March 20, 2024 at 11:15 am
Turnitin is a plagiarism-prevention tool that helps you check the academic integrity of student writing. Starting April 16, 2024, the LT Hub will enable Turnitin’s “Plagiarism Framework” integration with Canvas. The new integration will allow the tools to work together more closely. Specifically, you and your TAs will be able to
- enable Turnitin assignments within the existing Canvas assignment workflow,
- access Turnitin’s plagiarism checking via the Canvas SpeedGrader,
- grade and provide feedback on Turnitin submissions within the Canvas SpeedGrader, and
- view Turnitin’s potential plagiarism indicators directly in the Canvas Gradebook.
What do I need to know about the change?
- You will not need to do anything to prepare. The integration will be enabled seamlessly, and the option to use the tool via a Canvas assignment will be available from April 16 onward.
- We recommend trying the Canvas integration, as it streamlines the Turnitin workflow for you and your students. When using the integration, students will no longer need to create Turnitin accounts or sign in to Turnitin. However, if you prefer, you can continue to use Turnitin as a standalone tool that students access separately from Canvas.
Our Turnitin instructor guide will be updated with steps reflecting the new integration, once it is enabled. If you have other questions about this change or about Turnitin, feel free to contact us at the LT Hub.
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Posted in Turnitin News
January 19, 2024 at 7:32 pm
If you wish to provide an attendance option for students who are unable to travel to a UBC campus, use this quick guide from the LT Hub and UBC IT Audio/Visual (A/V) team to transition to temporary online or hybrid teaching.
Streaming or recording your class session
In situations where not all students are able to attend in-person classes, options could include live-streaming the session, recording an in-person session, or recording a session to be shared asynchronously.
Preparing to live-stream or record a synchronous session
To teach a synchronous session online, do a few things ahead of time:
- If needed, adjust your lecture and learning activities to account for multiple modalities.
- In particular, active learning activities and group work between students who are in person and online may require a more complicated setup. Please consult with UBC IT A/V if you are planning such activities in your course.
- Decide which web-conferencing and collaboration tool that you will use (i.e., Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Panopto) and how any recording will be shared afterward (e.g., via Kaltura).
- Decide how students will share their questions, particularly in large classes (e.g., TAs could assist in monitoring the chat).
- Using a secure form of communication, inform students of their online option for attending class with details on how to access the session (e.g., a Zoom link).
Live-streaming or recording a synchronous session on your own with Zoom
Live-stream and/or record with Zoom by following these general steps:
- Schedule a meeting with Zoom for the class session.
- On the day of the class, bring your laptop, an external microphone or headset, and any necessary cables to the classroom.
- Before class starts, connect your laptop to your classroom projector, set your display to mirror your screen, and open your slides or any other apps needed for the lecture.
- Open Zoom and set your audio and camera settings.
- Mute all online participants.
- Share your presentation slides in Zoom. Note that when you set your display to mirror your screen, the classroom projector will show only your slides, while your laptop will show your presenter’s view, Zoom controls, and video thumbnail.
- If desired, record the lecture with Zoom. Recorded Zoom lectures can later be shared with a link from Zoom or within Canvas.
Live-streaming or recording a synchronous session with help from UBC IT A/V
UBC has General Teaching Spaces (GTS) that are equipped with dedicated recording and streaming technology for capturing lectures and other events. GTS generally leverage the Panopto video platform for media capture, which may have a delay of 30-60 seconds for live-streaming. Alternatively, a small number of GTS can support other web-conferencing and collaboration tools like Zoom.
If you are instructing in one of the UBC rooms that have media capture, UBC IT A/V can assist with scheduling the live-streaming and recording. To find out more on these spaces or request scheduling with Panopto, contact UBC IT A/V.
Recording an asynchronous session
If you want to record your lectures ahead of time to share asynchronously, you can use the desktop-capturing software Camtasia. The quickest way to record in Camtasia is to present your slides on your computer as you talk over them. Then you can upload the recording for students to stream in your Canvas course or in another online platform.
Supporting other learning activities
Depending on the duration of the disruption to on-campus activity, you may need to consider alternate approaches for other activities such as assignments, assessments, or labs. The UBC Keep Teaching website has suggestions about how each of these activities may be transitioned to an online format. You can also contact us in the LT Hub for personalized support.
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Posted in Other Tool News
December 14, 2023 at 1:00 pm
During the past year, the LT Hub has been piloting the annotation tool Hypothesis. Hypothesis lets teaching teams and students annotate and tag online readings, for their own use or to share their notes with each other.
Now that the pilot has concluded, LT Hub Leadership has decided to centrally support the use of Hypothesis—outside of Canvas.
Why was this support selected?
Hypothesis fills a perceived gap in robust annotation tools at UBC, and the pilot demonstrated that its pedagogical benefits can carry across different course contexts. Many teaching teams felt that Hypothesis furthered students learning with each other, supported students connecting with each other, and helped guide instruction in the course. Many students likewise reported that the interactivity improved their engagement with content and peers.
While the Hypothesis integration with Canvas also showed promise, funding is not available at this time for fully integrated support. Instructors and students can instead use the open-source, web-based version of Hypothesis once they create a Hypothesis account on the vendor’s website.
What will happen next?
The Hypothesis integration with Canvas will be turned off for UBC at the end of December.
Going forward, you are free to use Hypothesis outside of Canvas and to contact us in the LT Hub with any questions about this tool.
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Posted in Other Tool News
November 20, 2023 at 9:00 am
Ally is a content-checking tool that works in Canvas to help teaching teams improve the accessibility of course content. During the past year, the LT Hub has been centrally supporting and piloting Ally. Now that the pilot has concluded, LT Hub Leadership has decided to pause central support of Ally.
Why are we pausing support of Ally?
Our leadership has made this decision based on three key factors:
- The pilot of Ally surfaced some gaps in the tool’s current functionality. At times, Ally will identify accessibility issues in course content but not provide clear steps on how to address these issues.
- We see a need to better help faculty and staff understand accessibility broadly before we adopt a specific tool. We plan to develop resources that will offer support independent of any supporting technology.
- UBC’s new Accessibility Committee is actively forming recommendations of what the university can and should do to support accessibility. We want to take direction from the committee regarding whether tool(s) should form part of this support.
What will happen next?
Starting November 27, Ally will no longer be available by request to use in Canvas. We encourage you to reach out to your Instructional Support Unit or contact us with accessibility questions.
Academic accommodations continue to be available for students who have a disability or ongoing medical condition which impacts their access to or engagement with activities. You can direct students to contact the Centre for Accessibility (UBC Vancouver) or the Disability Resource Centre (UBC Okanagan) for assistance.
We will share updates on any new resources and recommendations as they become available.
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Posted in Canvas News, Other Tool News
November 14, 2023 at 10:30 am
Starting March 31, 2024, UBC will begin removing chat messages in Zoom after 90 days. This chat retention policy impacts chats exchanged between individuals, in groups, and in channels using the Zoom “Team Chat” feature.
Why are chat messages being removed?
The use of UBC Retention and Disposition Schedules for data in tools like Zoom is required to comply with UBC Records Management Office policies. By regularly removing records that do not need to be stored, UBC reduces the risk of data breaches and maximizes the digital storage space available.
What can I do to prepare for the change?
- Review your Zoom chat history by opening the Zoom application and clicking “Team Chat” in the top navigation. Copy any information that you want to keep into a more permanent place.
- To use chats that will be retained beyond 90 days, consider requesting a team in Microsoft Teams. A team allows a group of people to collaborate in a private space that is not impacted by a retention policy schedule.
- Going forward, treat the “Team Chat” area of Zoom as a place for casual conversation. Use another way of sharing any information that requires an ongoing reference point or paper trail.
If you have any questions, please contact us in the LT Hub.
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Posted in Zoom News
October 18, 2023 at 2:15 pm
As of March 28, 2024, the information in this post about the Zoom video retention policy no longer applies. The Zoom video retention policy at UBC has been postponed, and more details about its rollout will be shared as soon as they are available.
Starting October 31, 2023 and March 31, 2024 respectively, UBC will begin removing video recordings from Microsoft Teams and Zoom automatically, one year after each video is recorded. This new video retention policy affects all faculty, staff, and student employees who use UBC accounts to record with these tools.
What you need to know to prepare
If you want to keep Zoom and Microsoft Teams video recordings for the long term, you will need to change how they are stored. Instructions for keeping your Zoom and Microsoft Teams videos are provided in our original news post.
Please note that changes for existing Microsoft Teams videos must be completed before October 31, 2023 for
- any Microsoft Teams videos that will be a year old at the time.
Changes for existing Zoom videos must be completed before March 31, 2024 for
- any Zoom videos that will be a year or more old at the time.
Older Zoom video backups will be available
We have downloaded and will temporarily store backups of all Zoom videos recorded before May 1, 2023. These backups will be available by request starting in November 2023.
Additional information on the request process will be coming soon. In the meantime, please contact us in the LT Hub if you have questions about the policy.
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Posted in Microsoft Teams News, Zoom News
August 28, 2023 at 11:45 am
Plagiarism-prevention tool Turnitin released an AI-detection feature in April that attempts to check for text generated by AI-writing tools, such as ChatGPT. For a number of reasons, UBC will be maintaining its April decision not to enable the Turnitin AI-detection feature, and the university will not centrally install any AI-detection tool at this time.
Why is UBC not enabling Turnitin’s AI-detection feature?
The LT Hub Leadership group—with the support of the Provosts at UBC Vancouver and UBC Okanagan—has affirmed the decision based on several factors.
Effectiveness of the feature is still unclear
- Testing for accuracy in the AI-detection feature remains in early stages: Turnitin claims that the feature is highly reliable, but this claim has not been independently evaluated. Additionally, Turnitin’s claim of accuracy that the feature can “detect the presence of AI writing with 98% confidence” was arrived at by checking their own training set of AI-written text against human-written text, and they have provided few details about that training set. Turnitin has indicated that their initial lab tests yielded different results than what is being seen in real-world settings. Even a small percentage of error can translate into significant numbers of false positives or negatives across a large sample of student work at an institution.
- Testing for potential bias in the feature also continues to be in early stages: Turnitin has stated that they have worked to address the concern of bias by including works in their training set from diverse contexts and authors. But without further information about Turnitin’s training set, process, or whether there has been any testing for bias, we cannot know the degree to which the feature may flag certain kinds of writing as AI-written more often than others.
- Ability of the feature to keep up with rapidly evolving AI is unknown: Turnitin’s feature has been trained to detect AI-written work from the GPT-3 and -3.5 language models. While Turnitin suggests that their detector will detect writing from GPT-4 “most of the time”, the development of new language models will likely outpace the ability for the detector to recognize them. Analogous to the race between anti-virus companies and hackers, there will be a race between AI writers and detectors. It is not yet clear the degree to which AI-detection tools such as Turnitin’s will be able to keep up.
It is not possible to double-check or review the results
- Instructors cannot double-check the feature results: Most plagiarism-prevention tools give instructors both the flagged passages of the student’s suspicious submission and the matching source material(s), to allow for intuitive comparison and help assess whether plagiarism occurred. However, in the case of AI-detection, the source material simply does not exist. Instructors are instead shown passages that are suspected of being AI-written, with nothing to check against. This limitation means over-reliance on such tools for academic integrity can be problematic.
- Results from the feature are not available for students to review: The report provided by the AI-detection feature in Turnitin is only accessible to instructors; students will not be able view the results. For other existing functionality in Turnitin, students may be able to see the outcomes, unless their instructor disables it. But with this new feature, there is no way for instructors to enable students to access results. That lack of functionality makes it more difficult for students to review information about suspected misconduct and to respond to any errors in flagged content.
What will happen next?
UBC is continuing to wait before deploying any AI-detection features, including the one by Turnitin. We will remain cautious until we can be confident about both a feature’s effectiveness, accuracy, and bias-mitigation, and its ability to employ an AI-detector as a robust component of talking to students about suspected academic misconduct. The use of other AI-detection tools is also not recommended, due to similar issues as those noted above, as well as privacy and security concerns; no AI-detection tool has undergone a UBC Privacy Impact Assessment yet.
The UBC Academic Integrity website has related information for faculty and students on how to teach and learn about academic integrity, including tips for assessment design and illustrative syllabus language that can be adapted for specific courses. On the website, there are also FAQs related to the use of generative AI in courses in the context of academic integrity.
If you have questions regarding the rationale for this decision, you can reach out to us in the LT Hub at LT.hub@ubc.ca.
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Posted in Turnitin News
July 20, 2023 at 4:05 pm
The LT Hub is launching a new initiative to support UBC instructors who develop learning technologies. The Learning Technology (LT) Incubator is a way for instructors with funded learning technology projects to collaborate with us and receive dedicated technical and project management support. This additional support can help you focus on bringing your project to life, rather than getting bogged down in administrative details.
How the LT Incubator works
Once your learning technology’s project funding is secured, you can reach out to us in the LT Hub. We will discuss your idea to determine if it is a good applicant for the LT Incubator. Projects can then be submitted using the LT Incubator expression of interest form.
If your project is accepted into the LT Incubator, you will become the product owner. Product owners are the strategic thinkers for a project, setting the direction for the learning technology and its technical priorities. Meanwhile, the team on the LT Incubator side will focus on executing the project. They will provide technical expertise, hire and manage the project team, and handle any privacy or security requirements for the technology.
Note that projects accepted into the LT Incubator will not necessarily be adopted, supported, or funded as central learning technologies at UBC. However, by working with the experts in the LT Hub, these projects will be well set up for broader piloting, evaluation, and possible adoption.
Where to find out more about the LT Incubator
You can read more on our new LT Incubator information page. This page gives further details on the collaboration roles, collaboration benefits, and funding approaches for the LT Incubator. You can also always reach out to us in the LT Hub with questions.
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Posted in Other Tool News
June 21, 2023 at 3:15 pm
The LT Hub’s support for the collaborative grading tool Crowdmark will end on April 30, 2024. Starting in May 2024, Crowdmark will no longer be centrally licensed. This change means that teaching teams will not be able to use Crowdmark as part of Canvas and will not be able to receive LT Hub support.
The LT Hub recommends that teaching teams instead use Gradescope, a different collaborative grading tool that we perceive offers more robust functionality. Gradescope can be used as part of Canvas and will continue to receive LT Hub support.
Why central support for Crowdmark is changing
We have been reviewing the LT Hub’s supported services to ensure that we are supporting tools and initiatives that provide the greatest pedagogical value to UBC. As part of this review, we have identified Crowdmark and Gradescope as two tools with largely overlapping functionality.
In comparing the tools, we have also decided that Gradescope offers better features for our context, including easier grading rubrics, a unique programming-based assignment type, and a more full-featured Canvas integration.
Streamlining our tools in this space will help the LT Hub provide more focused support and help UBC students have a more consistent experience.
How to prepare for the transition
We know changing the technology that you use can be stressful. Please contact us at the LT Hub for help with moving from Crowdmark to Gradescope. Please note that, as with Crowdmark, Gradescope requires Faculties/Departments to provide funding per student per course.
Any teaching teams who decide to continue using Crowdmark after April 2024 will need to procure their own license for using the tool outside of Canvas.
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Posted in Crowdmark News
May 12, 2023 at 10:45 am
This post was updated in mid-September 2023.
UBC has successfully moved all Kaltura videos hosted at UBC into the Kaltura cloud. Thank you for your patience as the LT Hub video team migrated nearly 180,000 Kaltura videos during the month of April.
The team has also been running scripts to automatically update Kaltura videos embedded normally in Canvas courses (e.g., videos displayed in a Canvas module or page), so that they point to the videos’ new location in the cloud. This updating process will continue during the next several weeks, as we continue to identify the different ways that Kaltura videos have been embedded in courses.
What do I need to do now?
- For any Kaltura videos that you share outside of Canvas (e.g., videos displayed on a website, direct links), you need to update each video link or embed code. This update will replace the existing link or embed code with one that correctly points to the video’s new location in the cloud.
- Your existing links will continue to work for the time being, and you will have sufficient time to complete the manual updates. But it is best to update earlier; analytics for a given video will not be captured in the Kaltura cloud until you do.
- For Kaltura videos shared in Canvas courses, please confirm that the videos have been correctly updated by checking if they use the Kaltura cloud video player. To identify the Kaltura cloud player, you can look for the new UBC logo in the lower right corner. The new logo will appear with a crest, as below.
If any Kaltura video in Canvas does not appear, displays an error, or does not have the crest (i.e., only the text “UBC”), please contact us in the LT Hub for help.
- For all Kaltura videos—regardless of how they are shared—please check what captioning is being applied. During the migration, new captioning was created for some videos inadvertently, including for videos that previously did not have captions. This captioning may have been set as the current default for your video in the Kaltura cloud. If needed, you can remove the new captioning or change it back to what you had before.
- If you have any bookmarks to the UBC Kaltura Teaching & Learning Media Portal, update them to point to learning.media.ubc.ca. This link will replace learning.video.ubc.ca as the place where you can manage Kaltura media, if you prefer not to log in to Canvas.
Where can I get more support?
Contact us
We know that dealing with technology changes can be stressful. We are happy to answer questions and help guide you through the process.
Join a workshop
You can register for a Kaltura workshop, held at noon on variable dates each month. These one-hour introductory sessions will delve into the features available in the Kaltura cloud. You can also ask questions and get answers about the migration of your videos.
Learn more
You can also read about the Kaltura cloud migration and the broader Enterprise Video Platform project that it is part of, to learn more.
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Posted in Kaltura News