New BlackBoard ToolSet:Safe Assign, Module Evaluation & TextTools

FoC Student Experience (L&T) Meeting

Thursday 10 Feb 2011 1-2 T9-05

Peter Chalk & Mehryar Adibpour

Safe Assign

• Student centred

• Draft essay plagiarism check

• Built into WebLearn

• SafeSubmit for plagiarism check of final submission

Create or add a SafeAssign submission using Build Tool

Teacher view of student view – one OK, 7% is refs; one plagiarised 66%

Analysis shows matching text:by %age and in blue; and source URL

&the7%?

“I particularly like the idea of ‘safe assign’, which is a program developed to help both students and tutors see whether a piece of work is plagiarised. For the student, it gives them a chance to check their work for signs of plagiarism before handing it in. In an article [1] on avoiding plagiarism thejournal.com states, “it generates a report that identifies what percentage of the paper may be lifted from somewhere else”. I believe I will find this a very useful tool for me to use in my future education.

1 Susan McLester, 25/01/2011, “The Accidental Plagiarists” accessed from http://thejournal.com/Articles/2011/01/25/The-Accidental-Plagiarists.aspx?Page=2 on 04/02-2011”

Student View (CC1H01N CW essay)

Module Evaluation in WebLearn

• Developed by Mehryar Adibppour

• In J.../FoC L&T/SEMs

• Questions zip file goes into WebLearn:– Designer tool, – Manage course, – import, then – upload the zip file

Analysis and presentation of results

• Excel spreadsheet analysis and presentation tool

• Copy and paste data into Tab (Sheet) 1

• Results automatically displayed in Tab 2

• Percentages and Pie Charts

• Including free text comments

Creating questionnaire in WebLearn

• Zip of questionnaire imported into WebLearn

• Unzip to Question Database

• Set up Assessment Survey

• Add all questions

Assessment/ survey:

Download and copy questionnaire results into tab 1 – tab 2 shows results

TxtTools

• Text students about urgent events

• Get feedback

• Use in class – ‘ask the audience’

• Company recently bought by BlackBoard

• Previously used in pilot; also recently by LMBS and others; and now FoC

• Chrisina Jayne has account admin rights

• Module leaders, course ldrs, PAAs...

Grab students from SITS, turnstile file, or enter one-by-one (!); as a group; text individually or as group; reply needs codeword for lecturer

Groups are listed; type 160 chars (like twitter; send; replies can be emailed to you

Summary

• New uni policy – all staff to have weblearn toolkit:– Safe Assign– Module evaluation– TxtTools– ...

• ...are all examples of what we need in our toolkit, as appropriate to each module