On 27th May, my colleague Tracey Madden and I attended the first Scottish Turnitin User Group meeting hosted in the University of Dundee. This is something I wished for since I took on the Turnitin Service Manager role four years ago. Very grateful for Glenn Thomas, the Turnitin Account Manager, and Emma Duke-Williams from University of Dundee who organized this!

Before the meeting, even on the train journey up, I am concerned of a few issues, for example: a, lack of data retention function; b, the Feedback Studio’s New Standard Assignment does not have some of the essential features that users familiar with in the Classic Assignment; and c, we do not get a notification before changes made on the system and had to monitor the Release Notes regularly.  

Glenn started the meeting by saying it was his hope to handover the meeting to the users and let us decide what we want to discuss, what features we wish to have and how we manage the future catch-ups, and it sounds encouraging! The meeting is structured around a few short presentations and group discussions. I am glad to meet other system administrators, user support lead, and online course developers from universities and colleges in Edinburgh, Dundee, Stirling, St Andrews and Fife in the meeting. Here are some of the highlights and reflections. 

Turnitin Admin Portal 

The new Admin portal released in January 2026 provides functions for system admin to download Stats data and manage Submissions, QuickMark and Rubrics in one place. Currently five nominated admin users can be added on the Master account. We are glad to hear that a few universities asked to increase the number.  

We asked for “Read Only” access, as the Manage Submission, Rubrics, Stats data might be useful for some colleagues but they may not need (or want) to touch system configurations. 

Glenn mentioned that some universities asked to list all classes in the Admin portal which we totally agree and welcome the idea! 

I am glad to hear a colleague from University of St Andrews raised the question about data retention function to comply with GDPR, this is something on my agenda for a long time. Recently Turnitin provided us a list of ~30k instructors accounts created since 2006. Many of the staff either left the university or moved on from their role hence their accounts need deleted according to Learn VLE data retention policy, but there is no function or API in Turnitin service to do it. We are in the process to identify expired user accounts and it is not straight forward either. Emma kindly reminded us that once an instructor is deleted, the QuickMark set they created will be lost which is worth watching out. I am glad to learn a few colleagues are interested to form a working group in Data Retention and Process.

Generative AI VS AI Detection

Glenn invited us to chat about GenAI and how people felt about AI Detection. Turnitin’s AI Detection feature was introduced in April 2023 and many universities soon opted out, including us. However, our service team took the opportunity during the free trial window and carried out some testing. We invited a group of colleagues and interns to submit their essays with a condition that they must indicate the percentage of text generated by AI and highlight it in the file. We collected ~80 essays with AI generated text ranges from 0% to 100%, and compared the self declared percentage with the percentage shown in Turnitin’s AI detection reports. We discovered that the results are not consistent, with both false positive and false negatives high. Our users used various GenAI tools and it is not clear which tools Turnitin used to train their model and the algorithms they adopted. After the trial, we no longer have access to those reports, here is a screenshot we captured.

Self Declared Percentage of Generative AI Text vs AI Detection

At the meeting, it turned out only one university had the AI Detection enabled. The general feeling in the room is that since AI became widely available, the attention has turned to using GenAI in an acceptable and supported way both for teaching and learning. 

Feedback Studio – The New Standard Assignment 

The Turnitin service team in the University tested the beta version of the New Standard Assignment last year and provided feedback to the product manager. We decided not to upgrade last summer due to lack of essential features. During the meeting,  Glenn shared the Product Roadmap site, and highlighted the process to vote for the features and subscribe to the update.  

We are glad the features for submitting on behalf of anonymous student, submission file preview, and uploading from Microsoft OneDrive had been provided upon requests. 

Some colleagues noted the improvements in accessibility in the New assignment and planned to switch it over in their institution. We are glad to see some features we asked have been listed there – we are now chasing an ETA for them. Please feel free to add your comments in these links:

• Streamlined assignment creation 
• Hide marker details 
• Group work assignments 
• Filter submission by groups 

When Glenn showed a new feature of Audio and Video feedback on the RoadMap, see a screenshot below, our immediate response is that it might push the data storage cost up.  Coincidentally, in Blackboard Learn service, we had just reached the decision to switch off the function to allow submission of audio and video files in Learn assignments. The recommendation is to upload audio and video clips to the dedicated MediaHopper service and then share a link in the Learn submission. 

Audio and video feedback feature on Roadmap

On our way back, I had a sense of relief as I felt the vendor is listening to the users and making efforts to make improvements. It made me happy to know I am not alone and colleagues in other universities are sharing the same challenges and want to achieve the same vision. Tracey took me to see The Match of Penguins statue and they certainly brought a smile to my face. 

The Matching of Penguins in front of Steeple Church, Dundee

Press on, little fellows! 

Dr Miki Y Sun

(A screenshot shows self claimed percentage of GenAI contents compared to AI detection report)

Reflections on the First Scottish Turnitin User Group Meeting / Digital Learning Applications and Media by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0

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