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SafeAssign vs. Turnitin
Last month I presented a Brown Bag session on SafeAssign, Blackboard's plagiarism detection
software. Although SafeAssign is not as powerful as Turnitin, there
are some advantages to its use. SafeAssign allows the student to decide whether or not to have
his/her paper globally archived when submitting their papers through
the SafeAssign tool. Alternatively, instructors can enable
DirectSubmit which allows them to
upload to SafeAssign only those papers suspected of plagiarism,
OR to cut-and-paste only those sections
of a paper suspected of plagiarism. This gives the instructor
greater flexibility in the use of the tool, as opposed to Turnitin's
interface that uploads the entire document and automatically
archives it.
It should be noted, however, that SafeAssign only allows students to
opt-out of the global archive. All papers submitted through
SafeAssign are automatically copied to a local institutional archive
which checks submissions against all previous JCCC student
submissions.
The major downside to SafeAssign--and Turnitin as well--is that the
powerlink is not integrated into the Blackboard Assignment tool. If
you have created a grading rubric for your assignments, it will work
only for those papers submitted through the Assignments drop box. As
a result, the instructor has to manually upload the document files
to Turnitin or SafeAssign, or manually grade the paper if the file
is submitted through Turnitin or SafeAssign. In this case, Turnitin
has the advantage because of its integrated GradeMark tool.
To activate SafeAssign, click on the Build tab. Then on the Course
Content home page click the Add Content Link and choose either Safe
Assign from the pull-down menu, or Direct Submit.
Online Course Student Feedback Survey The new
software for delivering the Survey is now in place. However, student
response is still very low. Ralph Juhnke and I will meet soon to
discuss this issue. Ralph notes that there still may be some
reticence on students' part to participate in a survey that is
launched from within the LMS. He suggested that IR can send a
stumail to every online student with the URL to the survey during
the same time frame as the IDEA reports go out. Faculty could alert
students of this through a Calendar entry or an Announcement in
Blackboard. This sounds like a good implementation plan.
Since the Survey--like IDEA--is formative in nature, reports will
be sent back directly to the faculty member. Faculty members can, if
they choose, use the Online Course Student Feedback Survey as
substitute for IDEA in the per semester course evaluation. Online
Student Orientation 'CD'
The online student orientation material is located at
http://students.jccc.edu/dlorientation. You might want to add
this URL to your Web Links tool. You can also direct students to the
hands-on exercises to help them gain familiarity with Blackboard before
the semester begins. To gain access to the
Z - Dev
Courses - DL Orientation shell, type in
OCB30401 to
99 as the User Name on the
Blackboard
login page, and 123456 as the Password.
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DLCC (Re)organized
Last month the DLCC took steps to become a standing committee
constituted from Marilyn Rhinehart's office and restructured to have
broader faculty representation from various areas of the college.
The most important step was to break up the two at-large positions
from the three divisions and assign them to more specialized units.
For example, there is now one representative for Math, and another
for Science and Health Care; one representative for AHSS/Design and
another for Writing, Literature, Media Communications & Learning
Strategies; one for Business and another for Information technology.
In addition to one representative from Counseling, Library, and
Adjuncts, this insures that all major content areas of the college
are represented.
As a result, there is an open position for Math, AHSS/Design (the
seat I held before becoming chair of the DLCC), and Writing,
Literature, etc. Jeff Frost, interim Asst. Dean for Math, is looking
for a volunteer to represent math. Marilyn Senter recently sent an
email from the LAD Election Committee to solicit nominations for the
two LAD positions.
I would urge those interested in Distance Learning to come forward
to serve. The DLCC has two very important issues before it: the LMS
survey and vote, and the online course quality initiative (Quality
REACH). Faculty participation is important in both these issues.
The DLCC also decided to meet on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the
month at 8:00 a.m. rather than weekly as before.
Online Course Information
Guide
Please be sure that the information on your page(s) in the
Online Course Information Guide is accurate and up to date.
If you plan to teach a new online course next semester, or if one of
your colleagues is teaching the online section instead, please send
me the additions or
corrections at
michaelr@jccc.edu.
iTeach Online
Due to the fact that the LMS question is in flux,
the Ed Tech Center has decided to offer the second iTeach
course as an online self-paced course. This will give the Ed Tech
Center time to rebuild the course in another LMS--should ATAC and
DLCC make that recommendation next week, and to break it up into two
parts: a beginning and a more advanced course--as many previous
iTeach graduates have suggested.
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