Failed because of uni system

[user1484050576]

Hi, I've had constant trouble with my log on with our uni system. Turnitin never works properly and uni keep saying nothing can be done. Recently I've had to hand in a piece of work on our Turnitin system to the point where it kept saying error then locked my account completely. My tutor is now saying that it is an automatic fail due to it not being handed in on time. I don't know what to do as I'll have to resit but it wasn't my fault! Just need some advice!

[slug]

Hi
I administer these systems in a university. Normally if a student does not have a valid IT or Turnitin account (and where I work the Turnitin account is administered via the VLE - Moodle in my case) then the core issue is with your identity at the university.

When a student comes to me with these queries the first question I have is:
"Are you completely enrolled?"
Followed normally by "Have you paid or made arrangements for the paying of your fees?" and "Do you have a valid IT account"

We consistently turn off IT accounts and VLE access for students who have failed to enrol completely, failed to pay fines or failed to pay fees. It proves far more effective in motivating students to do things they should have done than constant emails which they can ignore.

As a student it is your responsibility to ensure you have completed all the process correctly and fully and I would strongly suggest you contact your Registry to check your status. After that, contact the IT helpdesk to check you have a valid IT account. Depending on where your VLE is administered, some universities house it in the IT department, others site it in teaching teams, you should also contact the Turnitin administrator, who is probably also the VLE administrator, to check your data is correctly loaded. You will be able to find out who this is from the university website.

The point I would underline though, is that if the University is telling you they can do nothing, then the issue is almost certainly at your end i.e. something you have not done or not completed or an instruction you have failed to follow. Believe me, universities are not in the business of randomly failing students because of minor IT niggles.

[user1484050576]

Hi,

Everything on my account is up to date, paid for and I have properly enrolled. We have an actual day not matter what year you're in where you have to enrol with a tutor on the system to make sure there are no mistakes. When it was last checked, as this has happened before with the new system, everything was perfectly fine and updated and it has been working since then.
I am a combined student and in my other subject I have had no issues, my friend however has had the same issue and has automatically failed because of the system.

[slug]

In which case I suggest you fill in a mitigating circumstances form (or whatever it is called in your university)

The due date wasn't Saturday was it? There was a Turnitin downtime between 3pm and 11pm on Saturday while maintenance was carried out. It was definitely up and working again by 11pm because, sad person that I am, I checked.

[iveburntthetoast]

We always tell students to take a screen shot of Turnitin and to email it along with their essay to the module coordinator so there is some evidence of the IT problems and also proof that the essay was completed on time. This has happened to me once--the student emailed a day before the deadline saying there were problems and I just uploaded her essay myself.