[ARCHIVED] [ARCHIVED] New Turnitin LTI Issues

[stephanie_pope]

Goal: This discussion is to highlight the issues experienced while implementing the new Turnitin LTI.

I hope this discussion will help other admin implement this tool with a full understanding of it's limitations and functionality. We are a fully online school and implemented this tool without testing (our first mistake). We use a course copy model to create every course. Our LTI settings are copied over (without dates) from our master courses.

Overview of our Pain Points:

• Multiple dates (start date, due date, feedback release date)
• Resubmitting assignments
• Assignment parameters
• Rubrics
• Submit Button
• Additional options
• Already submitted work

Multiple Dates

We have found multiple issues/errors that happen due to dates. An assignment has 3 different slots for dates: start date, due date, and feedback release date. We've found that:

• The due date can not be the same as the feedback release date. This will generate an error and the behavior will not allow the student to submit work. Our workaround: We went in to every assignment and adjusted the feedback release date to be 2 days after the due date. Note: the due date can not be change from the TII settings- this must be adjusted on the assignment.
• The start date is created when you enable the LTI on an assignment. The start date must be before the due date.

Resubmitting Assignments:

The TII LTI will allow assignments to be resubmitted up until the due date. However, this must be enabled on the assignment. Students are no longer able to resubmit work after the due date.  Note: once a student resubmits work, the original work and teacher comments will be lost in the Feedback Studio.

Assignment Parameters:

We found multiple errors caused by our preexisting assignments. This will generate an error and the behavior will not allow the student to submit work. Assignment parameters:

• Assignment title were too long- the max is 99 characters
• Assignment title using a ; (this might have been resolved recently)
• Assignment point values were not a whole number
• Assignment due dates matched the feedback release date (see multiple dates above)

Rubrics

Assignments with the TII LTI enabled, the rubric is "replaced" with the TII LTI. Resulting in the rubric appearing as "not on the assignment." However, in Speedgrader the rubric is still attached to the assignment.

Submit Button

The location of the button is somewhat hidden to students when the LTI is enabled. Traditionally, the button is in the top right corner, which they grow accustom to. However, the LTI moves the button to the lower portion of the screen and is within an iframe. And depending on the device or browser, the student also has to scroll within the iframe to find the button.

Additional Options

Be sure to review the additional options carefully. We have dozens of assignments in one course, which makes any adjustment very time consuming. Options to consider: accept various file types, etc.

Already Submitted Work

If students have already submitted work and you enable the LTI after, all of the already submitted work will be lost.

Please feel free to add to this discussion so we can all help each other during this transition.

Thank you,

Stephanie

Higher Education​

Canvas Admins​

[stephanie_pope]

I completely agree.

[kschneider25]

Dallas,

We haven't used our Turnitin votes yet (I'm hoarding them).  Send over the idea and I will submit it.

Kori

[dhulsey]

Hey, Kori! Well, the good news is that each person gets votes, so I suppose you could bribe students into voting with free pizza or something. Anyway, if it were me, I would write up a feature request on The Turnitin website with something like this:

   The current LTI tool does not offer a smooth and easy path for writing assignments with multiple drafts. The revision assignment that currently exists    through the Turnitin website would solve this problem. Please incorporate revision assignments into the LTI for use in Canvas and other learning    platforms.

For what it is worth, another request I have been seeing lately goes like this:

   As implemented in Canvas, the Turnitin LTI tool makes it difficult for Canvas administrators and instructional designers to support faculty and    students. To access assignments through the  Turnitin  LTI, support staff must be enrolled in the course. The LTI should allow automatic login for administrators who have account  or subaccount level permissions. Masquerading as another user or enrolling in every class is not a satisfactory solution.

Neither of these issues bothers me, but I can definitely see how both are annoying to other users.

[gjarrett]

Just adding to the chorus of voices. #higher education professor here. I've been using Turnitin through their website for 16 years. I was at first delighted when, after my college switched to Canvas, my students could upload their papers through Canvas instead of managing a whole different login. For simple assignments, it has worked well for me. However, this semester I have an assignment for which I required a first draft and a final draft. On the Turnitin website, I have used the Revision Assignment as shown above. There is no way to do the equivalent through the Canvas LTI, so now I have to go back to getting my students to login to turnitin.com to submit their final drafts. We will see how it goes, but this is a big time waster so far.

[dhulsey]

 @gjarrett ‌, 

No one wants more work or to manage multiple logins. The good news is that you can easily do multiple drafts with the Turnitin LTI. All it takes is setting up one assignment per draft in Canvas: Rough Draft assignment and then final draft assignment.  I do this in all of my classes (also higher ed), and it works well for me.

I have some video tutorials on how to do this and other things with the Turnitin LTI at my blog post https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/plagiarism/blog/2015/04/18/canvas-and-turnitin?sr=search&sear...‌. Perhaps checking out the tutorials will give you some ideas on how to best leverage the Turnitin LTI and make your life easier.  

[gjarrett]

Thank you for your timely and helfpul reply,  @dhulsey !

I had found and read your (excellent) post over a couple of times when I first started with this assignment, but missed the part about revision assignments. It is a little tricky.

For those who end up here with the same problem, here is Dallas' solution:

In the Assignment page for the first (draft) assignment, in the Turnitin LTI, in "Settings" -> "Optional Settings" -> "Submissions to this assignment will be stored in:", change the drop-down to "Do not store the submitted papers." This should ensure that the drafts will not show up as matches when Turnitin makes the originality report for the final version.

I think it would be more clear to get an option, when setting up the assignment through the Turnitin LTI, that matches the one in Turnitin's website, "Revision Assignment."

Unfortunately, my students have already submitted their drafts. I changed the setting today, but I am not sure if will apply retroactively. To play it safe, I will be having them submit the final draft through the Turnitin website, not the Canvas LTI, because there I was able to make the final draft a Revision Assignment of the first draft.

[galyenk]

We have both the API and the LTI enabled. You can do a gradual shift to LTI if you'd like. All API stuff still works and is there.

[kbickell]

Has anyone noticed a drop in Turnitin usage at your institution since you switched to the TII LTI from the old API? Or do your faculty just keep working through the challenges?

[kschneider25]

We have noticed a drop in usage.  Our instructors really loved the one-click API check.  Then the issues appeared with the LTI and usage dropped again. 

[amcase]

We have had a few that are saying they might not use it anymore, and I don't blame them.

I am so frustrated I feel like I am a doing a new ticket everyday and for our small University that is a lot.  Constantly seeing students unable to submit and Turnitin's response is try again!!! 

[dhulsey]

Hey, Allison.  Have you been able to document the cause of the problems with submission? Maybe you could look over some students' shoulders and see what is going on? Also, if you can post or send me screenshots of your LTI configuration, the Canvas assignment settings and the settings for that assignment in Turnitin, we can look and see if any of the settings might be giving the students problems. We could also take a look at the submission instructions you are using to see if they might be causing students problems.

[amcase]

 @dhulsey ‌

Here is our LTI Configuration, I took out the consumer key for the screen shot.  Students have all been random with different assignments.  We now say: 

1. Try a different Browser

2. Restart your computer

3. Try a different computer

4. Try a different file type

If these don't work please send us a screenshot with the error you are receiving.  

 Recent turnitin tickets - Student got 401 error code - Turnitin response it is caused by a communication and authentication between servers, try again at a later date.  (well we all know students, and they usually wait until the due date to submit, so they can't wait till a later date to submit)

Other issues 

Another ticket: Student error message: "Turnitin Error
Sorry We could not process your request
We are sorry, but it appears we are experiencing an issue at this time. Please...."

My response given about this ticket was :"From time to time Turnitin does run routine maintenance which means the website is unavailable however, there is sufficient notice given to Administrators and the notifications are emailed advising when this will happen. When routine maintenance happens it is advisable to wait for the all clear tweet / email advising the sytem can be used again."

I couldn't find anything anywhere about this student submitting during "maintenance time"  I feel like I just get the run around and no real solutions  to anything.

Both of these students eventually were able to submit, but I think it is unacceptable for students to have so many issues trying to submit.  

One of my colleagues who is also taking a class this semester has experienced an issue of not being able to submit, since she works here she knows all the tricks to try and nothing worked except waiting a few minutes and trying later and then it worked.  

 @dhulsey ‌ Please tell me there is something in the configuration that is going to solve all our problems

[dhulsey]

Hey, Allison. I notice that the domain field is empty. It should be filled with "turnitin.com." I know for sure that needs to be filled in to launch Turnitin from the icons in Speedgrader. Who knows. Maybe it has other effects as well.

Will that solve all of your problems? 

Probably not.  

Turnitin has downtime. Some of it is scheduled maintenance. Some of it is not. Of the downtime that is not scheduled, Turnitin fesses up to the downtime that lasts awhile. You can subscribe to email or Twitter alerts for when they have significant downtime as documented here: Turnitin - System Status. Sometimes, there are short periods of downtime that they do not fess up to. Some of the problems you report may be a result of this downtime, but we do not see chronic or excessive downtime from Turnitin in relation to other services we use -- except Canvas, which is crazy reliable.

Sometimes, simply closing Turnitin and logging out and back in to Turnitin will solve problems. However, for all the times I tell my students not to use Internet Explorer (problems with Softchalk) or to only perform one transaction per session in Respondus or to periodically clear browser cookies and cache or not to use Open Office when the file is going to Turnitin, they will still ignore me and freak out and contact support before doing any of the things I suggest. 

One problem that we have seen is students will ignore us about changing their default email in Canvas. Turnitin will freak out if a student changes their default email address in Canvas because the institutional email domain is what Turnitin uses to identify the student as belonging to our institution. Perhaps adding that to your list of troubleshooting strategies might cut down on a few problems, and I wonder about this issue and the server authentication issue you mentioned.

That's all I have without being able to see particular assignment settings. There is no silver bullet here, but I hope it helps.  

[tross]

We never had the other interface but have only had the LTI.   We have not experienced the issues others are seeing.  The only times we have had trouble submitting is when they dates aren't correct in TurnItIn,  Specifically that feedback release date since it is not a date they can get from Canvas.  We also wish there were a better process for multiple drafts.   

[natalie_norton1]

FYI  - we have a few students receiving the following error when they try to submit to Turnitin:

LTI Error: Could not create user.
email - Sorry, this email already in use

Turnitin have confirmed "known issue" they are working on. They are advising logging out of Canvas and in again, but this is not resolving it for all students. Hopefully will be resolved soon!

[natalie_norton1]

Just a quick update to say the latest we have heard from Turnitin is that this will not be fixed for several weeks!

They have suggested that if email addresses are not in lower case this could be causing the issue. However we are unclear on why only some students are affected. 

[John_Lowe]

We just sent an email out to all of our faculty at Baylor University to advise them not to use TurnItIn until further notice because of this problem,  @natalie_norton1 ‌.  We too have been unable to determine why some people have the problem and others do not when ALL of our users have camel-case email addresses.

[tross]

This is interesting because we have no issues with the LTI app.  All our email address are lower case so that may in fact be causing the issue.  

[natalie_norton1]

We have changed the email address format in our student records system and it should sync tonight, so I'll report back!

[John_Lowe]

TurnItIn just contacted me to let me know that they have resolved this error.  I have verified with a few dozen students in a few dozen courses who I knew were having the LTI error, and it does indeed seem to be resolved now (without having to change case of any email addresses in Canvas).

[jbond]

Thanks to Dallas for very informative webinar this week.

At the outset of this thread, Stephanie wrote:

"We have found multiple issues/errors that happen due to dates. An assignment has 3 different slots for dates: start date, due date, and feedback release date. We've found that:

• The due date can not be the same as the feedback release date. This will generate an error and the behavior will not allow the student to submit work. Our workaround: We went in to every assignment and adjusted the feedback release date to be 2 days after the due date."

1) Do you all know if this is still an issue (the due date should not match the feedback release date)?

2) Dallas, in the webinar, you mentioned that one must have the "available from" date set in Canvas or it would negatively impact course copies. Can you explain more about your experiences?

Thanks so much.  Jill

[dhulsey]

Hi, Jill! Thanks for the kind words; doing the webinar was fun, and I do hope it was helpful.

Since I never had the problem you describe with the due date / feedback date, I can't be of much help there. Sorry!

I can explain the course copy issue with start dates though:

Previously, the instructor had to initialize a Turnitin assignment on creation and upon import / copy into a Canvas course by visiting the assignment or clicking the LTI button if the assignment was set to load in a new tab.

Now, the only time an instructor needs to initialize an assignment on the Turnitin side during assignment creation or import is if she wants to adjust the optional settings to be different than her saved defaults or if she wants to add a Peermark component to the assignment. For many instructors, this means they will never need to worry about initializing the assignment in Turnitin. Instead, the first time a student visits the assignment, it will initialize in Turnitin -- if the instructor has not already initialized it.

If the necessary information is absent in Canvas (title, points, start date, and due date as far as I can tell)  and if the professor has not initialized the assignment in TII, then the first student to visit the assignment will receive an error message instead of being able to access the assignment.

Ha! That seems like a lot to explain something relatively simple, and I am still not sure I did a good job of it.  

[jbond]

Thanks so much for your help, Dallas! (I see the first Q was actually answered in an earlier thread above.)

Just to be clear, when you wrote: "If the necessary information is absent in Canvas (title, points, start date, and due date as far as I can tell)...", you meant the "available from" date for "start" date, correct?

Thanks mucho.  Jill

[dhulsey]

Yes. I should be more careful about the interface terminology.  

[galyenk]

Here are the current issues that we see (in addition to the above!)

Canvas iFrame: iFrame window too small; confirmation button is hidden (the button after a student has uploaded but not yet submitted). You can't find the button and TII has stated this is an instructure iFrame size issue (height). In the meantime I have made a video that shows kids how to tap on the window frame to get the button to show.

TII Not Syncing Assignment Submissions back to canvas: Does not always sync back to Canvas when a student submits a TII paper.

TII Unrecoverable Error with  assignment resubmissions  being forever off : Has an unrecoverable error where if a student resubmits and it is within a short period of time (before TII syncs back to canvas), an unrecoverable error occurs where the name of the second file is attached to the first submission/ the first submission shows with the second file name. E.g. Students submits PaperA.docx; then submits PaperB.docx. In Speedgrader it shows PaperA but the file says PaperB.docx (and you download it and it says PaperA). You can wait an hour, day, a month, doesn't matter....the papers are now forever off without the ability to reset. You submit PaperC.docx 1 month later, it then will finally show PaperB with the file name of PaperC.docx. VERY bad. 

[jbond]

Hi:

Can you let me know the pros and cons of using a Canvas rubric versus the TII rubric for TII assignments? Best practices?

We currently use Canvas rubric "behind the TII curtain" and then include a screen shot of the Canvas rubric in the Canvas assignment instructions (and/or a PDF of the rubric) since Ss need to be able to see it up front when accessing their assignment instructions.

Keeping in mind that there is a triumvirate of partnering software - TII, SpeedGrader and GradeBook - we have strongly recommended that our faculty use TII directly to score and give feedback on student work (too many problems with SpeedGrader to/from Grade Book and SpeedGrader to/from TII). However, we have found that still using a Canvas rubric creates double work for Ts: then they have to score and give feedback in TII, then go to SpeedGrader and score the rubric itself. Thoughts?

Thanks!

Jill

[tross]

Our teachers are doing their grading in TII so they are mostly using the rubric there.  Some scan a copy and attach as a document to the assignment.  The main thing they like about the TII grader is the saved comments that they can reuse.  If they had that feature, more would grade in speedgrader and not in TII.

[natalie_norton1]

Some of our staff prefer the Tii rubric as it is non scoring. We also have issues with the Canvas rubric for complex marking grids as it seems to 'break' above a certain complexity. However we are having to warn staff about the Tii rubric as if any assignment settings are changed once marking has started (eg feedback release date) the rubric marking is lost with no way to retrieve it, and no warning. I had a member of staff lose marking on 100 assignments the other day! This has been reported to the Tii engineers but has been with them for a while now. Big risk for us currently unfortunately. 

[jbond]

Thanks. This is very helpful. Can you tell me more about what you mean by non-scoring?

Jill

[natalie_norton1]

Hi - yes of course. The Canvas rubrics force you to allocate a score against each criteria, which may then give a different total score to the overall grade given to the assignment, which causes confusion for students. Most of our lecturers prefer to give an indication of grading range against criteria within the rubric, with comments, but just give one overall grade rather than a calculated score. They can do this in Tii. I know some people have put in a workaround to just make the rubric score total 5, whereas the overall grade is a %, but this still causes confusion.  The 'non-scoring' rubric has been identified by the UK HEI user group as a top 5 priority requirement, but my understanding is that this development is not currently scheduled. Staff therefore prefer to use the Tii rubric at the moment, but we do have this risk with the settings change issue! 

The other rubric issue identified by the UK group was to do with the alignment breaking once you get to a certain number of criteria/bandings, and issues with the colours used in the Canvas rubrics not being compliant with accessibility requirements. Hope that helps! 

[galyenk]

We use the Canvas grading rubric because we have to keep track of who grades. Turnitin doesn't send back the name of the grader, so we aren't able to use it as a grading tool. I have talked with their eingineers about this, and they have stated that they don't have a field that collects the user's Canvas ID or SIS ID or anything like that, so it's not possible for them to do a passback of who graded even if they wanted to. (I hope they change this!)

1. That said, before changing  submission to LTI, we  create the rubric in Canvas. 
2. Then, we copy the rubric (paste it in word and remove extra "garbage" from the copy), then paste and format it in the assignment submission directions. 
3. Then we attach the external LTI tool. 

This way the student is able to see the rubric since the LTI obscures the Canvas rubric from view. 

Grading is exactly the same and doesn't change anything. However, note that sometimes Turnitin fails to sync the assignment back to Canvas and so the assignment is in the Turnitin assignment window but not synced back to Canvas in speedgrader. When this happens, just create a ticket to tier 1 and they now (finally thank goodness) have th ability to sync the student's work back to Canvas when the sync fails. 

Know that You should remind students not to resubmit quickly in a row; Turnitin has a bug where if they submit quickly, the submissions have a fatal error where they get off permanently, so they submit file 1 and it gets lost; they submit file 2 and it is submitted to canvas as file 1 (it's pretty bad.) I have submitted this error but haven't heard back about if they are working on fixing this or not. Howeve,r this is something to be aware of and we post this information in our submissions so students are aware of how they need to subimt.

[jbond]

Hi:

How do you all handle situations where faculty may want to allow a student to resubmit AFTER the due date is past? If one uses the creation of a new assignment as a workaround, what then happens in Gradebook? How might grade weighting be affected? Or, can a teacher simply delete the student’s first submitted paper and then resubmit/re-upload the revised one (if they receive it via email) for the student once the due date is past?

This is hard to test without possibly messing up an assignment in a live course.

Thanks for all ideas.

Jill

[natalie_norton1]

Hi - we have a similar scenario where we are having to use additional assignments for extensions, and we are putting an EX in the gradebook for the assignment which is not being used for that student. For 2nd attempts (where there is a mark in both, but only one should count towards total grade) we use the rule to exclude the lowest grade within that assignment group. Hope that helps! 

[DeletedUser]

Jill Bond

Response to Jill Bond's message from February 2, 2017 at 2:43.

We are going to turn off API this summer. We currently have LTI and API both. When we turn off the API, we will also be switching to Feedback Studio. When we tested turning API off, we lost all the submissions for our test assignments. To remedy this, Turnitin is helping us out by migrating all the API submissions to our account. We are going to communicate to the faculty that they can get access to older submissions by contacting us.

[RobDitto]

Our institution has something new happening with students submitting program code in text files via TII LTI, which my awesome colleague  @lindalee ‌ documented here:

• Possibly new Turnitin LTI - SpeedGrader problem

Summary of the problem: sometimes JSON data is returned to Canvas instead of the submission file. This issue affected more than 8% of submissions in a recent assignment.

[mbumgarner]

Does anyone know why my students are getting this error message when they try to access an assignment?  I've checked due date and post dates and I think those are ok. 

Marlene Bumgarner

Gavilan College

mbumgarner@gavilan.edu

[kschneider25]

 @mbumgarner ‌  the error is caused from a missing or incorrect default email address on the Canvas user profile.

[tross]

Whatever email address is on their account is not being accepted by TurnItIn.  I believe they use the primary on your account so if you allow students to use a different email than their institution email it will cause a problem.  

[kdemello]

Not sure if this is the best place for this comment, but I don't know where else to turn. 

This is our first semester using the new Turnitin LTI. I set up an assignment of a draft to be submitted and peer reviews to be assigned all through Turnitin. 

Some students are able to see the Turnitin pane with the peermark option to review submissions. However, other students can't see the Turnitin pane on the assignment page in Canvas. This is resulting in most students not completing peer reviews, at all. Has anyone else encountered this? Is there a fix? 

Canvas can't help and though I opened a ticket with Turnitin, the peer reviews will be due before they get back to me, I think. 

Any help is much appreciated! 

Thanks

[dhulsey]

Hi, kdemello‌. I find Turnitin (and most other external tools) works best when I load it in a new tab in my assignment settings. I have heard a few times of Turnitin not totally displaying if you load it inside of Canvas instead of a new tab.

The biggest problems I have seen with ctitiques is that students are not sure about the process. Here is the tutorial I use to show my students how Peermark works: https://www.nmjc.edu/userfiles/dhulsey/LTI/peermarktutorial.pdf

Perhaps that helps?