Feedback Studio reduces academic misconduct, makes grading faster and easier

Challenge

Unitec has a strong focus on student and teacher support, and as such, it strives to provide both students and teachers with the tools and technology to achieve their goals.

Turnitin’s Feedback Studio was identified as a great eLearning solution to:

• Leave feedback for students, whilst saving time
• Help students build relationships with their work
• Make students aware of importance of academic integrity
• Support students to act with academic integrity

Results

Unitec has been using Feedback Studio for more than 11 years. Over this time, the use of the technology has matured.

“At first, our teachers primarily used Feedback Studio for similarity checking. However, as they got used to using the platform, more and more teachers started to use the different feedback functions, attaching rubrics and grading online,” said Lisa Simperingham, Academic Advisor (Digital Learning) at Unitec.

“The feedback from teachers has been positive. They say that it makes grading faster and easier, and they like the flexibility of being able to do their marking from anywhere. Also, being online, it simplifies the process of returning graded assessments to students,” she said.

However, Feedback Studio was not just implemented to help teachers with grading. Unitec is deeply committed to Academic Integrity, as outlined in its Academic Integrity Policy. To support this, the organisation offers Academic Integrity training to both students and instructors.

Simperingham says, “Turnitin complements our Academic Integrity training in mitigating academic misconduct. Specifically, Feedback Studio helps students learn how to attribute their work correctly. It also highlights to teachers the need to teach their students how to research and reference correctly. It also helps teachers when they need to make a case that a student has committed academic misconduct.”

Feedback Studio is used widely across Bachelor and Masters courses at Unitec, and the organisation has seen a steady rise in both active users and submissions since introducing it in 2008. Today, more than 500 instructors across 25 different departments are using Feedback Studio, with more than 4,000 assessments submitted through the platform each month.