Enable Plagiarism Tool in Assignments

[nschutz]

Our organization is moving away from Vericite to Unicheck. Now that Canvas has the Plagiarism framework, I have not been able to find a way via API to enable Unicheck like we could we Vericite. In the Assignment object, there is a field "vericite_enabled" so I can turn it on for all the assignments in a course.  Does anyone know how to access the plagiarism framework via API so we can enable Unicheck for all assignments? We really don't want to do this manually for hundreds and thousands of assignments. Any thoughts, insights and advises are greatly appreciated.

[nschutz · Accepted solution]

Just heard back from Canvas and there is no way to enable Unicheck or any other plagiarism app in the plagiarism frame work other than via the UI.

[Alisia_Brin]

Dear @Nan Schutz, 

Vericite integration used an old API interface. Unicheck is using the most up-to-date Canvas framework interface to integrate with the platform.

We hope it doesn’t cause any difficulties for you to check assignments with the help of Unicheck.

Below you may find some links where you may check the detailed guidelines on how to integrate Unicheck with Canvas: 

Canvas Plagiarism Framework Integration 

Video Tutorials 

How to Use Unicheck in Canvas

The only action you have to apply is to choose Unicheck in the checkbox ‘Plagiarism Review’ while creating an assignment.

 

If any questions arise, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our Support Team. We will be glad to help you.

[afromero2]

Hi @nschutz

Is there an update on how to activate the plagiarism tool in an activity of a canvas course, using the API?

Regards

[nschutz]

Unfortunately, I don't see anything added or changed with the plagiarism frame work to allow activation of plagiarism tool in assignments.

[afromero2]

Using blazemeter, I have registered the process for edit and saving a "assignment" in Canvas.
I saw a "PUT" request to the assignment endpoint ( /api/v1/courses/{course}/assignments/{id assignment} ); at the bottom, this request sends information about the similarity tool (or any LTI).

 I'm using PHP code to activate Ouriginal plagiarism in an assignment.

The result:

[BryanNagorcka]

Does this solution still work ? The API call that I make returns ok, but I am having trouble getting it to work with a POST call to create.

Could it be that I have to create the assignment first with a POST to /assignments and then a second PUT call to /assignments/1234 to update the settings?

[CSCI_Teacher]

You are a life saver, dude! This solution worked great!

In case anyone is interested, I posted my refactored solution in python as an answer to a very similar question I posted before seeing this post.

Thanks again!

[nschutz]

@CSCI_Teacher @afromero2 

I was so excited to see your postings since I originally posted this in early 2019 but I still couldn't get mine to work!! Ugh... I tried doing the same in my PHP/cURL and from postman, all returned status code of 200 but didn't update the plagiarism tool.

My code looks like this (error handling not shown):

                    $curl2 = curl_init();
                    $updateAssURL = "https://" . $domain . "/api/v1/courses/" . $cid . "/assignments/" . $aid;
                    
                    curl_setopt_array($curl2, array(
                      CURLOPT_URL => $updateAssURL,
                      CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => true,
                      CURLOPT_ENCODING => "",
                      CURLOPT_MAXREDIRS => 10,
                      CURLOPT_TIMEOUT => 30,
                      CURLOPT_HTTP_VERSION => CURL_HTTP_VERSION_1_1,
                      CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST => "PUT",
                      CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => array(
                        'id' => $aid,
                        'submission_type' => 'online',
                        'similarityDetectionTool' => 'Lti::MessageHandler_xxx',
                        'configuration_tool_type'=> 'Lti::MessageHandler',
                        'report_visibility' => 'immediate'
                    ),
                      CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER => array(
                        $header,
                        "content-type: application/json",
                        "cache-control: no-cache"
                      ),
                    ));

                    $response = curl_exec($curl2);
                    $err = curl_error($curl2);    
                    curl_close($curl2);

 ANY INSIGHTS are appreciated tremendously.