Thank you Jebar (Ahmed, LTA in the School of Education) for your patience and support today with how to create an assignment on Turnitin via Unilearn, the University’s VLE and using GradeMark for giving feedmark. Jebar also shared his experience of using Google Docs and skydrive as a way of sharing documents and giving feedback as an online tutor and I now feel as though I am much nearer to deciding which system to use within my practice as an academic skills tutor (and for Andy’s assignment).
Previous to this support session I had thought about using Google Docs rather than GradeMark as an online teaching tool but now feel much more confident of using GradeMarkwith students to provide formative feedback. However, I still feel the need to test the different tools with particular students and evaluate their advantages and disadvantages; for example, sharing documents on Google Docs has discussion and comment stream features that can allow a synchronous conversation whilst sharing a document which isn’t possible with skydrive (although I guess instant messaging could be used).
Unfortunately I couldn’t show the comment stream but this feature can be seen at the top right hand corner of the image. Using this facility with students has its advantages as it would be close to conducting a f2f tutorial but one issue is that the comment stream covers part of the document so this could be a major drawback.
Furthermore GradeMark has the advantage of familiarity as most students at UCB and the University are experienced at submitting assignments and getting feedback this way. In which case learning to use this technology would be my particular resposnsibility although I could learn from their experiences.
For those not familiar with GradeMark, it’s described as “…a web-based application that provides a number of functions that facilitate online assignment management including collection, marking, and feedback. It is also used to check electronic assignment submissions for ‘originality'”(University of Brighton, 2011); see below:
Critical friends – please share your experiences of using any of the tools mentioned and any others you feel would be relevant to my practice as I would value your input.
References
University of Brighton (2011) Using TurnitinUK for e-submission, feedback and originality checking. Chapter Two : Using GradeMark for online feedback.
The Daley Post 
I do like Jebar! Eeeh I remember way back when we both started at Uni together … I really must tell you story about one of our colleagues waaay back at the beginning of time.
Anyway. As you know I haven’t used any of these for teaching or feedback or anything like that but I’m sure that most students will be familiar with all three of these technologies. Skydrive has many familiar features because it is a Microsoft product and Google Docs is very similar – I don’t think there is much to choose between them. The only problem I can foresee (and it is a minor one) is that if students don’t already have a googlemail email account they will have to go through the process of setting one up to use Google Docs. As Skydrive is part of their Unimail, they already have that facility and might be more willing to use that than start using a new one? Just a thought, knowing how ‘technologically challenged’ some of them can be! 🙂
I also know that some of our ‘technology challenged’ students have a big problem getting to grips with GradeMark (I know, I’ve held their hand whilst they have used it). Having said that, most of them should have already overcome their fear by now because they will have used it a few times already this year.
Basically it is up to you, but I think I might be tempted to offer them the choice. They might be more willing to take part in the ‘class’ if they have a little bit of control over what they use. I have no academic wisdom for this, just a gut instinct. You could quote Berry & Berry (2012) if you really need to reference it! 🙂
Thanks for your really helpful comments and advice Julie. I think I’m going to test out all three methods – grademark, googledocs and skydrive. I’ve spoken with a few students and have arranged to work with one Year 3 student who is used to grademark so that will be a learning curve for me; another student who uses skydrive but hasn’t shared a document yet so a learning curve for both of us and a Year 2 student who is a ‘digital native’ but hasn’t used googlerdocs so a learning curve for him (and still a bit of a one for me).
Interested in the reference – Berry & Berry (2012) and still more intrigued about the early days with Jebar that you mention – time for a f2f session I think !
Thanks once again, Sue