Students copy, they always have – and academic dishonesty is the bugbear of every teacher. As a rule, you just know if a pupil’s work is original; but how do you get the evidence?
Yes, you could copy and paste a chunk of it into Google; however, that’s time-consuming, not to mention a bit of a faff.
Instead, why not turn to Turnitin’s Feedback Studio?
When a student submits work, they do it via the website, which then uses scalpel-like software to compare strings of text against its massive database of billions of web pages, student papers, publications and journals, enabling it instantly to detect copied content and paraphrased passages.
However, secondary teachers don’t want to be plagiarism police, using software as a punishment tool. Above all, their aim is to support the learning process, with focused feedback to help close attainment and progress gaps.
And here’s where it gets really good – because this is precisely what Turnitin’s Feedback Studio helps us to do.
The Studio enables teachers to check submitted texts for appropriate citations and quotations by giving percentage similarity scores so you can easily spot any glitches. This means you can turn plagiarism into teachable moments.
But it goes further than that, allowing you to give feedback on learners’ drafts by typing comments which can be italicised, underlined and emboldened.
If you think your comments could apply to other students, a QuickMarks feature lets you create a library of feedback responses to drag and drop for future use.
There is also an automatic grammar checker, so you can give students further personalised and actionable feedback. A favourite feature of mine is the ability to leave up to three minutes of recorded, oral feedback, on top of which can be added further written comments if required.
Turnitin also provides teachers with predefined or customisable rubrics and grading forms to help evaluate students’ work based on defined criteria and scales.
These can be assigned to a piece of work; students can clearly see how they will be assessed, and teachers can spend less time marking.
Giving effective feedback is one of the most important ways in which we can focus on the specific needs of each pupil.
Turnitin supports this by helping students enhance their writing through meaningful and focused feedback that upgrades, polishes, edits and progresses.
It sets high standards and expectations, and boasts brilliant functionality.
Upgrade if you are looking for a professional and motivating feedback writing tool that helps students identify their strengths and weaknesses, encourages their critical thinking and empowers them to take ownership of their work.
Find out more about Turnitin Feedback Studio at go.turnitin.com. Watch more of our videos from Bett Show.
