[ARCHIVED] [ARCHIVED] New Turnitin LTI Issues

[stephanie_pope]

Goal: This discussion is to highlight the issues experienced while implementing the new Turnitin LTI.

I hope this discussion will help other admin implement this tool with a full understanding of it's limitations and functionality. We are a fully online school and implemented this tool without testing (our first mistake). We use a course copy model to create every course. Our LTI settings are copied over (without dates) from our master courses.

Overview of our Pain Points:

• Multiple dates (start date, due date, feedback release date)
• Resubmitting assignments
• Assignment parameters
• Rubrics
• Submit Button
• Additional options
• Already submitted work

Multiple Dates

We have found multiple issues/errors that happen due to dates. An assignment has 3 different slots for dates: start date, due date, and feedback release date. We've found that:

• The due date can not be the same as the feedback release date. This will generate an error and the behavior will not allow the student to submit work. Our workaround: We went in to every assignment and adjusted the feedback release date to be 2 days after the due date. Note: the due date can not be change from the TII settings- this must be adjusted on the assignment.
• The start date is created when you enable the LTI on an assignment. The start date must be before the due date.

Resubmitting Assignments:

The TII LTI will allow assignments to be resubmitted up until the due date. However, this must be enabled on the assignment. Students are no longer able to resubmit work after the due date.  Note: once a student resubmits work, the original work and teacher comments will be lost in the Feedback Studio.

Assignment Parameters:

We found multiple errors caused by our preexisting assignments. This will generate an error and the behavior will not allow the student to submit work. Assignment parameters:

• Assignment title were too long- the max is 99 characters
• Assignment title using a ; (this might have been resolved recently)
• Assignment point values were not a whole number
• Assignment due dates matched the feedback release date (see multiple dates above)

Rubrics

Assignments with the TII LTI enabled, the rubric is "replaced" with the TII LTI. Resulting in the rubric appearing as "not on the assignment." However, in Speedgrader the rubric is still attached to the assignment.

Submit Button

The location of the button is somewhat hidden to students when the LTI is enabled. Traditionally, the button is in the top right corner, which they grow accustom to. However, the LTI moves the button to the lower portion of the screen and is within an iframe. And depending on the device or browser, the student also has to scroll within the iframe to find the button.

Additional Options

Be sure to review the additional options carefully. We have dozens of assignments in one course, which makes any adjustment very time consuming. Options to consider: accept various file types, etc.

Already Submitted Work

If students have already submitted work and you enable the LTI after, all of the already submitted work will be lost.

Please feel free to add to this discussion so we can all help each other during this transition.

Thank you,

Stephanie

Higher Education​

Canvas Admins​

[Stef_retired]

 @stephanie_pope ​, I've shared your discussion with the Plagiarism​ group. It's a new group in the Community, and if you're not yet a member, and would like to be, please click on the link to the group and select Join Group from the Actions dropdown at the upper right of the page.

[Stef_retired]

...and since you've @mentioned the Canvas Admins​ and Higher Education​ groups, I've shared the discussion with those groups as well.

[Boekenoogen]

Stephanie,

We feel your pain. This interface with Turnitin has to be the worst interface that I have ever seen in my 15 years experience with online education. I know the finger will be pointed back and forward between Turnitin and Instructure on who has to fix the issue and we (the users) are stuck in the middle. Turnitin knows it has every by the hair because no one else has a large database system to check papers against, so they are not in any hurry in fixing these issues.

We feel your pain...

Dr. John Boekenoogen
University of Oklahoma

[natalie_norton1]

Many thanks for setting us this group - we have experienced a number of issues with the interface this week so sharing info is very useful. Couple of examples:

Moderated grading - there is a conflict if lecturers tick this box in error in the assignment set up, as there is no 'moderate' button to post the grades. Workaround is to add /moderate to the url, but still getting error message in a few cases which has prevented feedback being released

Resubmission - a resubmission in Turnitin is not passed through to speedgrader, meaning the older version is marked. Known issue - Canvas working on fix I believe

I found this guide which has some useful info on known issues! https://cdn.auckland.ac.nz/assets/central/about/teaching-and-learning/documents/Turnitin%20comprehen...   - we have experienced issue 1 a lot, and also had a detached rubric situation leading to all feedback being 'lost' for one course.

[stephanie_pope]

Hey  @natalie_norton1 ​,

Thanks for the heads up about the resubmission in Speedgrader. Going to alert my team on that one.

Thanks for the guide! Gotta love all the support here!

Stephanie

[joel_mills]

In addition, I was speaking with the Integrations team at TurnitinUK this week and they are on the verge of rolling out multiple due dates for individuals (extensions for individuals). This will tie in the feature request that is now part of Canvas Core

What this means for Turnitin/Canvas is that if we give an individual extension in the Canvas Assignment settings it will be transferred to Turnitin and that individual will have a different hand in date in Turnitin.

The feature is not yet here, but Turnitin has promised it will be here for Q1 2017 which is imminent. Keep the pressure on both Instructure to support this and for Turnitin to deliver it.

Joel

[stephanie_pope]

Hey  @joel_mills ​,

Wow- I didn't even think about the impact on extensions! What a mess! Thanks for this great tip.

Stephanie

[RobDitto]

Our institution just noticed a behavior change in Turnitin LTI with section-specific differentiated due dates for an Assignment. In brief, while the due date shown on-screen to the instructor in TII is still the "Everyone"/"Everyone Else" due date, students may now be required to submit by the due date for their section as specified in the (Canvas) Assignment.  

I wonder whether this means an extensions/varied-due-dates feature change was indeed released by Turnitin in 2017Q1. Their release notes show nothing as of this writing.

[dhulsey]

Hey, Rob. I do not use differentiated due dates, but I am thinking you see this as sort of a good thing? It is good because differentiation is working, but it is bad because the teacher is not seeing that differentiation in TII? 

[RobDitto]

It is good because differentiation is working, but it is bad because the teacher is not seeing that differentiation in TII? 

Exactly.  My colleague  @lindalee ‌ has just reproduced the new differentiation behavior in a test course (we had encountered it first in a real course), including how the teacher doesn't see the differentiation in TII.  We're also hoping to learn more about how the (possible) differentiation change interacts with late submission, resubmission, and the PeerMark review window.

Our case is at L2 with TII support. 

[dhulsey]

Please post the response from TII when you get it, Rob. I do recall reading somewhere that TII was working on implementing due date extensions for individual students; I wonder if they did something to prep for that with some unintended consequences.

[RobDitto]

We're baffled... Turnitin says "In speaking with our Integrations engineers they noted that no change has been made to this functionality on our side." 

[dhulsey]

Well, I guess that leaves the Canvas side?  Thanks for the update, Rob!

[John_Lowe]

According to Ryan Miller at TurnItIn:

It seems that when users had an email with mixed case it caused an early validation to fail to find the existing user, and subsequently our code attempted to create the user. A deeper validation correctly found the user to be part of the service and responded with the error 'email - Sorry, this email is in use'. A fix has been made to the earlier validation check and additional tests were added to meet scenarios where mixed case emails are passed to us via LTI in order to prevent regressions.

[lindalee]

Dallas,

Ordinarily, I'd agree that respecting differentiated due dates is a good thing!

However, we'd been exploiting this limitation for a specific edge case for a pilot assignment, taking advantage of the fact that the substitution variable picks up the date assigned to everyone/everyone else as the assignment due date.This allowed us to control students' ability to submit (or resubmit) their assignment separately from the due dates presented in Canvas.

The recent change to Turnitin LTI recognizing and respecting differentiated due dates, which happened sometime in the past two weeks (between Feb 9 and Feb 22), was unexpected and caused some expected problems for students who needed to submit/resubmit yesterday afternoon.

Subsequent testing reproduced the behavior we saw yesterday, suggesting that Turnitin does now recognize differentiated due dates. This isn't apparent in the teacher view (as far as I can see so far, anyway), but is visible while masquerading as a student.

[kbickell]

Another of our worries is that if faculty don't populate the dates correctly (Due, Available From, Until) for an assignment then students won't be able to submit - but faculty won't know until students complain since there are no prompts or error messages for faculty (somewhat understandably, since these are Canvas dates that get passed to TII, but still an issue).

Of course, we can & will provide instructions...

We're actually exploring alternatives - in fact, Vericite has a nice native integration that functions much like the old TII API, and at a lower cost - but we're concerned that we'll lose our entire database of internal submissions, and we're not yet sure the Vericite database is as extensive as TII's or the tool is as robust. Tempting...

[stephanie_pope]

Hey  @kbickell ​,

We are in the same boat. We loved the old filter of TII, I wish they would just support the old version. We are looking into Vericite too. The database is a huge concern for us too. But the sooner we make the switch, the sooner we rebuild it. So tempting...

[dhulsey]

The due date can not be the same as the feedback release date. This will generate an error and the behavior will not allow the student to submit work

This one strikes me as odd because when you configure the TII LTI to use the custom codes to sync the dates between TII and Canvas, the feedback release date defaults to the exact due time set in Canvas and synced to TII. Because I hate managing dates and times, I don't mess with a date unless I have to. I leave the feedback release time exactly the same as the due date with no problems. Stephanie, do you have the custom codes set up in your LTI configuration, or are you placing dates by hand into both Canvas and TII?

[stephanie_pope]

Hey  @dhulsey ,

We have the LTI configured to automatically populate the feedback release date (based on the due date). We do have to "hand" date every assignment. Do you think that's breaking something?

Stephanie

[tross]

Most of our teachers make the feedback release date before the due date.  They want students to have the option to see the originality report before the due date and correct issues on their own. 

[stephanie_pope]

That is a wonderful best practice and works well with the TII model. Sadly, our assignments are set up for submit/resubmit on one assignments vs. using multiple assignments for each drafts (seems to work best with TII).

Stephanie

[dhulsey]

I am not sure if changing the feedback release date by hand is breaking something. I usually leave it as the due date, but whether I change it or leave it, I have never received the error you describe. Maybe you could post some screenshots of the Canvas settings, the TII settings, and the error you get? Maybe we can at least figure this item on your list out.

Stephanie Pope wrote:

Sadly, our assignments are set up for submit/resubmit on one assignments vs. using multiple assignments for each drafts (seems to work best with TII).

My experience has been the opposite. I find it is better to use one assignment in Canvas / TII per draft. By using a separate assignment for each draft, you preserve all drafts, originality reports, and feedback (which would eliminate one item from your list) You can also avoid the twenty-four hour re-submission rule.  The only trick here is that you need to tell TII not to add the process drafts to the permanent repository in the optional settings to avoid false positives on revisions and final drafts.

[stephanie_pope]

We fixed all the errors the past 2 weeks- I don't have any screenshots. If we experience more, I'll be sure to capture them.

Good point about the drafts impact on the originality report. The challenge we have is since we do set up our assignment to resubmit, TII doesn't maintain record of the paper or comments in Feedback Studio. So all that is lost with the new submission. Canvas shows the trail but not TII. We need to capture all of the students work/effort. Thanks for your help with this.

[jbond]

Hi:

I am an instructional designer helping with our school's transition from using Turnitin (TII) as an API to LTI setting in Canvas. I am unclear how group assignment settings in Canvas are affected - or not - when we transition an assignment from TII API to LTI settings.

We have many assignments in live courses that are currently set up with the old TII API and I want to make sure there are no unseen pitfalls. It is very difficult to set up a test environment for group assignments, though I am working on it.

Thanks for any information.

Jill

[dhulsey]

Hey, Jill! As soon as you select the external submission on a Canvas assignment, the group options disappear. That is, Canvas does not support group assignments on external tools like the TII LTI. 

[jbond]

Thanks for this! Has anyone experimented with any workarounds?

Jill

[dhulsey]

Hm. Here is what I would try: 

I would assign one person from each group to make the submission for the group. After the originality report and any grading is done, I would download a .PDF from Turnitin and share it with all of the group members. Grading can be handled for each group member by direct entry in the Canvas grade book.

Do you think that would work for you, Jill

[galyenk]

The API still works, so as long as it's still working, I would not use the LTI tool for groups and just set it up like normal. 

[lindalee]

The workaround we recommend is to set up parallel submission assignments -- an individual Turnitin external tool assignment for originality checking, and a group assignment for grading purposes. We'd had reasonably good luck with this, provided that faculty communicate these expectations to students. A small number of groups often have duplicate submissions, as the assignment doesn't readily disappear from students' to-do lists.

[b_lapham]

Thank you SO much for sharing your experiences.

[natalie_norton1]

Hi

Our students are having great difficulty finding the feedback if marked in Turnitin (rather than speedgrader). 

https://guides.instructure.com/m/4212/l/64432-how-do-i-view-turnitin-results-for-my-assignment-submi...    shows the students should access it through assignments, but we are finding that once the until date has passed the turnitin link disappears.   

If they click on submission details, and then the originality score they get to turnitin but this is not intuitive are they are just not finding it.  I think they can also click on the turnitin score in grades, but again this is not obvious to them.  Has anyone come across a guide which shows this? Thanks

[dhulsey]

Hi, Natalie! Here are the guides I give my students for using Turnitin:

Go here for a tutorial on uploading your word processing file to the assignment: https://www.nmjc.edu/userfiles/dhulsey/LTI/SubmitTurnitinLTI.pdf

Here is a tutorial on using PeerMark:  https://www.nmjc.edu/userfiles/dhulsey/LTI/peermarktutorial.pdf

To access your originality report and feedback, please follow the instructions in this tutorial: https://www.nmjc.edu/userfiles/dhulsey/LTI/ltiversionNMJCCanvasTurnitinFeedbackStudentTutorial.pdf

It is true that if you set an "until date" in Canvas that students cannot access anything inside of the assignment. This means that an until date would block access to any external tool assignment and any feedback in it. This is true of Turnitin, SoftChalk, Office Mix, or any other external tool assignment. 

In the case of Turnitin, you can tell Turnitin not to accept late submissions in the optional settings in the LTI, and an instructor who likes that setting would probably want to save that as a default setting in the LTI.

I hope that helps!

[natalie_norton1]

Hi - many thanks for sharing. I did not know that about the 'until' date - we use that as standard to enable late submissions but only for a fixed period of time, so we would need to go through and remove all of these. Does anyone know the impact when a course is concluded? We need students to have access to feedback even once a course is closed. 

Also, does anyone happen to know a way we could run a report to see which courses are using turnitin? I've asked support but they don't know a way. 

Thank you! 

[kschneider25]

If you are the admin to your Turnitin account then you can log into Turnitin.com to see which courses and instructors are using Turnitin within Canvas.  I use the student report for this information.

[jbond]

Hi, again! Jill here.

The API option is still available for our courses, but, as you can imagine, we are anxious to turn it off school-wide. We are concerned that doing so may negatively impact assignments that still have the API turned on in the background. In other words, wipe out those assignments. I have not tested this yet in the test environment.

What do I mean by "API turned on in the background?" We noticed that we can have the new LTI activated in an assignment and simultaneously still have the old API checked under "online" under "Enable TII Submissions." In order to remove the old API, one needs to completely remove the new LTI and settings, save the "online" under "Enable TII Submissions" as unchecked, then go back and re-add in the new LTI and settings. Whew!

Does anyone have any experience with this? Please share.

Thanks.  Jill

[stephanie_pope]

Hi  @jbond ‌,

When we made the switch, our wokflow was: first uncheck, and then adjust the submission to external tool. We didn't experience what you mentioned.

We haven't really "dealt with" the old TII yet. Some of our courses may still have it checked- we are a small operation with thousands of assignments. So we wouldn't be able to check every single one. We haven't removed anything either. I will add a critical tip that I did in our test instance (thank goodness). At one point we talked about completely abandoning the new LTI so I tested "what would happen if I just deleted the entire LTI?" So I deleted the tool at the account level. I went back to click on the assignment and nothing loaded/happened...nothing. Not even the old assignment text. All submission were gone. I was stunned. So, needless to say we didn't go that route. We are still limping through and now our teachers are getting more and more upset with their new "workflow" with resubmissions- our greatest hurtle.

Stephanie

[dhulsey]

Hey,  @stephanie_pope  . If you aren't just done with TII, you might be interested in this: I was talking to a TII employye the other day who mentioned they are looking at bringing revision assignments to the LTI tool. A revision assignment is built for multiple submissions. Now, this assignment exists in the web portal version of TII. Here is the description:

Someone might want to head over to the Roadmap site and suggest adding the Revision assignment to the LTI and vote it up. Anyone who talks to a TII rep or files a support ticket could also throw in that the revision assignment would be a welcome addition to the LTI. I would write the feature request, but I have used all of my votes, and they haven't released them back to me yet.  

Having said that, I am wondering how the dates would sync back to Canvas with this assignment type. I am sure they can figure it out.  

[stephanie_pope]

Hey  @dhulsey ‌!

This is super helpful!! A BIG thanks! I will keep my eyes open for this feature.

Stephanie

[dhulsey]

Well, like I said, they mentioned it in passing. If revision assignments are a popular need, we should all find ways to let Turnitin know we support revision assignments in the LTI to solidify the plans and make sure the feature makes it to production. If I get a chance, I will follow up and ask some questions about how solid the plans are and if there is a time line.