Turn it in or turn it off: Confirming and disconfirming experience for innovative computer-aided assessment and feedback

The paper discusses the key findings of an institutional research project for an innovative computer-aided assessment tool - Turnitin and GradeMark experiences, funded by nLearning Ltd. (TurnitinUK) and the University's Education Sandpit Fund. Taking a small group of lecturers and their students from different disciplines across four faculties (more usage of technology versus less usage of technology in learning and teaching), the aim of the research is to critically investigate and evaluate how effective is Turnitin and GradeMark in (1) enhancing their experience of coursework submission, assessment and feedback? (2) promoting academic integrity by preventing plagiarism? (3) reducing lecturer workloads without necessarily compromising the quality? Both confirming and disconfirming experiences from students and lecturers were captured by in-depth video interviews and an online questionnaire. The comparative findings of this research demonstrate evidence-based data across different disciplines, for example, the top positive experiences and the top disconfirming experiences categorised in both technological and pedagogical aspects, comparative views of lecturers and students, and the comparative experiences with the traditional assessment and feedback mechanism. One key result is that Turnitin and GradeMark did enhance the assessment and feedback experiences for students, especially international students. One main enhancement is to improve academic integrity and to provide richer and prompt feedback compared with paper-based feedback. Lecturers, regardless of their technological competence, experienced an innovative end-to-end online submission, plagiarism detection and online assessment which eliminated the frustration of storing uncollected or unread assignment feedback, a speeding up of the assessment process and were provided with a flexible marking facility. On the other hand, a list of pedagogical debates, technical difficulties and learning curve are the main disconfirming experiences among lecturers and students. Recommendations on these continuous debates about student-centered and pedagogical practices are concluded in the paper.