Student Success Week will take place from October 28th to November 1st with the theme Moving Feedback Forward. Turnitin along with its sponsors invite papers or presentation topics for its first virtual conference on the implications of feedback on student success. In particular, we are interested in papers or presentations that discuss the impact of using web-based tools to provide feedback and how these approaches improve student success.

We welcome papers that, for example, detail best practices in the classroom (traditional, hybrid, and online), share research on strategies for providing effective feedback using technology, and discuss the discrete student outcomes of using web-based approaches to support student learning.

Proposals should be 300 words or less, but feel free to include links to additional information, previously published work, or examples. If you are interested in presenting, please submit your presentation proposal for any of our six topical areas:

If your proposal is accepted, we will invite you to participate in one of our daily virtual conference sessions the week of October 28th to November 1st. The sessions will be 45 minutes in length and be delivered via a web conferencing platform. Sessions will be held from 10:00 - 10:45am PST. Other proposals will be considered for guest blogs and papers that will be made available for download.

Do your students find your feedback helpful? What are the types of feedback that students are most apt to respond to?

Turnitin recently conducted a survey of 1,000 students to gather insights into how instructor feedback impacts the development of student writing. Specifically, the survey sought to uncover what students value most in terms of instructor feedback and how the timing of feedback affects the development of their writing skills.

Turnitin created a new interactive website, "Ratings for Top Student Sources," which ranks the most popular online sources found in student papers.

Turnitin partnered with a team of educators who scored the online sources most frequently used by secondary and higher education students in six categories: academic, social media, paper mills, encyclopedias, news/portals, and shopping sites. The educators used the Source Educational Evaluation Rubric (SEER) to rate 197 sources on the level of their authority, educational value, intent, originality, and quality. Visitors to the interactive site can set their viewing preferences using combinations of these attributes.

After evaluating the 190 posters submitted to Plagiarism.org's Originality Matters Student Poster Contest, and narrowing it down to ten finalists, we emerged with a winning poster designed by Madeline Ocampo, a 17-year-old senior studying visual arts at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA).

29 to 31 May 2013 - Hong Kong

Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU)

With a theme of "Learning Outcomes: impact on next generation learners", the forum is an excellent opportunity for members of the educational community to get together and discuss the issues that matter to them.

A major focus of the event will be technologies which can be used to bring about effective improvements in student learning outcomes. Subjects under discussion will include innovative teaching and learning and influence of outcomes on instructional changes.

In a 2-part Turnitin webcast entitled, "Engaging Faculty and Students to Resist Plagiarism Through Policy and Practice," David Wangaard, Ed.D., the Executive Director for The School for Ethical Education (SEE) touched on four rationalizing factors for student cheating and plagiarism.

1. Under Pressure
2. Uninterested
3. Unable
4. Unfair

"What's the point of recognizing these kinds of rationalizations?" asks Wangaard. "There are things that we can do as faculty and teachers to resist these things all appropriately."

As you know, Plagiarism Education Week is just around the corner, taking place from April 22-26. To make this week a success, we need participation from Turnitin's enormous educational communitym which spans over 125 countries, to help us amplify this important message that "Originality Matters."

There are many ways for you to participate in raising awareness for plagiarism education among your colleagues and students during Plagiarism Education Week—here are a few:

1. Join one of the five live or on-demand webinars featuring prominent voices in education and integrity.

2. Share Plagiarism Education Week with your friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or your blog. We’re using the hashtag #PlagEdWeek

Rules, if not enforced, lose their value—so is true of an academic integrity policy. I recently interviewed a university professor, we’ll call him Professor Thomas (not his real name), who followed his university’s sanction policies as written and intended, and found himself reprimanded by faculty colleagues for doing so. As a result Thomas took the initiative to try and change a strict and rigid policy, into one that offered flexibility, remediation, and learning.

The sanction guidelines for undergraduates were straightforward—the first offense was a zero on the assignment, the second offense was a failure in the course, the third offense was suspension for one full semester, the fourth resulted in suspension for two semesters, and beyond that was permanent expulsion. The guidelines were even more strict for graduate-level students, whereby the first offense resulted in failure in the course, and a second offense would result in expulsion.

Last year, Professor Thomas had nine instances of plagiarism out of 28 students on the first assignment in a graduate level course—they ranged from very minor (a cited, but non-quoted, copied sentence) to quite serious (multiple paragraphs) cases. Thomas reported all nine cases to the academic integrity committee per the policy.