Earle Abrahamson PFHEA School of Health Sport and Bioscience University of East London

1. For whom is the feedback intended? A student-focused critical analysis of Turnitin software as a tool for learning. Earle Abrahamson PFHEA School of Health Sport and Bioscience University of East London e.d.abrahamson@uel.ac.uk Dr Jonathan Mann SFHEA Centre for student success University of East London j.mann@uel.ac,uk

2. Content • Contextualising the problem: theory and practice • Overview of the findings: student and tutor sentiment • Notable key comments • Recommendations • Theory into practice - MyFeedback

3. We have our own rules and conventions. Writing? But I’m no good at English (or speak it as a second language). 21st century You will need to: - Thinklike us. - Writelike us. We never discussed this on the BTEC. How does University work? LOL! Another puppy picture on Facebook! This lecturer is asking for too much. I already know this. Tell me how to get a first instead. I want to build a robust argument. Wikipedia is so convenient. I’m tired from my night shift and haven’t had time to eat yet. I want to keep that similarity score down.

4. Many students experience written assessments as a high-stakes activity • ‘academic under-preparedness inevitably leads to academic exclusion’ (Chokwe, 2013) • ‘students’ underprepared status often serves to compound their marginalisation and oppression’ (Sanchez and Paulson, 2008, cited in Chokwe, 2013) • Feedback has the potential to be viewed as remedial (Hattie and Timperley, 2007) • Students may fail to understand or interpret their feedback (Duncan et al., 2007 and Taras, 2003) Developmental feedback can bridge these gaps.

5. Students need to learn implicit academic rules Academic Literacy  ‘meaning making, identity, power, and authority … the institutional nature of what counts as knowledge’ Academic Socialisation  ‘Students acquire the ways of talking, writing, thinking, and using literacy that typified members of a disciplinary or subject area community’ (Lea and Street, 2006) Feedback is a human learning journey and not a product.

6. Listening to our students:Narratives and negotiation • How do our students receive and interpret feedback? • How can we use Turnitin to enhance feedback so that it becomes meaningful to our students? • Do we question the intention and purpose of feedback? • Are students inducted into receiving and understanding feedback? Feedback is a partnership between tutor and student.

7. Students and tutors: general sentiments • Disparities between student and tutor opinion • More positive sentiments from students than tutors • More negative sentiment from tutors than students • This does not reveal much about academic usefulness, though The feedback “partnership” seems to be imbalanced.

8. Notable key students comments: genre I have noticed that even though I have I have put a lot of effort in I only get like one sentence back in feedback … to me I don't think that gives you room to improve. [I'd need to have] a few more sentences telling me exactly what it went wrong like which paragraph [or] was it which line was it. I really don’t know where I went wrong, so I'm going to have to just fix up on my sentence structures. Make my own feedback, basically. I think with our class in particular, some people have taken a lot of time out of education before they have come to uni. I've been out of education years before uni, and … before this, well, I hadn't [written] a paragraph in God knows how many years. It's a massive step. I don't feel as though Turnitin helps at all with academic writing. I feel like the formatives, they help us improve, but I don’t know how it helps. Feedback should anchored in and aligned with genre type.

9. Notable key students comments: trust in the partnership? Feedback is a conversation between people not simply a statement in learning. I have one problem with Turnitin … it said I had plagiarised it [the phrases 'A1, A2, and A3'] when I hadn't … it said that I had plagiarised it from a maths website but I never did that … We're not statistics … Turnitin is a statistic … They're trying to turn everything now - students, lecturers, work, everything - into a number. They're not humanising things anymore. There's no interaction between people. In my opinion, I think Turnitin is basically trying to act smart saying … trying to guess where you plagiarised but it's not always correct, like, this came from my head, not Google … OK? Also, what I am upset about … I was told that I paraphrase too much. Well, how am I going to come [up] with my own ideas when I'm being scientific or medical? … [As a solution] I'll probably just have to paraphrase it and kind of just simplify. I don't know. Is that a solution? I don't know. Turnitin can be a barrier to learning and thinking.

10. Notable key tutor comments: purpose … is Turnitin a plagiarism tool or is it a development tool? The fact that we change from using it as a staff tool for catching people to one in a sense to give students the tools to self-regulate was a good hope. I think in a sense you might have given students a way to check have I cheated well enough, or have I been caught? Students view it as plagiarism detection … Whether it has a secondary value as a feedback mechanism … depends on the [kind of] student they are … the people who possibly do need it, don't use it Different views about the purpose and value of feedback.

11. Expectation vs. experience Sometimes poles apart Students Staff Experience  Expectation Feedback should be developmental.

12. Selected software recommendations

13. Theory in to practice • Awarded large grant • Students employed to help students • Aligned with Academic Integrity policies • Professional mentoring for student co-creators • Custom Turnitin Quick Mark set with learning development focus • Links to videos and other bespoke online tutoring resources • Used 1,200 times so far • Students feedback on their feedback – 83% would recommend the service to others. Cultural changes, but no software changes as yet.

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