Uses of a ‘Part 2’ on a Turnitin Assignment

An interesting problem with a Turnitin assignment came in a few days ago.

A lecturer reported that students’ marks were being incorrectly graded downwards. For example, a student who had been awarded a Pass on their Turnitin rubric was showing as a Fail back in the Turnitin gradebook window.

A little scrutiny revealed that this Turnitin assignment had two parts. ‘Part 1’ was for receiving on-time assignments and ‘Part 2’ was for receiving ‘Extensions and Late Submissions’. Nice idea, but since both are graded items of work, this set up meant that students were effectively getting marked out of 32 on a Postgraduate assignment, rather than 16.

The lesson here is only use a ‘Part 2’ if

1) You have a genuine multi-part assignment or
2) The ‘Part 2’ element has a zero mark.

It is not suitable for combining two assignments in the one submission link.