Case study: Summative marking with Turnitin Feedback Studio

Department of Department of English and Related Literature
Nicoletta Asciuto

Nicoletta Asciuto shares experiences of using Turnitin Feedback Studio to mark and provide feedback on mostly essay-based summative assignments in the Department of English and Related Literature.

Prior to the introduction of Ultra, Turnitin was used for originality reporting and to allow staff to access submissions for marking, but marking and feedback was provided via Google drive. With the need to refer to assessment criteria during the marking process, this meant that up to three open windows were required which proved to be inconvenient for markers.

With the move to Ultra, marking is now done entirely within Turnitin Feedback Studio, and Nicoletta demonstrated how the feedback forms that were previously provided via Google drive are now embedded within the interface and accessible on the same screen as the student's work. A summary of assessment criteria is also provided aiming to increase clarity and relevance and to ensure that staff have access to this information while marking to, for example, guide their choice of language for feedback.

Although moderation processes still need to be carried out outside Turnitin Feedback Studio via a Google spreadsheet accessible to marker and moderator, the move to Ultra VLE has been positive, with improvements in efficiency and satisfaction for staff and students. Staff find the new system more convenient as everything is in one place, whilst students appreciate the accessibility of feedback.

Watch their presentation:

Summative marking with Turnitin Feedback Studio (Panopto viewer) (7 mins 56 secs, UoY log-in required)

Transcript

First of all, thank you. Thank you, so much for asking me to come and share our our experiences, using the ultra VLE for summative marking as you said.

So I don't, I don't know if everyone would be familiar with what we did before, so I thought that I would just very briefly explain what we did, how we marked prior to, um, moving to the Ultra VLE. So, uh, so essentially up to, just, about a, well, just over a year ago, we would access our marking on turnitin. So our marking, I should say, is, by and large, made up of essays. So. Kind of. Vary in length, quite substantially from first year to third year. But so the first essay that students write when coming on to the English department would be a 1500 words, and then, the very, the kind of word count of 3000 words or with the dissertation 8000 words.

Okay. So. So what happened prior to the move was that we will access the essays on turnitin, but we could access the Turnitin report. And, you know, check for plagiarism and things. But then what we would then do is that we would fill out this feedback form, which was housed in Google Drive. So this had various complications and one like that the colleagues repeatedly complained about was the fact that they would have to have two windows open and in order to comment on the essay, they would also have to have these open. So essentially, it was a bit fiddly, shall we say. So we would be. So the mark sheet would be only partly pre-populated. And then we would then write up our comments according to, you know, in, in each section and each section matches a category in the assessment criteria. Okay. We would also ask colleagues to have the assessment criteria open while marking. So effectively, this meant that colleagues had about three windows open on their laptops, on their, their computer. So it was um, yeah. It wasn't um, yeah. It wasn't particularly convenient, shall we say.

So the marker would then fill out the different sections, as I said. And then they would also populate a moderation sheet, which would look something like this, where we would record the conversation between the marker and the moderator. So here's the marker's comments and then the moderator. And then here we would highlight some scripts for moderation, and then we would give comments. Okay. So then there would be kind of additional spreadsheet. Shall we say.

As of last year, we moved to marking on turnitin as it is embedded in the Ultra VLE. So it's been a massive improvement, in essence, because we can now do all of the marking in one place. So this is the kind of the major improvement that staff have really welcomed. That's that they can write comments while also having the essay right here. As you can see. So I hope you can. I hope the screen sharing is still on. And you can you can see this. We don't - I should say that we don't annotate essays. So the only feedback our students get is the report at the end. So we have tweaked the grading form to have sections that match those sections that I was showing you in the old feedback form. So we have kind of migrated that format to the Ultra VLE, and we have put in a word limit of 200 words for each section. So each section, any marker can write only up to 200 words. So this is just a different section. And then the summary points.

What we've added, which we thought would be beneficial to colleagues is that here at the bottom, we have the a kind of a summary of the assessment criteria. So this is why, kind of following student feedback so we were hearing a lot of students complain that they would read the assessment criteria, and then they would read their feedback, and they thought that the we're not using exactly the same language as in the essays right here. So in order to encourage colleagues to use the language that's really like in the assessment criteria that we have, that we show to students, we have added this down here so that colleagues can be reminded of what, you know, of the sort of language. Um, unfortunately, there's only so much that one can copy in here. So, for example, there's, there are parts of the class descriptors that are missing which would be even more useful to have because, in the past, we've had students complain about receiving, for example, a first class mark. But then see the reference of the word good in the in the comments and the feedback, because good is associated with a different mark band or a different grade boundary. So this has, you know, this we found was a kind of a useful move to have everything in one place and suddenly to be able to have to also kind of easily scroll down and see the - kind of - be reminded of the assessment criteria and the fact that we should try and draw our language for feedback from there, as far as we can.

The problem of the moderation sheet remains, in a way, because we still use - so if I, if I just close this - we still use a moderator pack or moderation sheet that is in the is in Google Drive. So when it comes to moderation then we have to leave Ultra VLE and use Google Spreadsheets. This is something that we're looking into because actually while staff welcome to move to the Ultra VLE for marking and find it as I said, by and large, like much easier. They are still struggling with the fact that the moderator pack is on Google Drive and also, just about kind of the layout of the spreadsheet. So this year we're trying to - what the assessment team is going to try and edit this a little bit so that it's possible to better record a conversation between marker, and moderator. But we're also thinking whether it might be possible to embed the moderation sheet in the VLE, so that it's all in one place. But that's something that actually. Perhaps it will be It will be great to have, you know, kind of feedback from the VLE team on this.

I think, yeah, I think I think that's mostly it. I mean our professional services staff has welcomed the move because, again, it makes it easier for them to kind of manage everything in one place. Students seem to be finding it just fine to kind of look at the mark and feedback on the VLE. So it's it seems like it's been a positive step, I think.