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First things first: caveats and notices
- What Turnitin refers to as 'syncing' doesn't merge - it overwrites that entire submission inbox. See below for examples of how this could affect you.
- More than one marker for an essay? Be aware that your Turnitin app doesn't 'sync' in the strict sense of the word - syncing Syncing from the app actually overwrites any existing marks and comments. In other words, marks will be saved from the last device that marks were synced from. If the marker on the iPad app didn't have the markings of the other markers synced to the iPad app prior to creating his or her markings, then only the markers who used the iPad app will have their markings synced and saved. This is because Turnitin is designed for only a single marker at any one time (though there's ongoing development to support multiple marking).
- Sharing marking of a cohort between colleagues? If one of you is using an iPad, this gets complicated because 'syncing' to the iPad brings over all the submissions on the assignment, and 'syncing' from the iPad overwrites the entire inbox. So if you synced an inbox before your colleague had done their marking, then when you synced your markings back to Turnitin, you'd overwrite any marking they had done with the corresponding unmarked submissions on your iPad.
- Want to mark partly on your iPad and partly on your desktop or laptop? Again, take great care because 'syncing' from your iPad will overwrite any existing markings on Turnitin's server. If those markings were synced to your iPad in the first place, then no problem. But if they weren't, then you'd lose them.
ELE isn't promoting this app and can only support it on a best-efforts basis. As third-party software used on personal equipment, and consequently a varied and changing setting, we in ELE can't assume a standard iPad model, iOS version, or app versions, can't become experts, and can't test updates in advance of their release. That said, we know the app is out there and being used, which is why we've produced this guidance. There is also a UCL community of iPad app users with a dedicated Forum on the E-Learning Champions Network area on Moodle. We'd recommend joining that Moodle area and subscribing to the forum to receive messages by email (tend to be low volume and very useful). We'd also recommend signing up for alerts directly from Turnitin. Precise instructions further down this page.
How is the iPad app useful?
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