Turning You On To Turnitin.

Perhaps this is the first time anyone has seen sultry play on words equated to writing but two Cerritos College professors hope it’s not the last.

Students who log on to turntin.com may recognize the faces of art history professors Julie Trager and Lisa Boutin Vitela on the front page of the site.

Their writing campaign “Let’s Write and Turn It On,” earned them the 2015 MVP All-Stars: Higher Ed. award.

Professor Trager, who coined the campaign’s name said, “The idea behind the campaign is to get students writing more and to have writing across the curriculum and we thought perhaps the best way to get people excited is to make it a sexy campaign.”

Vitela expressed, “I think when people hear Turnitin they’re like ‘oh, yeah I’ve heard about that,’ but we wanted to make it more exciting.”

According to Trager, the ongoing campaign was an idea that was kicked off in early spring 2015 to encourage writing and technology and the Turnitin platform.

Writing Ability Matters

Trager said, “Writing is thinking, and so I think if you write clear ideas and you are able to articulate them, it’s freedom. It allows you to pursue your goals.”

She added, “It gives our students voice, I think it’s really important to have that voice and if you can’t articulate your ideas, then no one will know you have them.”

Vitela added that while one of their messages encourages students to express themselves, the main idea is to do so correctly.

She also expressed that she had been in the middle of writing papers and while some were well written, it concerned her to see sentence fragments and texting language in others.

“I go ‘oh, my goodness, how is this student going to communicate in a job later or how are they going to be able to communicate with an employer?’”

Incorporating Technology

“To write and to write well and to use technology with education and I think that also is very important to make that link,” Trager said.

Trager and Vitela emphasized the importance of incorporating technology into education.

“I think our students are very well versed in technology, plenty of devices but how do we use those devices for educational means?” Trager stated.

She added, “Here’s a great thing we could take technology and education and bridge it together. It creates that connection for students in the world that they’re living in.”

It’s Not Just About Cheating

The campaign, which focused mainly on faculty, was interested in grabbing the attention and encouraging instructors to explore the different functions of the tool aside from its recognition as a plagiarism scanner.

“We didn’t come to Turnitin first and foremost for plagiarism, I think it was about efficiency in grading, it’s about what we could teach our students, what [they] could learn through using Turnitin, so I think we decided to do it because we felt we wanted to come with more things to help our students succeed,” Trager expressed.

Some students recognize the tool more for being more helpful for professors but also acknowledge how it helped them.

Ryan Salazar, psychology major said, “I don’t think it has improved my writing skills at all but I see it as a great useful took for teachers to catch plagiarism and it’s a great way to store information, it creates this huge database for us to refer back to.”

According to Trager, Turnitin also allows instructors to create rubrics for writing and allows students who make errors to use a handbook that will explain how to make corrections.

Written and voice notes on behalf of the professor have also become part of Turnitin’s capabilities.

“That creates a personal touch, so that part is really great and it is green. I am very much interested in sustainability,” she said.

The online tool also allows students to scan their paper for grammar errors and to check what percentage of the words used are theirs before turning in their paper.

Angel Cartagena, undecided major said, “It has helped me be really careful on how I use my information to make sure I’m not using somebody else’s work without giving them credit.

He continued, “It makes me more conscious and aware of how I use my sources.”

Spreading the Word

Trager stated that the campaign wanted to familiarize faculty with “Turnitin’s capability and to encourage them also to assign more writing assignments.”

The end goal was to have more writing across the curriculum.

She expressed that to have faculty assign a written assignment so early in the semester would send out a message to students that writing is important across disciplines.

Vitela mused that there was some success after pitching the campaign to faculty asking them to assign a written assignment using Turnitin.

The campaign was publicized with flyers and faculty was given instructions on how to use the online tool even offering training.

“We did tutoring in our Center for Teaching Excellence, so we tried to make it a defined set of weeks,” Vitela said.

She added, “What we found is that sometimes faculty maybe have a writing assignment at the end of the semester or maybe they’re thinking ‘I haven’t designed it on my syllabus for this semester, but I’m thinking about it for the fall, so its ongoing.”

Trager said, “It is interesting also to see how different faculty members have incorporated this platform into the curriculum.”

According to Vitela, math instructors have gone on to incorporate writing in relation to the subject and Trager suggested the usage of word problems.

Building Connections

The idea to expand writing all across the curriculum is what earned the two professors one of the highest honors for their category.

Trager expressed that she and Vitela are trying to find ways to use their award positively whether it be in terms of sustainability or bridging with high schools that use the online tool.

[We’re] finding different ways in which this could kind of tie things together. The more things intertwine the stronger they become,” Trager stated.