[ARCHIVED] Can canvas detect when I paste something on the essay text box?

[ceasariannunez]

Our exams conducted as quizzes in our Canvas accounts, They are all essays based on a legal problem.

The way I answer my essay is that I copy and paste relevant information from the problem given to the text box below. In paper and pencil exams, I used to encircle the information that I think important from the given problem. I can't do this anymore since I can't really highlight on the text of the problem on the screen. When the problem is a few paragraphs long, it can get really hard to remember which information is relevant to the main issue. Also, I copied and pasted the problem portion for my conclusion so that I don't have to type it all over again. Example: "Is X liable for the offense charged." => "X is liable for the offense charged." I just transferred the word 'is'. And here I thought this saved me a lot of time.

There are talks on our schools that the professors can detect through canvas when we copied and pasted something on the text box. This made me really worried because even though I did not cheat, I might get accused of cheating, and I have no way of proving that I did not. I never once left the testing area to open another app or open another tab.

[gnoack · Accepted solution]

Hi @ceasariannunez 

I think this is best a question for your instructor.  Whether or not you are pasting can be detected depends on what other tools your school may be using to proctor exams.  My understanding is that without such tools, all that your instructor can identify is that you have clicked away from the quiz assignment to another window or application.  You stated you are not doing that. So, I would just be up-front with your instructor and ask. 

Honestly, a best practice for answering essay questions to an web based text box is to type your response in an application like Word so you can save your progress while you work and then paste your final essay into the text box when done.  Drafting your response into the the textbook without the ability to save your progress is just a heartache waiting to happen.  I would hope your instructor would allow for this. 

[ceasariannunez]

Hi gnoack,

Thank you for answering.

Our school does not use any other tools. Basically, I just log in using Mozilla Firefox, and that's it. They don't even require that we use a specific browser. No plug-in required or any special web browser. The reason why we are not allowed to use word processor to write our answer is that we, my class I mean, are worried about the instructor detecting that we left the testing area. I know this is worrisome if the internet connections cuts off, so I have an add-on on my Firefox that saves any input I make on a text box, so if things go south I have a way to retrieve what I have already written. It's called Form History Control (II) by the way if you are interested.

It's kind of an issue in our class because the school did not yet outright say what we can and cannot do while using the platform. They just say that cheating in general is prohibited. That's kind of fuzzy, because for example, if I clicked out and back-in in a second, would that be considered as cheating? It's just better not to get accused in the first place.

Many thanks,
Ian