Join National College of Ireland for a real-world look at how attendance data is helping drive earlier, more effective student support. Karen Mooney, Head of Student Support & Welfare, and Stephen Cleary, Student Engagement & Retention Officer, will share how NCI is using a centralised attendance and engagement system to streamline processes, improve visibility across student participation, and identify signs of disengagement earlier, enabling more proactive interventions and better student outcomes at scale.

Classroom response systems (CRS) are frequently introduced in classes and live sessions as tools to increase participation (Kay & LeSage, 2009). However, staff adoption is often hindered by time constraints and a lack of structured, sustained support beyond introductory demonstrations.

This paper presents a SATLE-funded initiative, From Zero to Vevox Hero, designed to move from one-off exposure to long-term capability building in the use of Vevox. Central to the project was the design and development of a bespoke, self-paced online course (built in Articulate RISE), created to support staff at different stages of confidence and experience. The course was intentionally structured as an on-demand resource, enabling learning at the point of need. Rather than relying solely on attendance at a single workshop, participants can revisit concise demonstrations, feature walkthroughs, and practical examples whenever they are preparing a session or experimenting with new functionality.

This asynchronous foundation was complemented by a series of live, hands-on workshops delivered across campuses and online. A key design principle underpinning the initiative was intentionality (Bennett et al., 2018). Recognising that staff are time-poor and often leave technology sessions feeling overwhelmed, the workshops were deliberately structured as participant-led, practice-based experiences. Rather than just observing a demonstration, participants designed, created, and facilitated their own Vevox sessions within the workshop environment. By the conclusion of the session, participants had developed and run a live activity, shifting the experience from passive exposure to active competence and emerging confidence.

The presentation will outline the design rationale behind integrating asynchronous and synchronous supports, offering a replicable model for institutions seeking to scaffold staff development and support meaningful pedagogical integration of educational technologies.

References

Kay, R. H., & LeSage, A. (2009). Examining the benefits and challenges of using audience response systems. Computers & Education, 53(3), 819–827.

Bennett, S., Lockyer, L. and Agostinho, S. (2018), Towards sustainable technology-enhanced innovation in higher education: Advancing learning design by understanding and supporting teacher design practice. British Journal of Educational Technology, 49: 1014-1026.

With the rapid developments in GenAI, academic writing and academic integrity have come under the microscope and have led to confusion for educational organisations, their staff, and students, and have created a "low-trust environment" (O'Sullivan, J, Higher Education Authority, 2025). With the absence of GenAI policies in some cases, this has led to uncertainty for all involved. “Academic Integrity ​is the​ cornerstone ​of higher education​” (Oldham, 2025), and products such as Turnitin have provided a platform to address both academic Integrity and academic writing skills issues in higher education.

This practitioner paper examines the roadmap of Turnitin as it has evolved through various iterations of products from Feedback Studio to Draft Coach and Clarity, and how these platforms are used in the classroom for student engagement with referencing, paraphrasing, and addressing academic integrity issues, along with the support infrastructure for staff and students.

Turnitin Clarity and Draft Coach are new writing and academic integrity tools that provide students with a transparent space to draft their assignments, access AI‑guided feedback (when permitted), and build confidence in the originality and authenticity of their work. For educators, Clarity enables clear visibility of a student’s writing process through version playback, flagged points of interest, originality insights, and configurable AI‑use settings. Students will benefit from clearer expectations, transparent drafting processes, and improved writing confidence. The pilot also provides a student-centered approach to academic writing and moves the perception away from Turnitin as ​“a punitive mechanism for detecting plagiarism rather than as a​ ​pedagogical tool to support academic writing development​”. (Oldham, 2025) The project supports SETU’s priorities and strategies related to digital transformation, assessment enhancement, and academic integrity.

This practitioner paper presents a Semester 2 pilot of Turnitin Clarity and Draft Coach across selected programmes at SETU to evaluate its potential to strengthen academic integrity, promote responsible AI engagement, and streamline assessment workflows and redesign. The project aligns directly with SATLE themes of Digital Transformation, Assessment Enhancement, and Academic Integrity, as well as SETU’s institutional priorities on responsible AI, student success, and equitable assessment.

The staff and student feedback of the pilot project will be presented along with the SETU Turnitin product roadmap.