Esyin Chew

1. Experiences of the University of Glamorgan Turnitin User Group10th September 2009 Esyin Chew

2. Content • Introduction to the strategy to develop Glamorgan Academics' usage for Grademark • Glamorgan's experiences on Grademark: • A show case on the Glamorgan’s Turnitin wiki site • Conclusion

3. Introduction to the strategy to develop Glamorgan Academics' usage for Grademark • The University of Glamorgan have implemented the Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy 2007-2012. The strategy is vested in the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) to promote learning and teaching excellence, resulting the increased use of online assessment and to enhance prevention and detection of plagiarism with TurnitinUK & Grademark. • CELT encourages all academics across the University and partner colleges to embed TurnitinUK through the institutional VLE (Blackboard) in their teaching module. GradeMark is an optional plus. • Encouraging example, Business School…

4. Introduction to the strategy to develop Glamorgan Academics' usage for Grademark • 121 support, disciplinary group training • CELT website, Learning blog and Turnitin wiki • Funded Research Project for GradeMark experiences

6. Glamorgan's experiences on Grademark • We are new…but very positive simply because the good students love it, and spark the learning interest for those less engaged students. • The support from TurnitinUK/US is beyond excellent – efficient and effective within 1-2 days to rectify the following issues: • Access to GradeMark • Broken link/ No permission for a particular instructor • GradeMark image generation • There are debates on the data protection issues for GradeMark: “In the last meeting of the HE Records Management and Information Compliance Group (Wolverhampton 15th May 2009), HEIs in the UK may not be encouraged to use Turnitin/Grademark due to the Data Protection issues – the feedback and comments from our academics that would be stored in a US server is not complies with the European law.”

7. Glamorgan's experiences on Grademark • Our move: • Checked with our institutional Information Compliance Officer. After a thorough research, he is,  at the moment, comfortable with our use of the system. Reference is made to the legal status in the document (link below) where it states that “The contractual terms which have been approved by the European Commission when considering the issue of transferring data outside the EU create an obligation on the iPardigms to comply with the terms of the DPA, to disclose information if requested to do so by an appropriate authority and to deal with requests from the academic institution”  It also states that they are a member of Safe Harbor.http://www.plagiarismadvice.org/documents/legal/DataProcessing_FactSheet_Revision.pdf    (Pg 9). • Still waiting for the Information Commissioner for the definitive view on GradeMark. • In the past – based on the individual academic’s interest. E.g. Police Sciences • Now and onwards: piloting in a small group (2009-2010) and then rolling out to the whole institution and partner college (2010-2011)

8. Pilot Project for GradeMark • “Turn it in or Turn it off” - A Collaborative Pilot Project Funded by Sandpit Education and TurnitinUK, Sept 2009 - Feb 2010 • Project Leader:Dr Esyin ChewProject investigators:Dr Jennifer Austin (HASS), Kim Blakey (HASS), Norah Noblett (HASS), Dr. Colin Rogers (HeSAS), DrPaul Ryall (AT) and Dr Trevor Price (AT)

9. Research Project for GradeMark • The aim of this proposal is to investigate the learning and teaching experiences with GradeMark from various disciplines at the University of Glamorgan. • Taking a small group of Glamorgan Academics and their students from different disciplines (HeSAS/AT and HASS), the proposed collaborative project responds with the following objectives: a.) To identify both the academics’ and students’ confirming and disconfirming experiences on Turnitin – the online submission, plagiarism detection, feedback and grading tool b.) To discover academics’ perceptions and experience of the impact brought by GradeMark (underpinned by Vygotsky’s educational theory) c.) To produce a series of good case studies and a video based on the finding from (a) and (b) to promote blended assessment and feedback

10. The Glamorgan’s Turnitin wiki site 117 visits; 77 absolute unique visitors; 22 invited members

11. All lecturers who attended the training sessions were impressed by the facilities provided by both Turnitin and Grademark – including those… Some pedagogical debates. Does Grademark enhances learning and teaching experiences? More research is needed to provide a pool of scholarly evidence…I will report our finding next year. In a summary, one of my PhD research participant said…. Conclusion

12. “The problem now is not because of the technology – University X does not short of any technology; the problem is the lecturers themselves. Lecturers do not know how to integrate all these. Technology does impresses me but it is the lecturers who does not impress me!” ~Student A from University X Students’ views: Good Lecturer + Good educational technologies (Turnitin + Grademark) = impressive learning experiences

13. Thank you Dr Esyin Chew Senior Lecturer in Technology Enhanced Learning, Teaching and Assessment (http://celt.glam.ac.uk) echew@glam.ac.uk