1. Plagiarism Detection on Canvas – VeriCite Guide
Canvas Quick Start Guide

2. Canvas QuickStart Guide: VeriCite
Who
This Tip Sheet is written for
Faculty
GTFs
Grader
Course Designer
Students
When
Student submission of an online assignment and/or writing
Why
To identify potential plagiarism or improperly cited text of the assignment

3. We’re Here to Help! 541-346-1942 (CMET Consulting)
In Person (with free coffee!)
UO Libraries CMET Consulting Knight Library 19 Monday – Friday, 9am – 6pm
Phone (with or without ScreenSharing)
(CMET Consulting)
Web Site
blogs.uoregon.edu/canvas/training/

4. Table of Contents: What is VeriCite and how does it work?
What Databases VeriCite scans against
Web browsers compatible with VeriCite
B. How do I setup VeriCite in Canvas?
Setting up VeriCite in Canvas
C. How do I Review/Grade VeriCite submissions?
View VeriCite reports
Search and sort through plagiarized text
Add comments in-line with the text
Leave feedback or comments/grading for my students in VeriCite
D. Questions or Help

5. A. What is VeriCite and how does it work?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

6. 2A. How does VeriCite work?
1. What is VeriCite?
VeriCite is a plagiarism detection service that identifies potentially plagiarized or improperly cited text. The service automatically checks submitted work against an ever-increasing index of online sources.
2A. How does VeriCite work?
VeriCite can accept student in-line submissions and submission files in any file format (e.g. pptx, html, docx, pdf, txt, rtf, ppt, doc, odf, etc.).
It converts the student submission into plain text and excludes any quoted material from matching. The rest of the text is then compared for exact matches with existing source material. VeriCite uses string matching methods, along with a series of algorithms and scoring processes, to identify matching texts. A final report is presented to the user highlighting different levels or amounts of matching per submission. There is an overview score as well as a side by side comparison of the matching text and sources.
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

7. 2B. How does VeriCite work? Continued…
VeriCite reports are created on demand every single time you click to view the report. This means that there is no waiting for the report; all reports are delivered instantly.
Reports are also non-static. If a student submits a paper and gets a plagiarized score of 0, and then another student in another class submits the same paper, then both reports and plagiarism scores will update to 100 to show that they have plagiarized. This dynamic updating can help prevent cases where groups of students or paper mills share the same paper.
All submitted papers are indexed in a completely encrypted form then stored securely in a repository that is specific to each subscribing institution. Additionally, the institution maintains full ownership and control of their repository materials.
Currently, VeriCite only supports the English language at this time.
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

8. 3. Can I use VeriCite in Canvas?
VeriCite works within the Assignments tool as an External Tool submission type.
When students submit assignments in Canvas, their reports are generated and available within the Assignments area via the VeriCite LTI integration.
Grades entered into the LTI tool are also automatically sent to the Canvas Gradebook.
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

9. 4A. What databases is VeriCite scanning against?
VeriCite compares student submissions against data that have been encrypted from millions of academically-related websites, both public and private, including books, journals, articles, open educational resources and much more. For example, the 4.6 million articles in the English edition of Wikipedia have been indexed and Longsight is negotiating with commercial vendors to include their periodical and book databases in the process.
The VeriCite crawler was initiated with a “seed” list of several thousand key academic resources that are commonly plagiarized. The VeriCite crawler continuously indexes each of those sites and all the sites that are linked within those sites and beyond.
Academically-related sites most often link to other academically oriented sites, and to sites that provide additional topical information for their site visitors (all potentially plagiarized material).
VeriCite is constantly adding new sites to the list based on our crawling process, manual additions to the seed list, and negotiated permissions to add new resources.
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

10. 4B. What databases is VeriCite scanning against?
Continued…
In addition, each institution has their own private repository in which all student submissions for that institution are stored and used for comparison.
Longsight can even index papers from prior term courses in order to populate the private repository with several years' worth of student work. All papers stored in this private repository remain the property of the institution and are removed from the VeriCite database if the institution discontinues the service.
The index is massive and continuously growing. More than 50 million academically-related websites (approaching billions of pages) have been indexed to date.
Approximately one million new sites are added to the comparison repository each day. The current comparison repository contains many terabytes of highly compressed “hashes” that are used for comparisons
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

11. 5. What web browsers are supported for VeriCite?
Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are the recommended browsers.
Note: VeriCite will not work in Safari.
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

12. B. How do I setup VeriCite in Canvas?
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

13. 1. How do I setup a VeriCite assignment?
Choose the + Assignments button and enter in assignment information u
Enter the following information for your assignment:
1. Assignment title
2. Assignment description
3. Points for the assignment
4. Assignment Group (Optional)
5. Display Grade format v w x y
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

14. 2. How do I setup a VeriCite assignment?
Under “Submission Type” select, “External Tool”
Then click on the white text box under “External Tool URL”.
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

15. 3. How do I setup a VeriCite assignment?
Scroll down the list and click, “VeriCite” and then “Select”.
This will automatically fill out the “External Tool URL”
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

16. 4. How do I setup a VeriCite assignment?
After you have completed this step, finish assigning the details in the assignment and click, “Save and Publish”. Once you’ve finished making the assignment, you will see the assignment within the following VeriCite screen:
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

17. C. How do I review VeriCite submissions?
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

18. 1. Go to Assignments
Navigate to the “Assignments” area on the left hand navigation bar within your course
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

19. 2. Go to the specific Assignment
Click on the assignment you want to view or grade.
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

20. 3. Choose the student you wish to grade
Select the View Report button for the student submission report you want to view and/or grade.
Tip: You may click on any of the underlined items (i.e. Assignment, Status, or Submission title) to edit those items. Also, remember that you can filter the items displayed by Assignment, User, or Status using the drop-down menus at the top.
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

21. 4. The student's report will display
The report will open. You will see the report Details which show the user, submission date, assignment, status, and the matched score. The report also displays matching text highlighted in the colors noted in the legend at the bottom of the report.
Note: Use Top Matches tab to view a list of the High Matching (red text) sources.
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

22. 5. Enter a grade and/or comments
To enter a score, click on the "..." ellipses next to “Assignment Grade”. A box will appear allowing you to enter your score. Comments can be entered in the “Comments” box below. Hit the Enter key on your keyboard or click outside of the comments box to save your changes.
Any grades entered here will automatically be sent to the Canvas gradebook and can be accessed via the Grades tool. Note: comments are not synced with the gradebook.
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

23. D. Questions or Help? What is VeriCite? Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help

24. Have Questions or need help?
CMET Consulting:
Location: Knight Library, Room 19
Normal Hours: 9am - 6pm, M-F // Summer: 10am-4pm, M-F
Phone:
Website:
What is VeriCite?
Setup VeriCite in Canvas
Review/Grade Submission
Questions or help