Tag Archives: services

Download of Grademark papers (‘Current View’) & Digital Receipts

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Resolved:
March 5th 12.30-17.30

Turnitin service disruption 05/03/21

Turnitin Support have informed us that there is currently an issue with the download of the grademark paper (also known as ‘current view’) and digital receipts. This issue is being investigated by Turnitin’s engineers and you can review updates at the Turnitin Status page.

Please note, that the view of the similarity report, marks and feedback and the submission information that are available via the Turnitin Feedback Studio (paper view) are unaffected. Student submissions and electronic return of feedback are unaffected. Staff review of student work and marking activities is also unaffected.

Tii News: March 2017

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9:00am – 10:20am on 27/03/17
Turnitin was unavailable for submissions

The following error was displayed to students/staff attempting to upload any file type: “Invalid file type! Valid types are: Microsoft Word (DOC, DOCX), PowerPoint (PPT, PPTX, PPS, PPSX), Acrobat PDF, PostScript, Text, HTML, WordPerfect (WPD), OpenOffice (ODT), Rich Text Format and Hangul (HWP). Click here for more information.”
This is issue was reported to Turnitin. This issue prevented any work from being submitted between approximately 9:00am and 10:20am on Monday the 27th of March, 2017.

Tii News: December 2016

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Wednesday, 30th November – Digital Receipts issue

RESOLVED at 11:36 on Monday 5th December

Students submitting assignments via Turnitin have not been receiving email submission confirmation receipts since approximately 20:35 on 29/11/16.  This issue has been reported to Turnitin and is under investigation currently.

Until this issue is resolved, we recommend that students take a screenshot of the on-screen digital receipt shown once an assignment has been submitted.

Students may also download a copy of their digital receipt by viewing the Turnitin submission point, clicking the “Download” icon next to their submission, and choosing the “Digital receipt” option from the menu shown:

screenshot showing how to obtain a digital receipt

Reminder – Turnitin is unavailable from 3-7pm this Saturday, 3rd December

Turnitin have advised us that they will be carrying out maintenance on the service on Saturday 3rd December, from 3-7pm. The service will be completely unavailable during this maintenance window (including the Turnitin for iPad app), and we therefore recommend avoiding scheduling submission deadlines to fall within this period.

Tii News: September to November 2016

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Just a few things to flag with regard to our Turnitin service.

Turnitin for iPad app update – some features added

The Turnitin for iPad app had an update and minor makeover during the summer. Here are a few of the features top features that have been added recently.

  • You can now see the title of the submitted work underneath the student’s name
  • You can see if the submission was late in the app (small clock symbol)
  • You can see the mark as out of 100
  • You can search submissions (will search submission titles or names) and also sort by Name or Date submitted

Image of the Tii iPad app

Bonus tip courtesy of Craig Wakefield at Eastbourne:

iOS8+ lets you install supplemental keyboards. There is an app called MyScript Stylus which you can install as a supplemental keyboard and then you can handwrite your feedback on the iPad screen with a stylus (an inexpensive stylus is the wacom bamboo).

ipadpic2-2biwgyq-1024x768

New tutorial materials for Turnitin services

Turnitin have provided some new learning materials and they are quite helpful for when you run across day-to-day queries.

Here is the instructor manual for the version of Turnitin that we currently use: https://guides.turnitin.com/03_Integrations/Turnitin_Partner_Integrations/Blackboard/Blackboard_Learn/Blackboard_Basic/02_Instructor_User_Manual

Here is the manual for the iPad app: https://guides.turnitin.com/01_Manuals_and_Guides/iPad_User_Guide
Please note: reference is made to students using the app, this is not available for those who use Turnitin through integration (we use Turnitin through integration with studentcentral/blackboard).

Here is the manual for the Feedback Studio, the new version of the Turnitin document viewer, which will be released next summer at University of Brighton (tentative – to be confirmed) – just in case you would like to get a head-start: https://guides.turnitin.com/01_Manuals_and_Guides/Instructor/Feedback_Studio_Instructor_Guide

Demo version of the Turnitin Feedback Studio

Also while you are looking at Feedback Studio you can try out a demo version at Turnitin’s site – Direct Link.

I would also point you towards the video below, which outlines the differences between Turnitin classic (what we use now) and the Feedback Studio.

Uptime reports for Turnitin

Details of outages:

September:

Some users encountered issues in early September (week beginning 5/9) when upgrading their Turnitin app to the newest version at that time. These issues are now resolved.

October:

Turnitin reported brief service degradations on the 6th of October and 21st of October. No interruptions to service were reported to the university during these times.

November:

Saturday, 5th of November from 1pm – 6pm
Turnitin have advised us that they will be carrying out maintenance on the service on Saturday 5th November, from 1-6pm. The service will be unavailable during this maintenance window, and we would therefore recommend avoiding scheduling submission deadlines to fall within this period.

Friday, 18th of November

RESOLVED
Issue occurred from 10:50 on Thursday, 17/11/16 to 14:37 on Friday, 18/11/16

Turnitin submission points set to ‘allow late submissions’ are disallowing students from submitting after the set deadline

There is currently a nationwide issue with Turnitin where submission points that have the ‘allow late submissions’ setting enabled, are not allowing students to submit assignments after the deadline has passed. When students attempt to submit they will receive an error message stating they have already submitted an assignment, even when they have not.

Please note: recommended practice is to create an additional submission point for students who have agreed extensions. Where this is the case students will be unaffected. However, in cases where ‘allow late submissions’ has been enabled in order to allow the submission of agreed extensions, then while this issue persists, we recommend setting up an additional submission point for those students. Instructions for setting up submission points are provided at this page: https://staff.brighton.ac.uk/is/learningandteaching/Pages/Turnitin/Turnitin-Setting-up-a-submission-point-in-studentcentral.aspx

December – early warning:

Turnitin have advised us that they will be carrying out maintenance on the service on Saturday 3rd December, from 3-7pm. The service will be completely unavailable during this maintenance window (including the Turnitin for iPad app), and we therefore recommend avoiding scheduling submission deadlines to fall within this period.

Tii News: July/August 2016

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05/08/16: Turnitin Scheduled Maintenance on Saturday, 20th August from 3pm – 7pm

Turnitin has informed us that scheduled maintenance will take place on Saturday, 20th of August from 3pm – 7pm GMT. We recommend that you avoid scheduling any submission deadlines to fall during this period. TurnitinUK may be temporarily unavailable to users during that time.

Turnitin Building Block Upgrade this week

This week we are upgrading the version of Turnitin that we use through integration with studentcentral. This is a minor update, but based on testing there are a few improvements to report. This upgrade was confirmed as complete on the morning of Friday, 5th of August, 2016.

Grade Centre Column Visibility for Anonymous Submissions

In May it was reported that Turnitin was not automatically making the associated Grade Centre column visible to students on the post date. This was communicated broadly on 23rd May. After in-depth investigation by Turnitin support and myself this issue was later localised to anonymous submission points specifically. Normal submission points were and are revealing the marks and associated column as expected. Based on tests of the new version of Turnitin, this issue is now resolved for anonymous submission points. The associated Grade Centre column will become visible within 30mins of the post date passing.hideshowimg

Please note: if manual changes are made to the column visibility then the automatic availability will be overuled and the column will need to be manually made visible to students using the “Hide from Students (on/off)” option.

The Turnitin “…by Group” tool

The Turnitin “View Assignments by Group” tool now has the grade column included. This is a tool that is essentially part of studentcentral but interacts/pulls information for the Turnitin submission point and filters it by groups which have been previously setup in studentcentral. The inclusion of the Grade Column has been requested for a while as it will enable markers to keep track of which papers have been marked more easily as there was no indication of this in the prior view. Unfortunately, folks who use anonymous marking who have requested this most will not benefit as the marks are omitted from both the Grade Centre and the “…by Group” tool until the post date has passed in order to maintain anonymity. I will keep asking if improvements can be made to this tool, such as a way to manually indicate which papers in the list have been completed.
assignments by group

02/08/16: deleted submission point issue in Turnitin for iPad app

05/08/16 Update: based on testing this issue has been resolved in the Turnitin for iPad app and also the display shown in the class stats display shown in submission points (“hide dropped and deleted” is hiding deleted submission points again).

During scheduled Turnitin testing on Monday, I discovered that the Turnitin for iPad is still displaying submission points that have been deleted. This was reported to Turnitin immediately and is currently being investigated. This is a low risk issue as most deleted submission points are empty. The most common reasons for staff to delete submission points are as follows:

  • the submission point was surplus to needs and had no student submissions in it;
  • the submission point did not produce a student-facing link in the Assessment area of the module due to a login timeout error*;
  • the submission point is a duplicate.

*this is known issue that happens occasionally when a submission point is created after being logged-in to studentcentral for more than 1 hour.

As there is not a visual indication or warning that a submission point is actually deleted and no longer active within the iPad app, there is a small chance that if a deleted submission point contained submissions that a staff person could mark ‘said’ submissions unawares. If that is the case your marking would not sync through to the module-based submission point as expected. If you have any concerns that this may have happened, please contact me, Fiona MacNeill (Falmer LTA) as it is possible to arrange that deleted submission points are reinstated. I will update this post as soon as this issue is resolved.