Monthly Archives: November 2012

GradeMark Paperless Grading

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GradeMark is a paperless grading system that gives instructors the ability to add comments and corrections to assignments submitted electronically. It is a tool offered within Turnitin, the plagiarism detection software product used at JHU. With its drag and drop functionality, among other features, GradeMark has the potential to save instructors a great deal of time when grading online assignments.  It is also easily integrated with Blackboard.

(Note: In order to use GradeMark, online assignments must be created using Turnitin. If using Turnitin within Blackboard, accounts are automatically created for instructors and students through the Blackboard system. If using Turnitin outside of Blackboard, the instructor is responsible for creating separate accounts for each student. Please click here for more information on Turnitin’s integration with Blackboard.)

Screen shot showing example of using GradeMark

GradeMark contains several different grading features:

  • Dragging and Dropping Quickmarks – Quickmarks are frequently used comments that are readily available to drag and drop into a student’s assignment. While viewing an assignment, the instructor can select from a panel of standard Quickmarks that come with GradeMark, or from a custom set that s/he has created.  For example, the abbreviation ‘Awk.’ is a Quickmark indicating an awkward phrase. The ability to drag and drop Quickmarks to an assignment, instead of typing them over and over again, can save instructors a lot of time.
  • General Comments – Each assignment has a generous space where general comments can be added.  General comments can be used to further clarify any Quickmarks that were added as well as discuss the assignment as a whole.
  • Voice Comments – A recent addition to GradeMark is the ability to add voice comments. A voice comment can be added to the assignment lasting up to three minutes in length.  An instructor can use the built-in microphone in his/her computer to easily record the message.
  • Rubrics – Rubrics created within GradeMark can help streamline the grading process by using a ‘scorecard’ approach. Specific criteria and scores are defined in a rubric that is then associated with an assignment. Instructors grade the assignment by filling in the scores based on the evaluative criteria in the rubric. There is also the option of associating Quickmarks with rubrics when they are added to the assignment.

Students are able to view their graded assignments when the ‘post date’ is reached. The post date is set by the instructor when setting up the assignment. Students have the option to print or save a copy of the graded assignment and can view only their own submissions.

GradeMark Logo showing grade book and apple

Advantages:

  • Flexibility in marking up assignments – Quickmarks, rubrics, text, voice comments all available.
  • Time saved dragging and dropping reusable comments.
  • Increased consistency in grading.
  • Clear feedback to students, instead of ‘scribbled margins.’
  • Opportunity to provide more detailed feedback to students including links and resources.
  • No need to download assignments – everything is web-based, stored online.
  • If the instructor is using Blackboard, when the assignment is graded the grade is automatically transferred and recorded into the Blackboard Grade Center.

Amy Brusini, Course Management Training Specialist
Center for Educational Resources

Image sources: Amy Brusini screen shot of GradeMark example; GradeMark logo

Discouraging Cheating in the Classroom

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Research has shown that colleges and universities with honor codes that are backed by an institutional culture of ethical behavior experience fewer incidents of student cheating than those with no codes or codes that are not reinforced with institutional expectations. (Donald L. McCabe, Linda Klebe Trevino & Kenneth D. Butterfield. 2001. Cheating in Academic Institutions: A Decade of Research. Ethics & Behavior. 11(3):219–232). Even in the absence of an honor code, these researchers found that creating a culture of ethical behavior, even at the level of the classroom, could have a significant positive impact on the likelihood of student cheating.

StudentsCheatingAs to implementing such a culture, the University of North Carolina’s Center for Faculty Excellence’s blog, CFE 100+ Tips for Teaching Large Classes, offers practical and concrete examples in Tip #27: Discourage Cheating by Providing Moral Reminders and Logistical Obstacles. They suggest having a brief discussion about cheating before a test, and asking students to write out and sign the honor code. Even if there is no specific honor code at the institution, faculty can ask students to write a statement on their exams saying that they will not give or receive assistance.This is most effective if done before, rather than at the end of the test.

The UNC blog post also offers examples for making it logistically impossible to cheat. These tips will be particularly useful for faculty teaching large classes and using multiple choice questions on exams.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image source: Microsoft Clip Art

Teaching Your Students to Avoid Plagiarism

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As the semester passes the midterm mark and papers and reports come due, we begin to get requests from faculty for ways to teach students how to avoid plagiarism. Most often students plagiarize unintentionally, because they don’t know how to cite sources properly, cut and paste from e-resources, and aren’t skilled in the arts of paraphrase and summary.

Recently a colleague, Lynne Stuart, the MSEL Librarian for Economics, Government, Law, Policy Studies, pointed me to a great web site on plagiarism at Arizona University that addresses this, and is called, appropriately, Accidental Plagiarism. There are two tutorials that provide background information on what plagiarism is and provide examples of how to properly summarize, paraphrase, and quote sources. The first has a sidebar menu for navigating; the second is an interactive tutorial that resembles a series of slides. In both cases students can practice skills and test themselves.

Sign with hand and text reading prevent plagiarism.A Google search “plagiarism exercises college” yielded many, many more examples. Here’s an editor’s pick of some of the best.

Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education offers the Principles of Paraphrasing, How to Avoid Inadvertent Plagiarism in Three Easy Modules, which is pretty slick and comprehensive. The format is PowerPoint with audio, worksheets with answer keys and handouts. Exercises are included.

Cornell University’s College of Arts and Sciences recognizing and avoiding plagiarism site is divided into three sections: principles, logistics (how to recognize and check for plagiarism), and exercises. It provides a good overview, plus the exercises (quizzes), which you can take as a guest. The quizzes cover a variety of disciplinary examples.

Indiana University School of Education Understanding Plagiarism site provides an overview, links to real plagiarism cases, plagiarism examples and explanations, self-practice, and a test that is available for non-IU visitors.

The University of Southern Mississippi, University Libraries’ Plagiarism Tutorial has a tutorial adapted from  tutorial was adapted from Robert A. Harris’s The Plagiarism Handbook : Strategies for Preventing, Detecting, and Dealing with Plagiarism (Los Angeles, CA : Pyrczak Publishing, 2001), combined with a true-false pre-test and two interactive quizzes.

WISC-Online [Wisc-Online is a digital library of Web-based learning resources called “learning objects.”] There is a short learning object on plagiarism that provides a basic overview then presents six examples for self-testing.

Purdue University’s OWL [online Writing Lab] is a great general resource for scholarly writing. It includes sections on using research you’ve conducted in your writing: Quoting, Paraphrasing and Summarizing, Paraphrasing, a Paraphrasing Sample Essay, Paraphrase Exercises, and Avoiding Plagiarism. There are some plagiarism exercises; however these are less useful than those found on other sites, as there are no answers or comments provided. These are meant for class discussion.

The Center for Educational Resources also supports Turnitin, a plagiarism prevention application. Find out more about using Turnitin at JHU on the CER website.

And don’t forget the Sheridan Libraries Research Help where you can find information on a variety of topics including proper citation and evaluating materials found on the Internet.

Macie Hall, Senior Instructional Designer
Center for Educational Resources

Image Source: Microsoft Clip Art edited by Macie Hall