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How to compare two MS-Word documents for plagiarism detection

2013/11/14 2 comments
  1. You could start with the document properties
    1. some  students leave even the author and editing time in. However, author does not prove any wrong doing, a student may have borrowed a laptop, including its MS-word installation, to author a document and submit it
    2. It may  actually be more of an indicator of something illicit if document properties are empty.
    3. Students have likely used the “Document inspector”:
      1. (1): File / (2) Info, (3) view the properties (this document looks like it had its privacy information removed), you can use (4) to view even more. image
      2. to remove all privacy relevant information, like so: (5) unfold “check for issues”, (6) “inspect document””,
      3. in the window: “document inspector”, click image, you will be given the option to “remove all”personal information: image
    4. However, removing personal information can be perfectly legitimate, unless something else was assigned. And it does not help plagiarizers cover their tracks anyway, for…
  2. …there is the more substantial “compare” documents feature which (even though it was developed for the legal profession, as blackline) tracks what really counts: content changes.
    1. Access it form the ribbon’s “review” tab: image
    2. point the tool to your 2 documents: image
    3. make your life easier by selecting on the “review” tab to view only content changes  (formatting comparisons is noise for plagiarism detection): image
    4. You get a handy (here blurred, but still demonstrating the amount of similarity (=black), compared with changes (= blue),  between the 2 documents ) overview of (from the left)
      1. list of changes
      2. view of changes in a merged document (which you can save)
      3. original document
      4. secondary (likely plagiarized) document: compare documents-blurred
      5. The feature is nice, but only moderately intelligent (see the first match, I would obviously not count that as substantially different) and best used with discretion, to make it easier for a teacher to decide how likely it is that these similarities are accidental.
      6. In this instance, even if the teacher questions are not counted, it seems obvious that only minor alterations were made to the original document and many responses, including quite lengthy sentences, are entirely the same.
      7. While this *is* an instructional use, you can find happier instructional uses of MS-Word’s reviewing/tracking changes feature here.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, e-learning, office-software, service-is-assessing, Writing Tags: , , , , ,

How to create screencasts of student presentations for the language learner ePortfolio in the digital audio lab

2013/11/08 Leave a comment

image

  1. Students can now easily video-record their own screens during class presentations – not only when using PowerPoint; instead students could demo a website, like their Facebook page.
  2. Last year, we were limited to PowerPoint’s record slideshow with timing and narration feature, and either send the PPSX (small, but requires the PowerPoint viewer) or the “Save as” video (new in PowerPoint 2010; computing intensive and large file size).
  3. Now with MS-Community Clips, screencasts are
    1. minimal effort to create (keyboard shortcut WIN+ALT+R or T; save on desktop; drag/drop into Sanako homework folder)
    2. and little effort to distribute:
      1. Students could have uploaded to a Moodle’ file upload assignment (default file size limit: 64MB) or Kaltura file upload assignment (not sure whether there is a size limit). This seems more suitable for assignments with screencasts recordings.
      2. In this instance
        1. Sanako collected the Homework files to the Sanako share,
        2. my langlabemailer emailed them as attachment (so far tested to allow for 25MB attachment size, the equivalent of 7-8 minute screencast, a hefty space to fill in L2!  We also established: 45MB is too much… Smile)  to the originating student and teacher, for review, grading –
      3. and – provided it passes muster as an attractive and significant piece – possibly for re-use in the student’s language learner ePortfolio.
  4. In addition,
    1. Before the presentations, the teacher easily collaborated on proof-reading the slide decks of individual students, by using the Sanako Remote control screen sharing feature.
    2. During the presentation, students followed more closely – which seemed to increase their attention and comprehension -, thanks to audio and screen being shared to them from the presenter, using the Sanako’s  “Model student” feature.
Categories: Arabic, audience-is-teachers, digital-audio-lab, e-languages, English, eportfolio, Farsi, French, German, Greek (modern), Hindi, Italian, Japanese, learning-usage-samples, Mandarin, multimedia-recording, office-software, Portuguese, presentations, Presenter-Computer, Russian, Spanish, Speaking, Student-Computers Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

How to find out whether you have access to your classroom early (e.g. for setup tasks), by using the R25 calendar

2013/10/31 Leave a comment
  1. Go to http://calendar.uncc.edu/, and follow these steps:
    1. (1) switch to view by “locations”  instead of (the default) “events”,
    2. (2) select your building,
    3. (3) find your classroom,
    4. (4) see whether it is blocked=booked before your class (hover over the block to see by what) –
  2. image
  3. in order to browse to your classroom’s schedule – for example, you could also just (5) search for your classroom.
  4. Sorry, unlike in the LRC calendars from MS-Exchange, here
    1. no direct links to your room’s schedule;
    2. no simple flexible booking, even though there seems to be a need for one-time bookings (AFAIK, I did not venture behind the screen after top menu: “Reservation request” since I do not know how to answer its question).
Categories: audience-is-teachers, e-infrastructure, Institution-is-University-of-North-Carolina-Charlotte, Screenshots, websites Tags: , , , ,

How to upload a folder with many files in Moodle 2–the ultimate training

2013/10/22 Leave a comment
  1. …using animated .gifs. Different speed? 0.25sec,0.5sec, 0.75sec, 1sec, , 2sec, 3sec, 4sec, 5sec, 6sec, 7sec, 8sec, 9sec, 10sec. 1.5sec
  2. And the answer is: You now can simply drag-and-drop a zip file  (provided you are using a recent web browser). Start with “Turn editing on”, “Add resource”, “Folder”, and then proceed like so:
  3. Easy enough, but you can still save time: If your folder is reusable not only between terms, but also teachers (sections etc.), I suggest doing this in our Moodle metacourses (once).
  4. If you want to use an existing instead of adding a new folder, a slightly different way to manage your multiple files upload in Moodle 2 is described here.
Categories: animated-GIFs, audience-is-teachers, e-learning, lms, training Tags: , ,

How can I configure my PC to write in Arabic

2013/10/22 Leave a comment
  1. In Windows past XP, you can just choose – without first installing support for Right-to-left languages – by pressing +R, typing ïntl.cpl”, clicking ”OK”, clicking ”keyboards and languages”and “change keyboard”.
  2. An Arabic keyboard layout that is commonly preferred by Westerners (closer to the phonetic layout of the keyboard) is a separate download: https://thomasplagwitz.com/2013/01/06/imrans-phonetic-keyboard-for-arabic/
  3. A transliterating IME (type on a Western keyboard sounds as you speak, pick suggestions in Arabic letters from a dropdown menu).
    1. Popular choices are Google Input Arabic: http://www.google.com/inputtools/windows/
    2. Microsoft Maren: offers more, also morphological analysis. Transliteration tool is linked at the bottom of this post: https://thomasplagwitz.com/2011/06/09/ms-maren-morph-helps-read-arabic-web-pages/ .
Categories: Arabic, audience-is-students, audience-is-teachers, Writing Tags: , ,

How teachers can include a link to their metacourse content in their Moodle course

2013/10/21 Leave a comment
  1. How teachers get the metacourse link:
    1. image
    2. Find your metacourse and expand (1).
    3. find your resource (the textbook is actually “Voilà”, but we want to make extra sure there are no non-ASCII compatibility issues) and right-click (2).
    4. Click “copy link location” (3).
  2. How to use the metacourse link in your actual course:
    1. image
    2. You can e.g. start a new topic (0).
    3. Add title (1).
    4. Add text (2).
    5. Add link to text (3).
    6. Paste link from clipboard. (4)
    7. I you choose open in new window (5), following the link will not navigate the student away from your actual course in the main web browser window.
  3. Result: image Caveats:
    1. FireFox opens in a new tab, even if you in Moodle request to open in a new window.
    2. You can only link to the root folder of a Moodle Metacourse. If there are multiple content sets within your textbook folder, please advise your student of the name.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, documentation, learning-materials, lms, textbooks Tags: , ,

How a teacher can easily grade a NanoGong audio recording assignment in Moodle

2013/10/17 Leave a comment
  1. Similar to grading video recording assignments with Moodle Kaltura, You can enter in 2 ways:
    1. By clicking on the assignment like your students: CAM03104
    2. Or by clicking on Activities: NanoGong Voices CAM03116
  2. Before you make it to the assignment page and can see the NanoGong plugin, you may have to bypass some Java warning dialogues.
  3. On the assignment page:
    1. Click (1) speaker symbol for the recorder control to show up.CAM03113
    2. You can also
      1. enter (1) feedback
      2. or (2) re-sort the submissions – we had to click this once for the recordings to actually shows up (seems to refresh the page).CAM03110
      3. I have not had the chance to see the results in the Gradebook, but here are some screenshots from blogs of users that have:
        1. ng2.jpg
      4. ng6.gif
Categories: assignments, audience-is-teachers, grading, lms, multimedia-recording, recording-software Tags: , , ,

How a teacher can use NanoGong’s plugin for the HTML editor to easily send their own audio to students

2013/10/17 Leave a comment
  1. The rich HTML editor recorder plug-in is supposed to make it easier for the teacher (than other recorders that require the teacher to save to file and upload the file to a Moodle activity). Here is how it can work:
  2. Add an activity which includes the rich HTML editor plugin, e.g. a page. 
  3. Click on the loudspeaker icon denotes NanoGong among the editor tools.
  4. image
  5. A window will open that includes the recorder JAVA applet (you may have to bypass Java warnings): image
  6. Click the red record button and speak.
  7. When done, click insert.
  8. Result: image
  9. Note, however,  that so far I have run into issues actually displaying this teacher-added NanoGong recorder content.
Categories: audience-is-teachers, documentation, e-languages, Listening, lms, multimedia-recording, recording-software Tags: , ,