Students can deal with issues of grammar, similarity and plagiarism while they are drafting and revising their assignments before they submit. Here’s how the tool works.
Turnitin Draft Coach is available to all MQ students in Google Docs. Students can Install the Google Docs Add-on to start checking their work before they submit!
What is Turnitin Draft Coach?
Turnitin Draft Coach is a diagnostic tool that detects grammatical errors, missing citations and text similarity in students’ drafts, prior to Turnitin submission. Draft Coach provides instant, formative feedback to students while they write, empowering students to fix errors before they submit and improve their final work. This tool is another leap forward in our ongoing promotion of academic integrity to students.
What does Draft Coach do?
Turnitin Draft Coach has three main functions: Grammar Check, Citations Check and Similarity Check.
| 1. Grammar check | Detects errors in grammar, usage and mechanics, indicating to students the type of error that has been made, guidance on how to fix it and examples demonstrating correct usage. |
| 2. Citations check | Detects whether any sources cited in-text have been left out of the Reference List, or if any sources in the Reference List are missing from the text of the assignment. |
| 3. Similarity check | Functions in the same way as Turnitin’s similarity check by identifying text matches and highlighting where students have not paraphrased, quoted or cited appropriately. |
How does the Draft Coach self-similarity check work?
Students can run the Turnitin similarity report themselves in Draft Coach before submitting their assignment to iLearn/Turnitin. Turnitin will check the assignment for text-matches within its databases and present the same similarity report as the marker would see, including a breakdown of matches and a similarity score. Papers checked through Draft Coach are not stored in the Turnitin database, so using Draft Coach will not interfere with students’ final Turnitin submissions. While students have unlimited access to Grammar Checks and Citation Checks, they are limited to three Similarity Checks on their draft.
What are the benefits for students and staff?
Turnitin Draft Coach can increase students’ confidence in their submissions. The Grammar Check gives students targeted feedback, indicating the types of errors made and guidance on how they can be fixed. Receiving such specific feedback means that students can work more efficiently by focusing on particular areas of need and avoiding similar errors in future.
In addition to checking their grammar, students can use Draft Coach’s Similarity Check to detect if the wording of a paraphrase is too close to the original text or if quotation marks are missing so these mistakes can be rectified before submission. Since Draft Coach highlights all quoted material, students can also see whether they have used too many quotes, providing students an opportunity to remove material, paraphrase more, or make their voice more dominant.
How do students access Draft Coach?
To access Draft Coach, log into GoogleDocs with an MQ student email address and OneID password. Install the Draft Coach Add-on and you are ready to go. See the guide on how to set up and use Draft Coach. (Note that MQ staff emails generally don’t have access to Google Docs unless you have been around at MQ for a while).
What does Draft Coach look like for students?
If you don’t have access to Google docs, then this 2.5 min video shows you the student view of Draft Coach.
Make Draft Coach part of the assignment submission workflow
Talk to your students about incorporating a submission to Draft Coach as an important step in their assignment submission process. Students can run the similarity check up to three times on their writing in a Google doc and have a chance to edit and improve their work in between.
You can direct students to these help pages which have step by step instructions and a video on how to use Draft Coach.
Questions?
Contact ilearn.help@mq.edu.au for any questions about Turnitin Draft Coach.
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*Article originally published May 2022. Updated August 2022 and re-published.
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