New Quizzes: Unicheck for Essay Questions

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I suggest Unicheck be programmed to analyze potential plagiarism for Essay Questions in a Canvas quiz.  

plagiarism #unicheck

16 Comments
carrie_huffman
Community Participant

I suggest Unicheck be programmed to analyze potential plagiarism for File Upload Questions in a Canvas quiz.  When creating the question users could select to enable Unicheck. 

It is my understanding the Unicheck works best with (or perhaps exclusively with) PDF files.  It is then my hope this would be a relatively smooth feature addition when the uploaded file is a PDF.

unicheck #plagiarism 

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

carrie_huffman‌, as this is a change that might need to be implemented on https://community.canvaslms.com/community/answers/partners-platform/unicheck?sr=search&searchId=62c3...‌'s side, I'm tagging t.logvynenko‌ to get her feedback.

Stef_retired
Instructure Alumni
Instructure Alumni

carrie_huffman‌, as this is a change that might need to be implemented on Alliance Partner - Unicheck‌'s side, I'm tagging t.logvynenko‌ to get her feedback.

t_logvynenko
Community Contributor

Carolyn, thanks, it sounds as a great idea. Our team is going to consider it on our next meet-up. It’s not only up to us, but also there's a number of factors all we need to think of.  But first of all, let’s see how many Canvas members will like it Smiley Happy

t_logvynenko
Community Contributor

Thanks for suggesting! All our Unicheck team can't wait to see the results. If there be a great many willing give this idea a go, we will think of all the possible ways to run this feature. 

matthew1
Community Explorer

I'm just curious-- has this moved forward in anyway?  It would be really helpful for our courses since we have  a lot of exams that utilize essay questions.  

Steven_S
Community Champion

Unicheck is not exclusive to pdf files it works with doc files and txt files, and I'm sure there are others.  It does not work with the html files exported from assignments where students type directly into the field within canvas.  I'd love to see that as an added feature, though I'm not sure it would come from canvas. 

Alisia_Brin
Community Participant

Dear @Matt Correll, thank you for your message and interest in our software. We highly appreciate your recommendation, as it helps us develop and improve Unicheck. However, as for now, we can’t offer a solution to analyze and check Essay Questions in the Canvas quiz. Still, we have worked on the improvement of our existing algorithms and features, like Similarity Detection Engine, Citations and Reference Detection Algorithms, Text Modifications Search Algorithm.

Alisia_Brin
Community Participant

@Steven Schwamenfeld, you are right. Unicheck supports the following file formats:

- Adobe (.pdf);

- Apple Pages (.pages);

- Google Docs via Google Drive. Also, submissions from OneDrive, Dropbox;

- HyperText Markup Language (.htm and .html);

- Microsoft Word (.doc and .docx);

- Microsoft PowerPoint (.pptx, .ppt);

- Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx);

- OpenOffice files (.odt, .ods, .odp);

- Plain text (.txt);

- Rich text (.rtf).

- .dot, .dotx;

- .xml;

- .m;

- .csv.

We are grateful for your recommendation, as it helps us develop and improve Unicheck. As for now, we can’t offer a solution to analyze and check Essay Questions in a Canvas quiz. Still, we have worked on the improvement of our existing algorithms and features, like Similarity Detection Engine, Citations and Reference Detection Algorithms, Text Modifications Search Algorithm. 

Steven_S
Community Champion

That is a longer list than I realized! I see that html files are included in your list, however those have not worked for me yet. Maybe there is something different about html files created by canvas?

 

There is a submission type for writing assignments in canvas that allows students to type directly into a textbox.  Unlike submissions that students upload as .doc, .pdf, .txt, etc, canvas has to create the file using what the student typed before we download copies of the submissions.  The file created is a html file, however when I upload those html files into unicheck the scan always fails.  I have to open the html file and copy and paste the contents into a new file within unicheck.  It is a pretty simple step as long as there are only a couple of submissions in that format.

 

I wonder if the solution to analyzing essay questions could be similar to automating the manual conversion I do for those writing assignment html files.

Alisia_Brin
Community Participant

Would it be possible for you to make a video recording of your computer screen on how you create, upload, and check the file? It will help our Support Team assist you to address the issue.

Feel free to get in touch with our Support Team and send the video recording at support@unicheck.com. They will guide you on how to check the files in html format without any difficulties.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas on the improvement of our software. We appreciate them much!

Steven_S
Community Champion

While making a video I discovered that the problem with scanning responses students had typed into text boxes was already fixed.  Maybe if we could export essay question responses and discussion posts in the same format, then unicheck could scan those as well.

Alisia_Brin
Community Participant

Unicheck can check all the files submitted in the above-stated formats. Thus, if you manage to export and save essay questions in .txt, .htm, or .html, you will be able to check them with the help of Unicheck. 

Steven_S
Community Champion

Although unicheck does not currently check essay questions, we can check them manually by copying and pasting into unicheck's site.  This process could be improved if we had a bulk download option for essay questions, and so you may be interested in https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/15635-download-essay-questions 

Alisia_Brin
Community Participant

Dear @Steven Schwamenfeld, you are absolutely right. As for now, we can’t offer a solution to analyze and check Essay Questions in the Canvas Quiz. Our main priority is to help with the automation of time-consuming routine tasks, so at the moment we focus on text similarity detection and authorship verification. However, as we plan to facilitate the collaboration between students and teachers, the feature you mentioned is definitely something we’ll take a closer look at. As soon as such a feature is released, you will be surely informed and will be able to test it.

ProductPanda
Instructure
Instructure
Status changed to: Archived
Comments from Instructure

As part of the new Ideas & Themes process, all ideas in Idea Conversations were reviewed by the Product Team. Any Idea that was associated with an identified theme was moved to the new Idea & Themes space. Any Idea that was not part of the move is being marked as Archived. This will preserve the history of the conversations while also letting Community members know that Instructure will not explore the request at this time.