Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Dan Marsden -
Number of replies: 18
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Hi Everyone!

I need some help testing a Turnitin Integration for 1.9

If you have a 1.9 version of Moodle running with PHP 5 and CURL extensions enabled, and have a Turnitin Licence I'd be keen for some help in testing!

It works off the existing upload and uploadsingle Assignment types. - instead of being directed to the turnitin site, students upload a file as per normal in their assignment, and then behind the scenes it submits the file to turnitin.

There is still a bit of tweaking to go, but it would be helpful to get some feedback on the current version if possible!

let me know here if you are able to help test! - Neil I'm still waiting for a response from you - I'd be keen to get you to do some tweaking if poss!

thanks!

smile

Dan

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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Anthony Borrow -
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Dan - Feel free to send me the code you have and I will throw it on our test server and see what happens. Peace - Anthony
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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Neil Eliot -

Hi Dan,

I've now completed the negotiations with TurnItIn and I am drafting up an integration spec with them (working on it today in fact), it will be XML based, documents base64 etc. and will be platform independant providing various functions to submit, grade and track submissions, once this is complete and they have signed it off as an agree interface build will commence, in parallel the interface for moodle can be built, at whch point I'll let everyone know and then collaboration to get going would be great.

My initial thought is that it should be an assignment type sinilar to the single upload, in fact I would like to build it as an extension to it with a flag to switch it on and off and then matbe it could be adopted as core.

Oh! Moodle will be the first integration to be carried out using the new TurnItIn API.

Neil

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In reply to Neil Eliot

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Dan Marsden -
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Hi Neil,

I disagree with this approach - creating a separate assignment type... - Moodle already allows single uploads, multiple uploads and on-line type assignments - it makes more sense to make use of these (like my current code does) and bounce off when required to TII when required... - and simply allow a teacher to "tick" a box to say "I want to use turnitin" for this assignment.

This is all possible using the existing turnitin API which returns XML on submission.

The only thing that I don't like about the existing API is the way you POST data to TII with the actual assignment - it seems a bit messy.

BUT as I mention - all this can be done in the background of the already existing Assignment types. instead of creating a new one. - I have a feeling that if we make it this simple, it may be possible to have it included in the Core download.

smile

Dan

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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Anthony Borrow -
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I agree with you Dan that it is best to use what Moodle already has and then just add an option to take a particular set of uploaded or online assignments and send them to TII. As we move toward final exams next week I am looking forward to more time for playing and testing. Peace.
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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Neil Eliot -
Hi Dan,

TurnItIn has agreed with the initial open interface approach I have defined, I'm now going to formalise the spec with them, in terms of the XML message formats and the operations the iterface will support. Could you send me a copy of your codde so I can see where things are up to and to see if there are any specific requirements for the moodle integration.

Neil
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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Keith Schroeder -

We are just getting up and running but this sounds like just what we would want to use.  It sounds awesome!  Keep us posted on the progress!

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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Wen Hao Chuang -
Hi Dan, we have TurnItIn license here at SFSU and we have a huge user base for our moodle installation. We are very interested in helping testing the new TurnItIn plugin for 1.9. Please let me know how we could get the new codes, thanks!

By the way do you know of any work-around for the current TurnItIn plugin to work with Moodle 1.8? We know that the current plugin works in Moodle 1.7 but not 1.8. I did a quick diff with both 1.7 and 1.8 for the /mod/assignment folder, and found that mainly the main difference is 1.8 no longer use frames while 1.7 still does, and the current TurnItIn plugin seems to be heavily relying on frames. Is this the main reason why the current TurnItIn does not work in Moodle 1.8? For the new TurnItIn plugin for 1.9, is it close to beta now or still kind of in alpha stage? Thanks!


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In reply to Wen Hao Chuang

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Neil Eliot -
Hi Wen,

The main difference is not just the frames but the actual data as well, the data for an assignment has changed, there is less of it (in terms of form posting), the existing interface would take quite a bit of work to change although I do have a prototype almost working, however TurnItIn and I feel we could get a brand new deep integration out in with same effort. Given the amount of work involved in maintaining the code help is always welcome and Dan Marsden seems very enthusiastic on the interface front so we'll be talking more closely with him once we have a starting point, I'll be asking to have a look at his current code when I get a chance as that may speed things along for everyone but at the moment I/We need to get an agreed interface spec with TurnItIn that they are happy to take forward.

Neil
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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Anthony Borrow -
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Dan/Neil - I'm getting ready to begin testing of the 1.9 tii integration. Where can I get the most updated version. There have been many changes in /mod/assignment/lib.php (http://moodle.cvs.sourceforge.net/moodle/moodle/mod/assignment/lib.php?r1=1.230&r2=1.247)
and I would like to have the most recent one to test with. Have you merged the changes in CVS into the file? Peace - Anthony
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In reply to Anthony Borrow

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Wen Hao Chuang -
We will be interested to help out with testing too. Thanks!
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In reply to Wen Hao Chuang

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Geoffrey Rowland -
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We have already got the Turnitin integration working with Moodle 1.6 and Moodle 1.8 and will be shortly getting a new development server. So we would be interested in testing the Turnitin integration with Moodle 1.9 too.
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In reply to Geoffrey Rowland

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Michael Tudor -
What's the progress on the 1.9 TII integration? Will this be ready by the time moodle 1.9 is released?
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In reply to Michael Tudor

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Ghassan Geara -
Hi Tii users!

We're still running Moodle 1.6.5. We have a TII licence and got the Tii integration for 1.6.x

After testing it, we are willing to release it to instructors. This will save lot of time for them in the assignments' submissions. The problem is that we found serious bugs to Tii integration. Hereby a list in a PDF file you can find in this post: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=83543

Any solution is most welcome!
Thanks
Gass
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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Andrew Yong -

I've installed the patch for the Turn-it-in plugin for version 1.9. I've also performed the global admin configuration and setup. However when I create an assignment activity (using "Upload a single file" or "Advanced uploading of files") there are no turn it in options whatsoever.  Have I missed a step?

Andrew

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In reply to Andrew Yong

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Dan Marsden -
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I'm guessing you need to go to the admin > modules > assignment page and enable turnitin for the assignment module and set the defaults.

smile

Dan
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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Andrew Yong -

Hey Dan

Thanks for the reply - looks like I did a boo-boo. Forgot to copy the uploadsingle.php and upload.php files. Now that I have, it's given me the option to enable the turnitin submission when setting up an  assignment.

However, I've now tried submitting an assignment, but there are no changes to the assignment submission screen. There's nothing about turnitin - it just allows me to upload a file as per normal. What's the new screen suppose to look like?

Andrew

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In reply to Andrew Yong

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Dan Marsden -
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I presume you've read the information here:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Turnitin_administration

but after a student has uploaded a file, when the cron(scheduled task) runs, it will submit any uploaded files to turnitin.

then when Cron runs again, it will pull back the originality score and a link to the full report.

this information is displayed on the "view x responses" page for teachers (if they have the right capabilities set) and for students on the same page used to upload files (if allowed in the settings of the assignment)

Obviously I need to write some updated documentation for this at some point... smile
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In reply to Dan Marsden

Re: Turnitin 1.9 Testing needed.

by Dean Stringer -
Hi Dan (and other interested parties),

I know nothing about the TII API but was wondering what the feasibility would be of writing a kind of stub/reflective/smoke-n-mirrors service that might emulate the TII API so Moodle admins could point their test Moodle instances at it and demo or test their local TII code.

We've had a few occasions where we've wanted to test things are operating ok Moodle-side after applying patches to the assignment module, its TII components or other Moodle or cron code, and we've not wanted to really submit or configure anything on the TII servers to do so. There might also be the case where a particular dev or test Moodle instance is behind a firewall and not able to access the live TII instance, or heaven forbid the TII servers might actually be down or not available (however unlikely)

From what I do know (Dan please correct me if I'm off track) there is a seqeuence of events for each submission that are processed TII-side: some sort of student logon or association with the course, actually submitting the document, and finally recieving the TII assement of it.

Clearly you dont want to reimplement TII!!! but it seems like there would mostly have to be some SSO bluffing, and some kind of some session retention across those requests. The documents themselves could be discarded after submission, and the grades and error codes returned could just be random (within reason)

There's no real urgency with this suggestion, just an idea that someone might like to pickup, or maybe there is already something like this outside of the Moodle community that you might be able to point us at?
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