Holly Wang/KAIST

“Feedback Studio prevents plagiarism and frees up teachers’ time. It enables discussion and helps students realize that they can’t just get by submitting someone else’s work as their own. That realization is powerful.”

A Focus on High-Stakes Academic Literacy

Holly Wang is a professor at the KAIST School of Humanities and Social Sciences. She teaches the four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking as well as presentation and discussion courses. She works with around 100 graduate and undergraduate students per semester. KAIST students have strong science backgrounds and many go on to work within academia and industry. Holly’s graduate students are already becoming members of the academic community and need to write articles for publication in journals. When these students write, the stakes are high, and a thorough understanding of the importance of academic integrity, as well as proficiency in wider academic writing skills, is key.

Enabling Teachers with Turnitin Feedback Studio

With 100 students writing multiple papers each semester, Holly has lots of marking to do. Turnitin Feedback Studio saves her time and allows her to provide consistent yet targeted feedback. Rather than having to write the same comment over and over again, she uses the QuickMarks tool to add frequently used pre-loaded comments and editing marks to students’ papers—all with a simple drag and drop. Where necessary, she adds customized comments, sometimes containing links to more detailed explanations. These customized comments can be saved and reused later when marking other papers. Holly also makes use of the general comment section, where she can provide an overall comment on the paper. She feels this “big idea” feedback helps summarize the specific comments on a paper, which can overwhelm students. She thinks recording spoken feedback on TFS allows her to tailor her feedback style to students and situations where a verbal comment is more helpful.

Checking students’ writing for plagiarism is another task which used to take up too much of Holly’s time. “I remember that before using Feedback Studio, I would read through student papers and sometimes feel that those papers were too good,” she said. “I would spend time searching for certain phrases or parts of the paper on Google and catching students plagiarizing. However, this was always a waste of time because other students who needed my help would not be able to get it.”

Now, Holly uses Feedback Studio’s Originality Checking feature to check students’ submissions for plagiarism. The tool checks students’ work for improper citation or potential plagiarism by comparing it against the world’s largest academic database. The tool also checks against other assignments submitted by students, functionality that Holly has found particularly useful, as her students are sometimes tempted to use a friend’s paper rather than writing their own. Feedback Studio’s Originality Checking feature has caught more plagiarism and given Holly more time to focus on areas where she can add so much more value: “Using Turnitin does that for me and I think that I can better use my time to have discussions with students, which is more fruitful than looking for plagiarized parts of papers.”

Increasing Students’ Creativity for All

Academic integrity isn’t only important from a moral and legal standpoint. Without it, there can be no creativity. If they are to come up with original ideas, both in their studies and in their wider lives, students must learn that they can’t simply copy other people’s thoughts.

Holly feels that Turnitin is fundamental in changing how students approach creativity. Using Feedback Studio, students know that they will be caught out if they try to copy from another source. This helps students understand the value of original work. Teachers want to see their work – no matter how good or bad it is, it has value because it is original. For Holly, this is a powerful realization for students, as it gives them confidence in the legitimacy of their own thoughts, encouraging them to create. “Academic integrity and original writing should be promoted more heavily in Korea so that more and more students feel the validity of their work,” Holly says. “Hopefully, this will lead to a stronger nation that not only has the technology, but also has the creativity and the integrity to stay a leader in the world.”

Everything in One Place

Because students submit their work directly to Feedback Studio, and Holly and her students interact with it there through its various drafts, Holly can easily manage students’ submissions. If a student forgets to bring their physical paper to class, she has them open the paper in Feedback Studio. Likewise, if a student loses a copy of their paper, they—or Holly—can always locate the online version. Holly always asks her students to resubmit their papers at least once after she has marked the first draft. She sometimes also encourages peer review of drafts—which also takes place within the online Feedback Studio environment. Students can see Holly’s feedback and their peers’ comments on their paper before producing an improved second draft within Feedback Studio. (Peer feedback, and students’ assignments, can be anonymized to avoid any potential sensitivities in the class.) All drafts are saved within Feedback Studio, allowing teachers and students alike to see the progression of a paper from first through final draft.

Having everything stored in once place online has made the logistics of Holly’s classes much easier to handle—no longer does Holly need to store hundreds of hard-copy papers. In addition, Moodle integration means that, as at KAIST, Feedback Studio—and all of students’ other online course content—really can be delivered through one single platform.

About Turnitin

Turnitin is revolutionizing the experience of writing to learn. Turnitin’s formative feedback and originality checking services promote critical thinking, ensure academic integrity and help students improve their writing. Turnitin provides instructors with the tools to engage students in the writing process, provide personalized feedback, and assess student progress over time. Turnitin is used by more than 26 million students at 15,000 institutions in 150 countries. Backed by Insight Venture Partners, GIC, Norwest Venture Partners, Lead Edge Capital and Georgian Partners, Turnitin is headquartered in Oakland, Calif., with international offices in Newcastle, U.K., Utrecht, Netherlands, Seoul, South Korea, and Melbourne, Australia.

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