You may have seen a news article on the staff intranet over the summer about enhancements to the way Turnitin and Brightspace work with each other. These enchantments are the result of ongoing work between D2L, ourselves, and several other EU universities over the last year.
The article summarised the headline improvements, so please do have a look at it if you haven’t already. Probably the most immediate and significant improvement though is a reduction in the number of clicks you have to make when marking work. For those of you who did not use Brightspace last year this will perhaps not seem so amazing, but for those who did use it, read on!
Last year, marking with Turnitin in Brightspace meant entering a mark and feedback in Turntin and then clicking to sync it over to Brightspace, clicking again to ‘use’ that mark within Brightspace, and then clicking a third time to ‘Publish’ it. That was three steps per student, and if you changed the mark during second marking you had to repeat each step.
Well, thanks to the new enhancements all that is gone. When marking with Turnitin this year you just enter the mark and feedback in Turnitin and then go straight on to the next student. No syncing, no ‘use this grade’, and definitely no clicking ‘Publish’ – in fact as a marker you should not now click on Publish at all. Brightspace does everything for you in the background, and saves the marking as ‘draft’ until it is published by the Programme Support Team.
You will also now be able to see the status of Turnitin marking as you go, thanks to a new column in the Assignment Folder view. This column allows you to directly open the work for marking by clicking on the pencil icon, and also shows you any mark that has been entered for that student so far. It also shows you whether they have had feedback added. There is still an icon that looks like it’s for ‘syncing’ the mark, but its actually just for refreshing the page; you don’t actually have to click on it!
For a step-by-step guide to the enhanced way of marking with Turntin in Brightspace, see the updated guide in the Brightspace Staff Resources area.
The updated method also now features in Session 3 of our staff Brightspace foundation training. Staff are welcome to come to this whether they are new to Brightspace or used it last year. Dates and times – and the all-important booking link – are available on the staff intranet.
You can also come along to a Brightspace Drop-in session. These are usually on Mondays (Lansdowne -S103) and Fridays (Talbot – DL115) from 1200-1500. Please see the staff intranet for specific dates and times.
