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‘Tis the season for final papers and exams. As time grows short in the semester, I’ve seen more of my graduate students cite Wikipedia in their papers.

Some students have noticed that I cite Wikipedia in my blog posts. I include links to Wikipedia so that students can find a quick, reasonable discussion of a specific topic.

But that doesn’t mean that I will let graduate students cite Wikipedia in their assignments. I wouldn’t let undergraduate students cite Wikipedia, but I do hold graduate students to a higher set of standards. Masters students should be able to find, assess and use reliable, authoritative references for their assignments.

Here’s a good response on this issue. Jorge shares my opinion that the reference lists in some Wikipedia articles can be a good source of reading material for students. This practice is similar to using the reference list of a good textbook or an academic article to find additional readings on a topic. I encourage students to do this, as long as students find, read and cite the sources.

Wikipedia is not a textbook, dictionary or paper encylcopedia. Wikipedia is a user-created database of articles on a wide variety of topics. As I’ve mentioned on 7 March, Wikipedia is, at best, a tertiary or third-level reference. Wikipedia articles should not include any original, primary or first-level research.

That means that all Wikipedia articles should be based on secondary research.

TurnItIn.com does check student papers against Wikipedia articles, which helps deter students from using Wikipedia as a reference. Jessica Farris wrote a brief article on QuestionCopyright.org in which she mentioned some of the deterrent qualities of TurnItIn.com. Bill Zeller discussed the legal status of TurnItIn.com’s indexing in this article in one of his course blogs. Zeller also refers to this 13 March 2007 BusinessWeek article about TurnItIn.com.

As the semester moves along, the assignments get longer. I avoid printing the assignments whenever possible. It makes little sense, as I would have to scan each graded hard copy before returning the assignment to my online students.

It’s easy for me to grade an assignment in TurnItIn.com’s GradeMark feature, if the document is under 10 pages in length.

Longer documents take more time to load in my GradeMark editing window, depending upon my bandwidth and TurnItIn.com’s server load.

Fortunately, I have attached an LCD monitor to my office desk, by using an after-market monitor arm that can pivot and rotate the panel. The extra monitor is connected to the video out port on my MacBook Pro.

When I am grading a long paper, I open the GradeMark window in the top monitor.

I open a read-only copy of the paper in Word or Acrobat, depending upon the file format that the student submitted. I display that document on the MacBook Pro’s display.

This lets me read the original document while I’m marking it up in GradeMark.

Unfortunately, GradeMark does not have a bookmark feature. That’s a problem when I’m grading a long document.

Sometimes I need to look at a different section of the document while I’m writing a comment. This section might be a reference list or an appendix. I’ll use the bottom read-only window to display that section, so I don’t lose my place in GradeMark.

When I graded the Paper 2 assignments for my courses, I tried a feature in TurnItIn.com’s GradeMark system. It’s a scoring matrix that helps me calculate assignment grades.

I usually have a scoring matrix in my assignments. It’s printed at the end of the assignment document, after the questions and requirements. This is an example from the IS 6100 Paper 2 assignment for the Fall 2007 term.

In previous courses, I would append a completed matrix to the graded assignment.

When I started using GradeMark last year, I just typed scores into the TurnItIn.com general comments box. There’s no way for me to append a page to an existing document in a TurnItIn.com assignment.

The matrix lets me allocate points to each row or item in my grading scheme. The columns represent a grading scale. After I type in my remarks and fill in the general comments screen, I can check the approriate cells in the matrix to calculate a grade.

I’m a visual person, and I’ve used a similar format in printed scoring tables.

I didn’t connect the vertical scale to the letter grades.

Also, the draft and peer review items are scored in those assignments, so I did not include them in the scoring matrix shown below.

This screenshot of a TurnItIn.com scoring matrix is from my instructor account, so it might be different from the student view.

This matrix is available in the printable version of the GradeMark report, and the total grade will appear in the TurnItIn.com gradebook. See my article from 5 February 2007 for more information on viewing GradeMark reports.

During the term, the point value of each assignment increases. I’ll add more rows to the scoring matrix to distribute the points in reasonable amounts.

One issue I’ve run into is the scoring matrix editor. It tends to crash for no reason. I had to close the editing window, but at least the crash didn’t take down my web browser or the operating system. It took me 3 attempts to create the matrix shown above.