1. Digitising Source Materials: A virtual archive for Level One Historians Gavin Rand History, Greenwich

2. aims To develop a digital archive of ‘primary’ source material relating to the ‘Indian Mutiny’ of 1857 To explore the educational and pedagogic possibilities of the turnitin plagiarism-detection system

3. the ‘Indian Mutiny’

4. method I assembled a range of original 19 th century sources which I was able to digitise in order to form a ‘digital archive’ I then devised a source analysis exercise to introduce students to the pleasures and pitfalls of historical research

5. the digital archive

6. rationale The digital archive allows our students do some ‘proper’ archival research… so it includes some sources which are less relevant and a few ‘hidden gems’

7. All of the assignments produced by students were subject to scrutiny by the turnitin plagiarism-detection software The turnitin originality reports were then used as the basis of group tutorials in which students read each other’s work to identify examples of good and bad practice and tune them up!

9. outputs/legacies Student feedback on the exercise was positive – especially re: source analysis The digital archive continues to grow, and I’ve just acquired a collection of mutiny-related drawings by Indian school children which will be used in next year’s archive

10. outputs/legacies I am developing further turnitin exercises designed to foster good academic practice, including a précis exercise set up to invite plagiarism to demonstrate ‘what not to do…’ From next year, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences will introduce turnitin across all of our Level One courses