

8. Mark and provide feedback

(using post‐date)

Key 1‐5: Departmental Administrator 6: Student 7‐8: Marker

Notes a) + Submitted work is ready for checking, marking and feedback as soon as it is submitted

– no further intervention is required by Departmental Administrators. b) + Creating Assignments in Master Class and then pushing them to Sections is a

streamlined method – a single mouse‐click recreates the Assignment and all its details in each of the sections.

c) ‐ Students will have to be divided into equal sized groups – one for each marker. A Section is then created for each group. Students will need to know the details for only their Section.

d) + An additional step (after 8) could involve assigning the course Leader to all the Sections, or re‐assigning Markers to different Sections for quality control or second marking.

e) ‐ Second‐markers would be able to see the trail left by the first marker, so this method would not support double‐blind marking. The feedback would have to be initialed by the markers in order to distinguish who wrote it.


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13.05.11 page 4 of 5

5. Postsubmission workflow: Creating multiple sections to support teambased marking

Model 1

1. Submit files to Assignment

2. One Marker checks for originality

3. Divide submitted files into equal sized groups ‐ one for each

Marker

4. Download submitted files as .zip files to PC or network drive

5. Create new Section(s) ‐ one for each additional

Marker

6. Edit the Assignment details to

NOT check for originality

6. Upload .zip files ‐one to each Section


(using post‐date)

Key 3‐6: Departmental Administrator 1: Student 2, 7 : Marker

Notes f) ‐ Originality checking and Marking become separate activities in this model. Alternative

outlined in Model 2 g) ‐ Submitted work has to be redistributed by Departmental Administrator before marking

and feedback can begin. h) + Creating Assignments in Master Class and then pushing them to Sections is a

streamlined method – a single mouse‐click recreates the Assignment and all its details in each of the sections.

i) + Students submit to a single Section as normal – no need to complicate their enrolment and submission activities

j) + An additional step (after 7) could involve assigning the course Leader to all the Sections, or re‐assigning Markers to different Sections for quality control or second marking.

k) ‐ Second‐markers would be able to see the trail left by the first marker, so this method would not support double‐blind marking. The feedback would have to be initialed by the markers in order to distinguish who wrote it.


Martin King


13.05.11 page 5 of 5

6. Postsubmission workflow: Creating multiple sections to support teambased marking

Model 2

1. Submit files to Assignment

2. Divide submitted files into equal sized groups ‐ one for each

Marker

3. Download submitted files as .zip files to PC or network drive

4. Create new Section(s) ‐ one for each additional

Marker

5. Upload .zip files ‐one to each Section

6. Remove 100% matches from copy in initial sections


(using post‐date)

Key 2‐6: Departmental Administrator 1: Student 7 : Marker

Notes a) ‐ Task 6, the removal of 100% matches can only be performed piecemeal and is

impractical for larger cohorts or where there is greater time pressure. b) + The Turnitin2 interface combines originality checking with marking and feedback ,

model 2 takes advantage of this configuration

supporting multiple-administrators-and-markers-in-turnitin

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