The White House and Department of Education Recognize Turnitin Revision Assistant Among Other Leaders Seeking to Improve How Testing Can Inform Instruction

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WASHINGTON D.C. - Turnitin received special recognition at the White House this week for its formative writing product Turnitin Revision Assistant. Revision Assistant extends the reach of teachers by giving students immediate, actionable and substantive feedback as they write. Click to Tweet.

On December 7, the White House and the Department of Education hosted teachers and their students along with industry and legislative leaders for the Innovative Assessment Tech Jam in Washington D.C. to model best practices and technology leading to better, fewer, and fairer assessments. Revision Assistant was one of a small group of new educational technology products featured at the event because it fits the model for educational resources teachers can use to inform instructional practices with innovative, relevant assessment ties.

Revision Assistant uniquely fits this vision for education technology because it evaluates the quality of a student’s writing not to assign a score. Instead, Revision Assistant uses natural language processing to evaluate an essay and compare it to a rubric of standards, then it instantly gives four pieces of specific feedback highlighting areas of strength and areas to improve the essay. The student can then make their next version better and call for another review to get new feedback. Students can call for as many “Signal Checks” and rewrite their essays as many times as they like. In a pilot study, students averaged 10 revisions using Revision Assistant.

“We’re honored that the White House and the Department of Education recognized Turnitin Revision Assistant as a tool to evaluate writing for the express purpose of giving constructive feedback,” said Elijah Mayfield, vice president of new technology for Turnitin and the visionary behind Revision Assistant. “In our studies, teachers found Revision Assistant opened the door to deeper conversations about effective writing and improved the quality of writing students were submitting.”

The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is the leading source for rigorous, independent education research, and it evaluates products for their educational effectiveness. In 2014, Revision Assistant was awarded grants from the IES and Gates Foundation to advance the practice of using technology to support the process of learning to write. Today, the product serves over 2 million students and through partnerships with the College Board®, supports writing in the Official SAT practice on Khan Academy®.

About Turnitin
Turnitin is revolutionizing the experience of writing to learn. Turnitin’s formative feedback and originality checking services promote critical thinking, ensure academic integrity, and help students improve their writing. Turnitin provides instructors with the tools to engage students in the writing process, provide personalized feedback, and assess student progress over time. Turnitin is used by more than 30 million students at 15,000 institutions in 140 countries. Backed by Insight Venture Partners, GIC, Norwest Venture Partners, Lead Edge Capital and Georgian Partners, Turnitin is headquartered in Oakland, Calif., with international offices in Newcastle, U.K., Utrecht, Netherlands and Melbourne, Australia. @Turnitin

_{SAT, AP and the College Board are registered trademarks of the College Board.Khan Academy is a registered trademark of Khan Academy, Inc. All Khan Academy content is available for free at www.khanacademy.org.}

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_{Summary: Turnitin Revision Assistant featured at White House event for ability to inform instruction through immediate feedback on student writing.
Tweet: White House event: @Turnitin Revision Assistant model for assessment to aid #writing instruction #edtech
Tags: Turnitin, Revision Assistant, College Board, White House, Department of Education, education, teaching, assessment, Khan Academy, writing, K12}