March 2014
Turnitin Maintenance
Early warning – Turnitin UK services may be intermittently unavailable during a scheduled maintenance period between 3pm and 7pm on Saturday, April 5, 2014.
Issues
Some institutions have reported performance issues occurring on the 13th and 21st March. Turnitin have since responded that these issues affected certain integrations.
Our integration between studentcentral and Turnitin was not affected.
New
- A new feature planned for introduction at the end of March, is the ability to import rubrics from Excel.
- The Excel file must follow these rules:
- The file must be a .xls or .xlsx file
- Only one rubric can be uploaded per Excel file
- The rubric in the spreadsheet must have the scales of the rubric as its first row
- The rubric in the spreadsheet must have the criteria of the rubric as its first column
- If included, criteria descriptions should be in the same cells as the criteria titles separated by a line break (ALT + ENTER = line break)
- Descriptors for the body of the rubric can be included
- Criteria titles must be 13 characters or less
- Grading formulas will not be imported with the Excel file
- Numerical values cannot be imported. If you would like to use numerical values, add them to the rubric after import using the rubric/form manager.
- Rubrics that have been imported from Excel inside the rubric manager in Turnitin, will be able to be used in Turnitin for iPad as long as they have been attached to an assignment in Turnitin.
- At the time of writing (March 2014) rubrics cannot be exported from Turnitin to Excel.
- The Excel file must follow these rules:
I have been working in the Educational Technology field within Higher Education for eleven years. A big part of my job is finding new and innovative ways of integrating technology into current teaching and learning methodology. This can include assisting academic staff with Virtual Learning Environments/Learning Management Systems (Blackboard), implementing specific software packages, maximising current technologies and championing new ones. I find this profession both riveting and rewarding. I really enjoy life on the cutting edge, but I also enjoy being able to help staff achieve small and meaningful efficiencies; sometimes that makes all the difference.
