"The Future of Plagiarism Detection" Follow Up (Turnitin)

[dhulsey]

Thanks to everyone who attended  "The Future of Plagiarism Detection" at InstructureCon 2017. Bill and I felt good about the presentation and hope the audience did as well.

For those who asked and those who could not attend, please find our slides here. 

Many of you likely received the email announcement today announcing changes to the student submission process in Turnitin's LTI tool. As Bill Loller discussed in his portion of the presentation, more improvements will be coming in an updated version of the LTI tool later this fall. For those who did not, here is the text of today's email:

"We’ve simplified the student submission workflow and more enhancements to the LTI user experience are on the way.
 
Beginning August 8th, students will see a progress bar indicating clear steps for making a submission, as well as an additional confirmation screen to indicate the submission process is complete.

This is just the start of a major effort to improve the ease-of-use of our LTI integrations. We are also working closely with our LMS partners to make integrations more robust and seamless, taking advantage of the new LTI 2.1 standard.
 
Want to learn more? Keep an eye out for more information in future emails, in our release notes, and on Twitter @TurnitinProduct. 

If you have any questions about this update or suggestions for additional improvements, please contact us at migrations@turnitin.com. 
 
Sincerely,
Turnitin Product Team"

For those who were wondering about setting a due date and a lock or until date for assignments using the Turnitin LTI, here is how it works:

1.  Delete (or do not enter) the line of code that syncs the due date from Canvas to Turnitin in your LTI tool configuration. The code will appear in the custom fields section and should be deleted if present: custom_duedate=$Canvas.assignment.dueAt.iso8601
2. When building an assignment using the Turnitin LTI, use a due date. This will be the date the assignment is due, and Canvas will mark anything submitted after this date as late. Do not, however, use an "until" date in Canvas because you will lock the student out of any information in Turnitin (originality report, comments, etc.).
3. Save the assignment in Canvas.
4. On the Turnitin side of the assignment, set the Turnitin date for the last date you will accept submissions. 
5. Open the "Optional Settings" in Turnitin to make sure the assignment is not set to accept late submissions.
6. Save the settings in Turnitin.
7. Explain to students that the due date in Canvas is the due date and that the due date in Turnitin is the last day to send a late submission.

Sounds good, right?  While this procedure adds a few clicks, for instructors who want exact control over dates, this is the way to get it done. On the down side, people like me would rather have the due date syncing because the fewer dates I have to worry about the better. 

The good news is that LTI tools can be configured on the Canvas account, subaccount, or course level, so an admin might choose to enable the due date sync on the account level and use a course level configuration without due date syncing (or vice versa). As long as the names saved on each configuration allow easy distinction, instructors should be able to choose between the different configurations.

I hope that is helpful information! If you have other questions, please let me know. If I cannot answer them, I will pass them to the folks at Turnitin.

Thanks!

[natalie_norton1]

Thanks dhulsey@nmjc.edu‌, that's really helpful. I hadn't received the email regarding the changes to the student submission process. Do you happen to know if those changes have also been made to the UK Turnitin LTI version? Many thanks

[dhulsey]

Sadly, I do not know for sure about TurnitinUK. As far as I know, the services offered by UK are the same as those in the U.S., but I am not sure about the timeline. Perhaps your Turnitin rep would know, or perhaps someone else from the UK will chime in?

[natalie_norton1]

Good news - confirmed in UK version too!

[garciah]

Is there a way to subscribe to the release notes? I checked the website, but couldn't find a way, and I'm hoping I just missed it.

[dhulsey]

Hi, garciah@oregonstate.edu‌! As far as I know, there is not a subscription for the release notes. Turnitin does send emails out to local Turnitin admins for major changes, but you might want to visit Turnitin's "Suggestions" section on their website and suggest the ability to subscribe. I know I would sign up for release notes in my email inbox.  

[garciah]

Hi, dhulsey@nmjc.edu‌! Thanks for the response. I submitted the suggestion as a ticket. I also followed Turnitin on Twitter, so hopefully, I can keep up with their release notes that way.

[garciah]

I just heard from Turnitin:

"Thank you for taking the time to write in with that suggestion.

Your opinion is duly noted, and I have just passed them on to the marketing team in charge of e-mail lists and subscriptions.

I also personally do agree with you on this once, so would like to see it happen."

[dhulsey]

Heather wrote:

I just heard from Turnitin:

"Thank you for taking the time to write in with that suggestion.

Your opinion is duly noted, and I have just passed them on to the marketing team in charge of e-mail lists and subscriptions.

I also personally do agree with you on this once, so would like to see it happen."

The That sounds like a promising response! I always appreciate being able to subscribe to important items like release notes.