Assignment Tool vs Turnitin: A Comparison

Assignment

While the Assignment activity does not have an in-built post date feature, it allows you to hide and release grades by creating a marking workflow .

You can also hide grades through Gradebook:

1. On your iLearn site click on Grades.

2. Under Grader report click on Gradebook Setup.

3. Click on the Edit button next to a grade item and select Hide.

The grade item is now hidden in the example provided, meaning that students will not see any marks entered for this assignment.

If you would like to specify a date until which grades will be hidden, follow these steps instead:

1. On your iLearn site click on Grades.

2. Under Grader report click on Gradebook Setup.

3. Click on the Edit button next to a grade item and select Edit settings.

4. Click Show more to display further options.

5. Under Hidden until, check the box to enable hiding and enter a date.

6. Click Save changes.

Turnitin

A post-date in the Turnitin activity can simply be assigned by choosing a post date in the Settings of the activity.

Assignment

To communicate instructions to students, assessment instructions can be uploaded as separate files to the Assignment activity. These files can stay hidden until the exam date.

Turnitin

Turnitin does not support file sharing with students in this manner and acts as a collection point of assessments only.

The plagiarism check that you know and love in Turnitin is available with the same functionalities through the Turnitin plugin inside the Assignment activity. To enable Turnitin inside the Assignment activity follow these steps:

1. On your iLearn site click on the Assignment activity and open its Settings.

2. Scroll down to Turnitin plagiarism plugin settings and click to toggle open.

3. Under Enable Turnitin choose Yes.

4. Make any other selections as required.

Feedback Studio is available in the Assignment tool as well. When Turnitin is enabled the whole suite of feedback tools, such as rubrics, quickmarks, and text comments is enabled.

You can add a rubric to both activities. The recommended method for adding a rubric is through the Turnitin plugin.

1. On your iLearn site click on the Assignment activity and open its Settings.
2. Scroll down to Turnitin plagiarism plugin settings and click to toggle open.
3. Under Enable Turnitin choose Yes.
4. Scroll down to Attach a rubric to this assignment.
5. From the drop-down menu choose an existing rubric.

You may allow multiple attempts to students in both activities.

Assignment

In the Assignment activity this may be controlled through Submission settings, where you have the option to either manually allow additional attempts or do this automatically until a pass grade has been achieved. You can also specify a number of maximum attempts.

Turnitin

In Turnitin allowing multiple attempts can be facilitated through the Similarity Report Options. Under Report Generation Speed you can specify whether students can or cannot resubmit.

Assignment

You may allow late submissions in the Assignment activity simply by not specifying a Cut-off date under Availability.

Turnitin

In Turnitin you can do this under Similarity Report Options and by choosing Yes under Allow Submissions after the Due Date.

Assignment

The Assignment activity supports group submissions through Group submission settings.

The above settings would ensure that one student can submit on behalf of the group, and once they have, that the same submission appears in each team member’s submission area.

Turnitin

Turnitin does not support group submissions. While there is a Group mode and a grouping feature under Common module settings, these are only useful for markers to select their own tutorial group for marking but do not enable students to make a submission on behalf of their group.

Assignment

When using the assignment activity, once one group member’s assessment has been marked, the feedback and marks are automatically applied to all group members.

Turnitin

Because student group submissions are not supported in Turnitin, feedback given is also not applied to all group members and would have to be entered separately for each student.

The assignment activity is an iLearn integrated tool, and because it is part of Moodle, it is more stable. In an instance of system failure internal tools can be managed more effectively than external tools.

When uploading to Turnitin, students cannot link a video file that they have saved in their Echo library to Turnitin and would have to upload the file itself. If the file is large, this would be problematic, as iLearn has a file size limit, whereas the assignment activity seamlessly integrates with Echo360. Students can click the Echo button and quickly attach a link to a video file.

A marking workflow allows markers to work through a set of grading stages, before grades are released to students.

Assignment

In the Assignment activity these stages are: In marking, Marking completed, In review, Ready for release, and Released. You can learn how to create a Marking Workflow here.  

Turnitin

While Turnitin does not have a marking workflow per se, the post-date feature can be used to hide marks and feedback until a certain date, effectively creating a marking workflow between the stages of In review and Released.

Both tools allow you to designate groups of students to specific markers for review of their assessments. In both tools you need to create a grouping that contains the student groups, before you can implement a marking allocation.

In Turnitin once a grouping has been created, markers can manually select their designated group from a drop-down menu:

Assignment

The assignment activity allows you to create user or group overrides. User overrides are useful when special considerations need to be enacted and extended access given to particular students.

Group overrides, on the other hand, are useful when different groups need access to the same activity at different times.

Turnitin

Turnitin does not support user or group overrides.