OAKLAND, California, February 11 /PRNewswire/ --

- New Tool Will Offer Option of Unbiased Marking Metric for UK Students

iParadigms LLC, makers of Turnitin, today announced that they now offer anonymous marking within its signature GradeMark(R) online feedback tool. The new anonymous marking feature offers TurnitinUK tutors the ability to view and mark students' work without knowing the identity of the author. Anonymous marking of students' work is increasingly a requirement of assessment procedures in UK universities and colleges, and is also endorsed by the Quality Assurance Agency's (QAA) Code of Practice (QAA, 2006), allowing tutors the option of hiding students' names from their assignment inbox, to allow for unbiased marking.

Many institutions in the UK have requested this invaluable feature - which, surprisingly, is not supported by any Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), said Will Murray of nLearning Limited, who support Turnitin in the UK and Europe. It is a successful example of the user-led development approach to which iParadigms is fully committed.

Tutors use the new anonymous marking feature while using GradeMark as usual but student names are hidden. Once the post date for the assignment is reached, student names are revealed. If necessary, tutors may uncover a student's name prior to the post date, but the tutor will be required to provide a specific justification for such action. In such a case, a notice will be sent to the account administrator to ensure the integrity of the commitment to anonymous marking.

The anonymous marking feature is also supported via integrations of TurnitinUK with Blackboard, WebCT and Moodle.

About Turnitin

Turnitin, a service of iParadigms, LLC, is the leading originality checking and plagiarism prevention service used by millions of students and faculty, and thousands of institutions in more than 100 countries. Turnitin Originality Checking, along with GradeMark and Peer Review, are the core components of WriteCycle, an award-winning, web-based solution to support instruction in the writing process. Turnitin is a registered trademark, and GradeMark and WriteCycle are trademarks of iParadigms, LLC. More information may be obtained at www.submit.ac.uk.

Will Murray of iParadigms, LLC, +44(0) 845-643-0105, press@nlearning.co.uk, sales@nlearning.co.uk