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| (c) Turnitin Logo |
Ever since I worked for the charter formation of a statewide online high school and served as its principal, feedback and integrity has been a foundational issue. How can we insure student work is their own and best support students with meaningful and strong responsive feedback?
One of the first tools on the market was Turnitin and although in those early years it appeared challenging to integrate to the proprietary learning management system (LMS), problems were solved quickly and Turnitin has become an industry standard. I am now doing course design contract work with Clemson University Online and have been excited to once again see Turnitin and am pleased it is their go-to tech tool for insuring quality work. The best has survived!
They just launched an infographic describing what their research and surveys show is the substance of what students really want in feedback. I downloaded the pdf as soon as I saw it. I believe some educators and educational institutions will be surprised at what their students had to say. Oh, I am sure students jump to that all-important grade - it's human instinct. But I am pleased to see students aren't interested in only negatives or meaningless fluff. After all, what does "Your writing is strong" really mean? We can do better and Turnitin is here to help.
I have been a lifelong writer and English teacher. Despite every iteration of my syllabus attempting to teach research writing to students, many continued to struggle with what citations and bibliographies were. I had students in my online and on-the-ground office asking me why certain references or paragraphs weren't their own, clearly confused by the expectations and process. The explosion of the Internet only made things more difficult. Turnitin, however, clearly shows students that even a phrase from a website or author takes away their personal authenticity. The Internet may be huge, but information and sites don't escape Turnitin's reach. What a boon for teacher efficiency.
Turnitin provides blog posts, webinars, and cutting edge tools to make an educators' job easier and more meaningful. Just look at their recent acquisition of LightSide Labs to support formative feedback and the integration to your tablets for convenience. It is just getting better and better!
Take the survey results to heart and if your school doesn't have Turnitin, consider it worth investigating and run, don't walk, to their website for more information. Just as Turnitin has, you will raise the bar on student submissions and integrity, and who wouldn't see that as a plus?
Well, maybe the student who told me just a few years ago: "But they [the researchers] said what I wanted to say. How could my words be any better?" Ah, youth!
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