Video on using Turnitin Peer Review

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Peer review, Turnitin

Interview with Anabel Guitierrez (Senior Lecturer in IT at Regent’s University London) on her experience of using Turnitin Peer Review

 

Evaluating Turnitin Peer Review…a case study

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Technology enhanced learning, Turnitin

I have been supporting one of our lecturer’s here at Regent’s College, Anabel Gutierrez who is using Turnitin Peer Review.

In my role as a Learning Technologist I did a demonstration of Turnitin Peer Review to staff in September 2011. Anabel saw the demonstration and set up Peer Review assignment with her students studying the Information Management module. The immediate feedback from the students was very positive. At the end of the module when the assessment had been completed I went into the lesson and spoke to the students. What they really liked about it was the opportunity to see their colleagues work. They said that they really liked to see how their work compared to others in the class.

This academic year (2011-12) Anabel repeated the assignment with a different class doing the same module (Information Management) which is a module on the BA in International Business.

Evaluation. First, student Peer review questionnaire was created and given to students. Turnitin Peer Review Questionnaire Results. Secondly I interviewed Anabel Interview questions on Turnitin Peer review for lecturer. You can hear the interview here http://soundcloud.com/rowellc/usining-turnitin-peer-review?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=twitter&utm_content=http://soundcloud.com/rowellc/usining-turnitin-peer-review or alternatively read the Transcript of interview with Anabel Gutierrez

This term we plan to do the same evaluation again, but this time with post-graduate students on the MBA. So we will do a questionnaire with students in week 9 of the course and I will do a similar interview with Anabel when the module is complete. it will be interesting to compare the undergraduates results with the post graduates and compare the similarities and differences.

At the end it would be great to turn this into a conference presentation or journal article…watch this space!

London Blackboard User Group meeting agenda #LondonBUG

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Ann Austin, Exhibition Road, Imperial College, Imperial College London, London, South Thames College, Turnitin, University of Bedfordshire

Date: Thursday 13th December 2012, 12.30pm – 4.30pm

Theme: Integrating other software/systems with Blackboard

Venue: Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2AZ.
The meeting will be held in rooms SAFB-119/120 in the Sir Alexander Fleming Building.  On arrival, enter via the main entrance and take the stairs directly in front of you to the first floor.

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Agenda:
12:30: Lunch
13:30: Introduction and Welcome to Imperial College (Bryony Bramer, Regent’s College and Mimi Weiss Johnson, Imperial College)
13:40: Integrating PebblePad, and using Turnitin for student feedback (Mark Gamble, University of Bedfordshire)
14:00: Integrating Blackboard with Office 365 (Ann Austin, University of West London)
14:20: Shibboleth in action, and the new Blackboard SIS integration (Ian Bartram, South Thames College)
14:40: Text notifications and more with Blackboard Connect (James Holden-Storey, Blackboard Connect)
15:00: Coffee Break
15:30: Integrating the WebPA Peer Assessment System (Julie Voce, Imperial College)
15:50: New and upcoming features of Blackboard 9.1 SP10-SP12 (Paul Wigfield, Blackboard)
16:20: Next steps and discussion
16:30: Close (and on to ‘Coco Momo’ (25 Gloucester Road, SW7 4PL) for drinks).

5 ‘Cool’ things you can do with Blackboard

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Blackboard, James Leahy, Tricks of the Trade, Turnitin, VLE's

Myself and Bryony (VLE Manager at Regent’s College) did this week’s ‘Tricks of the Trade’ session on ’5 Cool things that Blackboard can do’. It was a bit of a last minute thing as the session should have been on the new media server but that wasn’t quite ready yet.

The five things we looked at were 1. Terms 2. ‘Paste from Word’ Mashup 3. ‘Sign up’ Mashup 4. Bb Rubrics 5. Voice feedback in Turnitin

Firstly, would you like to hide the modules you no longer teach on Blackboard?There is now a simple guide on how to group your modules into terms or semesters. Organising modules into term and semesters This will enable you to hide previous modules you taught, so that you only display the modules you are teaching currently. You will still have access to previous modules when needed but the new simplified ‘My Modules’ area on Blackboard will make it easier to access your current classes. If you need any further help please contact the Blackboard team on blackboard@regents.ac.uk.

The second ‘Cool’ feature we talked about was the ‘Paste from Word’ mashup. Again a really neat little feature that means when you cut and paste text from a Word document (or even stuff from web pages) it doesn’t change the formating in the text. This is a really useful function when cut and pasting things like bullet points or tables and ultimately saves a lot of time.

Thirdly, we looked the ‘Sign Up’ mashup we installed in our version of Blackboard. This was developed by Durham University and is a great addition to Regent’s Blackboard. Once its set up, it allows students to sign up to groups or time slots. This could be really useful for organising classes that have to do a specific activity, like a presentation. What I really liked about it is that it creates a reserve list and if students drop out of a group, it populates that group with participants from the reserve list automatically…cool!

James Leahy, always at the cutting edge of learning technology has produced a stupendously fabulous Prezi that explains this in further detail:

http://prezi.com/edw_qektwqlv/blackboard-user-group-signup-lists/

The fourth feature was Blackboard Rubrics. You don’t really hear the word ‘rubric’ in UK Higher Education because we call them (correctly) ‘Marking Criteria’. Again they are simple to create, as most lecturers already have a marking criteria for their assignments. However, what the Bb ‘rubrics’ enable you to do is allocate a specific grade to each marking criteria and then it totals it up for you! (Note to Turnitin – it would be really great if Turnitin Rubrics could do this too!)

Finally, we demonstrated the voice feedback in Turnitin. The beauty of this is just how easy it is to use. Simply hit the record button, record the feedback and save the recording. Students can then easily access this recording. Simple but very effective!

Overall an enjoyable hour spent on a Wednesday afternoon!

Peer Review Assignments with Turnitin

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Blackboard, Peer review, Staff training, Tricks of the Trade, Turnitin, VLE's

Last week Dr. Anabel Gutierrez, Senior Lecturer in ICT at Regent’s College gave a short presentation on using peer review assignments based on her experience of using this type of assessment here at Regent’s College.  Her talk addressed these three issues:

•How does peer review help students’ learning process?

 

•Peer Review using Turnitin – Implementation

 

•Implementation Reflections and recommendations

 

The first of these issues relates to the different types of students we have in our class. Some of our students are fully engaged in the classroom learning activities but others are easily distracted or are poorly motivated in the first place. Using Peer Review does help to engage and motivated these weaker students.

 

In terms of ‘Implementation’ of the Turnitin Peer Review process Anabel showed that we need to be really clear and well prepared in terms of the Assessment design: 

-Assessment Brief

-Marking criteria

-Formative activities

-Milestones

 

Next Anabel gave a good description of how to technically set a Turnitin Peer Review within Regent’s College VLE (Blackboard). This is basically a two stage process, first setting up tthe TurnitinUK Assignment: (Paper Assignment) and then secondly the PeerMark Assignment.

 

 

Anabel outlined the key benefits of using Peer review:

 

•Students improve their writing and critical thinking skills

•Learning process is enhance with relevant and timely feedback, and the tools are available!

•Lecturers have evidence of student progress and participation

•Marking criteria is clearer to the student (and to the lecturer)

 

 

There then followed a short discussion  with ‘Questions and Feedback’. Some of the audience were concerned about the time implications of managing the peer review process on top of their existing busy workloads. It was noted that there are different ways of setting up the peer  but  the (lack of) time is real issue.

 

Finally Anabel summarised with these general points:

  

•Improvements and better understanding of peer review is needed to get consistent results.

•Is important to provide feedback to students along the process assessment process not only at the end. WHEN does the feedback is more relevant????

•Sharing their learning to the class, not in a formal presentation but as a group discussion. HOW????

•Time management. TIME please!

 

Outside of the session myself and Anabel have met to discuss how best to evaluate the student’s experience. We have started to think about the types of questions we need to ask them and how best to do this evaluation. Watch this space for further details;)

 

 

 

Giving Voice Comments in Turnitin

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Turnitin

Finally got round to checking out how to add voice comments in Turnitin’s GradeMark. It’s very simple to use and student’s will love the ‘personal’ feedback from their lecturers. Just as importantly some (not all) lecturers will like it too. For those lecturers who like giving this type of feedback it could save them hours of work compared to giving written comments to the students. Here is a guide that explains how easy it is to use:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bD6D3Tlq7iA

and here’s a link with a bit more info:

http://pages.turnitin.com/index.php/email/emailWebview?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRow5/mYJoDpwmWGd5mht7VzDtPj1OY6hBomI72JK1TtuMFUGpsqOOCOABARF5lmzR8=

New video by Turnitin gives instructions on how to change the colour of highlights in GradeMark.

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Turnitin

This new video by Turnitin gives instructions on how to change the colour of highlights in GradeMark. Not sure when this new facility will be available but its long overdue. There is a choice of five colours: blue, pink, yellow, green and purple.