Access to Digital Literacy Promotes Academic Integrity at Cranford College

Challenge

Like many institutions, Cranford increased students’ access to technology and internet sources with the intention of teaching independent thinking. While vital in preparing students for the world beyond school, exposure to digital literacy presented its own challenges regarding plagiarism.

Barbara Lodge, Head of ICT and Computing wanted students to “think about where they’re getting their information from, who it’s being presented by and what that person’s agenda might be if they have one and to really come to their own conclusions and become independent thinkers.” How could Cranford curb plagiarism while increasing independent thinking and student access to digital literacy?

Results

Cranford Community College adopted Turnitin Feedback Studio in 2014. Right away, students began submitting work online and instructors immediately received a clear, concise Similarity Report, which they shared with students. These Similarity Reports have helped students to achieve the institution-wide goal of creating independent thinkers:

“One of the things that I absolutely love about Turnitin and what students love that I wasn’t expecting was the rush to be the most original. We make the originality reports available to the students; we let them upload their work and then go back and start redrafting, rephrasing, and trying to make the work better and more their own. I mean it’s been fantastic; the unintended side effect of this has been how competitive the students have been over their originality scores. It’s brilliant!”

The time savings has also been noticeable. Each student assignment is processed in minutes, which has been a revelation to Barbara: “I still remember the days when I would sit and take a phrase from a student’s work and type it into Google to see where the source was because I knew it wasn’t their own work and now we’ ve got a piece of software that’s going to do that for you in a second.” Voice comments have given instructors the ability to leave audible feedback, deepening engagement with students. Barbara states, “They thought it was funny at fi rst...but the overwhelming response was that they appreciated more detailed feedback.”

Teachers, surprised by its ease of use, have embraced Feedback Studio. The college saw an 80% increase in instructor usage in 2018. Barbara adds, “Ultimately the whole point of any technology product or software service is to make our lives better, or easier, or simpler in some way. It absolutely will make your life easier and solve problems.”

Learn more about Feedback Studio at turnitin.com/products/feedback-studio