Bryan Lee's List: Turnitin Training

• • If your student finds the information in a source, s/he needs to show where s/he got it.  Kids often think that they are supposed to seem as learned as the authors whom they read.  If they believe this, THEN IT IS OUR FAULT. Assure your students that research is like a guided tour of the material they've found on their subject.
• In brief, if you use the work of others, you must either quote it or paraphrase it, but whichever method you choose, you must include a citation and reference.
• A piece of work that is partially referenced (for example, work in which a quote is put in quotation marks but not attributed to anyone) is still classed as plagiarism

1 more annotation...

• • The Similarity Index only shows whether text is similar to something else.  It doesn't show why that text is there.  
    
    
    
    
    Imagine that a student used properly cited direct quotes in his/her paper.  The Similarity Index would pick that up, and the Similarity % would go up.  That doesn't mean that the student plagiarized the paper.  It just means that there happens to be more in the paper that resembles other work than in a paper that refers to NO outside work.  If done properly, a higher (but not too high) similarity index would indicate that the student did a better, more thorough job researching that did one with a lower %.
• The most vital thing to remember is that a high Similarity Index does not necessarily indicate a high incidence of plagiarism. Turnitin can only identify similarities between submitted work and other sources. It cannot classify those matches, nor judge whether they constitute plagiarism. That decision can only be made by your tutor or course-leader, based on their knowledge and experience.

• • Scroll all the way through the page, mousing over each sticky note as you go.
• • CLICK THIS VIDEO TO HEAR FROM TEACHERS WHO HAVE USED THE GRADEMARK SUITE.
• • These are probably what most teachers are looking for in annotating student work.  These are palates of pre-written explanations for commonly made mistakes. To use them, just grab one with your mouse, and drag it to the place in the text you wish your QuickMark to be, then drop it onto the paper.  The student would only have to mouse over the QuickMark in order to have a thorough comment to appear.
    
    These are well-written, and (what's more) already done for you.  That deserves a big "YEA!!"
• • Some times, there is much in the inflection of one's voice that is absent in the QuickMarks.  For those times, or when you are interested in giving VOCAL feedback, you would only need to record Voice Comments, under the little microphone button on the bottom right of the GradeMark window.
• • Rubrics are really the place where HIGH STANDARDS meets EFFICIENCY & SPEED.  With a properly designed rubric, you can literally grade in seconds.  The points are calculated for you, applied to the student's paper, and are recorded in an online gradebook within Turnitin.
• Write a broader, in-depth comment to give students overall feedback about their papers.

  • These are for OVERALL critiques, not targeted work.

4 more annotations...

• • It's not clear whether we have access to these or not because of the location of our school, but that should not be a problem.  Below, there are instructions for downloading a ZIP file with them in it.

• Six Traits Narrative Writing Rubric

  • This will work for anyone wishing to grade a clear storyline.
• Six Traits Paragraph Rubric

  • Great for ANY level!

• • JUST SCROLL BELOW.  THERE IS A PERFECTLY GOOD EXPLANATION FOR HOW TO USE THESE RUBRICS IF YOU AREN'T ACCUSTOMED TO IT.

  • These are just as easy to use, but you would need to open them in Excel, instead of within a web browser.

• You'll find here five Excel-based rubrics derived from the traits-based rubrics in the Write Source series.

   

  
   

   

  Note: To use these rubrics, you need to have Excel installed on your computer.

• There is a separate rubric for each major form of writing:

   

                                                       

  	Narrative
  	Expository
  	Persuasive
  	Response to Literature
  	Research Report

1 more annotation...