Has anyone used one of the other plagiarism detection software programs that integrate with Canvas via the LTI? I noticed two plagiarism checkers when reviewing the Apps available for canvas integration: PlagScan and Unplag. I wondered if anyone had given these a try and if you had, what were your thoughts? Thanks Alane
I'm curious about this too. The backlash against the Turnitin LTI and the convoluted workflows that come with it has been strong from our faculty. I'm bumping this thread and sharing it with other groups.
I too am interested about whether anyone has tried these other tools. We are not looking forward to moving to the Turnitin LTI integration.
I have been working on this with our school district. Here is a super rough comparison chart that I have started. I am not done with the features or other columns yet.
I have used Turnitin and it is full featured and easy to use. But the biggest issue is the price tag, and they will not integrate for us at a site level. Our district is in serious budget crunch and so we need to look at other possibilities.
We tested Unplag (a terrible name) and found it to have some issues on set-up and use. It is not user friendly, but everytime I emailed the company they were quick to find a solution and implement a fix. Plagiarism scores are reported as grades since it is an assignment. This was annoying. And it did display in speedgrader but you could not annotate on it, so you had to create another assignment to give feedback (unless you just use comments).
I also found the support pages to be a bit light, but they made up for it in emails and online chat.
It also required the teacher to turn on quotation exclusion for every paper submitted, and then the kids could turn it off or on when they viewed their paper. But if you have 150 kids, well, then you are clicking buttons for 150 kids. Waste of time!
Also it does not allow kids to turn in from Google Drive.
I ran UnPlag with a class, and midway through we ran out of credits and caused the report to not complete and basically froze up the assignment. Kids were annoyed, I was annoyed, teacher was frustrated. But, again, the company was super quick to fix the issue.
I am in the midst of testing PlagScan. It's set-up is also in an assignment as an external tool. But it kicks you right into their site. I am not able to get to assignment set-up to do points or such like I can with Unplag. However, there are way more settings and general ease of use for students and teachers is by far better then UnPlag. Kids have a clear report, can make corrections and then go to the final assignment that you set-up and turn in the paper.
I have not run the UnPlag check with a class yet. That will be done in the next week or so.
Software | Cost | Accuracy | Canvas Integration | Features | Database | Customer Service | Document Types |
Turnitin | Mixed Results | Only does District Wide Integration not site, extra cost | Grammar check Clear results Feedback Exclude Quotes/ Biblio Peer Review | Previous year uploads and web, journals, publications etc. | Call Responsive and helpful | .doc, .docx | |
PlagScan | $699-1199/ year (per 600 students) | Set a Range of Sensitivity | Yes, no extra cost Does not use Speedgrader | Clear Results Upload Versions Exclude quotes/ biblio Easy to use interface | Previous year uploads and web | Email and Call | .doc, .docx Google Drive |
Unplag | $4.50 per students or $.08 per page - 275 words = 1 page. Can carry over extra pages to next year. | Set a range of sensitivity | Yes Speedgrader integration | Results require explanation Upload Versions Exclude Quotes/ Biblio Immediate student feedback | Doc V Doc Doc V Internet | Email and Call Online Chat Pushy, but helpful | .doc, .docx |
Plagscan Instructions: https://api.plagscan.com/PlagScan_Canvas_Manual-User_EN.pdf
We have Vericite up and going in our production environment now. We have a 90 day trial that runs through mid-summer for evaluation purposes. I also requested all SafeAssign documents from the institutional database so we can upload to Vericite (as a way of building out). So far...looks to be functioning very well and the price tag is MUCH more reasonable for our institution than Turnitin.
Shane
Very helpful, Christina. Thank you.
Thank you all, this is very helpful. We are still in the process of exploring our options and will most likely try out VeriCite. Our Canvas success manager gave me the name of a contact person at Colorado State to speak with regarding their experience with VeriCite.
Here is a link on the Colorado State site that was shared with me and I don't think they would mind me sharing here. VeriCite Anti-Plagiarism - Canvas Information and Resources - Colorado State University
I will ask him to join this conversation as he provided some very useful insight.
Alane
We never stop developing our system to ensure better user experience. The issue with plagiarism scores has been fixed (Unplag similarity score is no longer passed to SpeedGrader). Citations and references can now be excluded for all submissions in the assignment with just one option. Adding Google Drive integration, and other popular cloud services is on our roadmap. As for running out of pages during a trial - our manager can always add more pages if you need a larger number of checks during a testing period. It is worth noting that Unplag does not provide unlimited scans, because we always work with fresh indexes and index providers charge us for accessing this data. The benefit - you always get real-time results. We strive to create a valuable tool for educators and students, therefore we welcome feedback and suggestions concerning our service.
We currently use Turnitin, but we have had several issues with the plugin and the LTI this semester. I do at least 1 ticket a week just about Turnitin. We looked at vericite last spring and did several comparisons and we found that Turnitin found significantly more "plagiarism" than VeriCite.
Those of you using Turnitin are you all having problems with the LTI as well?
Those using VeriCite that have also used Turnitin in the past, are you and your instructors happy with the switch?
Hey, Allison. There are a few known issues with Turnitin, but many of them can be solved. What kind of issues are you having?
Our college currently uses Turnitin but they will be drastically raising their prices. We just started a free 60-day trial with Vericite. Has anyone done a comparison between Turnitin and Vericite? I'm looking for information that compares the % accuracy of plagiarism detection as well as the functionality it has with the Canvas LTI. I see that Allison Case, Alane Breitmeyer and Shane O'Hara have mentioned looking into these tools. Do you have any comparison info that you can share? When we conclude our study, I'm happy to share our results in the Canvas Community. Thanks.
My institution migrated from Blackboard to Canvas and in the process went from SafeAssign to no plagiarism tool to Vericite. We explored both Turnitin, Unplag, and Vericite when we were ready to select the right tool and went with Vericite based on report similarity to SafeAssign and because of the substantial costs savings compared to Turnitin. Unplug was okay, but Vericite really met our needs. Plus, they were open and receptive to uploading all of our previous SafeAssign document submissions in order to build out our repository. Hope this helps and good luck.
Thanks everyone for all the great information! We at the University of Florida are also considering moving from Turnitin to Vericite (very early in the process). I'm looking for a bit more info on the teacher experience for VeriSign.
We're very unhappy with Turnitin for doing away with the API. The creation of an LTI external tool is much more complicated and presents problems with native Canvas functionality such as groups/dates/peer reviews. If Canvas didn't have all that in it's native functionality, I'm sure faculty would be pleased for the extra features. But Canvas already has it - we don't need another tool that does almost the same thing and presents problems with the native functions.
But it looks like Vericite also requires the creation of an external tool, not just a simple checkbox like in the case of the TII API. Are instructors creating two assignments - one to get the originality report and then a Canvas assignment in order to use Peer Review/Rubrics/SpeedGrader/group assignments? I would LOVE another API feature originality report rather than having to make a separate assignment.
JoLaine Jones-Pokorney I heard that VeriCite was going to have their tool integrated with Canvas by Spring 2017 (not as an external tool). I heard this from our librarian. I'll see if she has more information.
We just got word that the new integration is ready. We've been told that our CSM can enable it for us, so we've made the request to have it on in our test environment to play around with for a bit.
"Instructure has released our new integration with Canvas which makes full use of Canvas tools such as Assignments and SpeedGrader. We are preparing an announcement which we'll release in the next week."
Shane
Shane O'Hara Are you referring to the new integration for VeriCite and Canvas? Did you get word from VeriCite?
Yes, I am. And yes, we reached out for an update this morning. I suspect we'll bring it to production sooner than later.
Shane
We're testing it out in Beta right now and hope to run a trial in production during the summer!
We will be evaluating VeriCite, very shortly. Would any of you be willing to share any evaluation type rubrics you may have used during your evaluation?
Thanks!
~Mike
Hey, Canvas Community!
We (Unplag) have been working hard all this time (product improvements are released every month) - we add new features, fix bugs, continuously listen to your feedback and make improvements. Pricing indicated above is not valid anymore. Depending on the needs of the institution and the volumes to be checked, the price may vary from $1.1 to $4.5 per student. If not all students in the university are going to use the app, the price will be based on the number of active users.
Scope of search and technology
Our scope of search has increased significantly (we make real-time Internet comparison with billions of pages/files and it takes only 10-15 seconds per page to produce accurate results). Accuracy of the similarity search is determined by 3 major factors: access to text indexes/collections, search algorithms, text analysis algorithms. We employ continuous integration and development methodologies in the development of our app for Canvas, so we are able to adjust our tool specifically to the institutional needs. You can read a recent article in Canvas community to get more specific comments from one of our clients: https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/admins/blog/2016/09/22/unplag-plagiarism-tool-resource
Verified similarity results
We do not simply throw search engine outputs at you - our state-of-the-art similarity search engine utilizes latest in-house developments in NLP, search algorithms and text mining to scrupulously analyze every phrase and sentence in the submission and returns VERIFIED similarity matches. No broken links, no garbage in the results. Almost an instant search against billions and billions of resources.
Free trial and pilot
We offer 3 months no obligation trial or 1 semester of free and no obligation pilot testing to institutions who want to evaluate us comprehensively.
Similarity search scope
New Canvas and SpeedGrader integration (not as an external tool)
Great improvements are coming soon. Unplag is working closely with Instructure team to develop new integration framework, and early version of it will be available to Unplag in December-January. Teachers will be able to use CrocoDoc annotations, download original submission, grade using native Canvas rubrics, save grade directly into SpeedGrader and access other standard Canvas assignment features in the SAME assignment where you enabled the similarity checker. We will be running tests with current clients and with all interested institutions (request your free pilot/trial) to try out new integration. When technology is ready (Q2 2017), all other vendors will be asked to switch to a new integration framework. We’re humbled and honored to be given a chance to be the first who will run early testing and will provide comprehensive feedback to Canvas technical product team.
Document types
We support MS doc, docx; pdf, html, txt, rft, odt, pages documents (Mac) and others file types. New formats can be added on request at no cost.
Cloud, reliability, scalability
We have implemented a cutting-edge micro-service architecture (technology invented by Google and used in their online services) which allows us to deliver 99,9% up time. We deliver reports in minutes and on time, files are never lost (additional server resources are added automatically by the system as the load increases).
Our passion
We share the passion for education and technology and this drives our desire to create an excellent tool, which is efficient, easy to use and cost-efficient. On top of this, we are committed to delivering a great integrated experience, which becomes possible thanks to Alliance partnership with Instructure. New integration with Canvas and SpeedGrader will change everything. But we are not going to stop there - next year we will introduce innovations that incorporate machine learning, artificial intelligence and advanced NLP. Stay tuned, and check-in for a demo anytime!
Ivan - who are you? You never identify your product.
JoLaine, the product name is Unplag. We're Canvas Alliance and The specified item was not found.
Here is the link to our app in Edu App Center - Unplag app. It can be installed from within Canvas App Center, however, to activate the tool, you need key and secret (standard requirement for all LTI apps). You can request trial access by contacting our team at Unplag.com or feel free to contact me via email ivan@unplag.com for further details.
next question - how do you pronounce unplag?
It is pronounced as 
.
You should really consider a name change - worst tool name ever.
Here is a bit more information where Unicheck (Alliance Partner) is heading and who we are.
We are a global company and work with academic institutions worldwide. We offer a similarity checker for K12 and Higher Education from Nov 2014. Unicheck is integrated with top LMSs, and we are happy to be a partner of Canvas doing amazing things together.
Nowadays, the Internet is growing faster than search engines can index it. No wonder that any similarity checker can hardly cope with it. For years, the question of authorship identification has been crucial. Thus, our team has been working hard to find an answer. And we did it. We call her Emma.
This technology will make a huge revolution in the world of checking for plagiarism and literally turn everything upside down.
Emma is based on the latest in-house developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Similarity search will no longer depend on web index or academic databases. The system will be able to say whether a person is the author of the essay or any other academic paper. That is because Emma feels student writing style.
She's based on up to 50 metrics and passes her verdict with more than 80% accuracy. In 2017, EMMA will be integrated with Canvas LMS and Unicheck app will evolve into a more efficient writing identity solution.
Emma is smart like detective. She's a self-learning girl. Simple as that.
We are moving to vericite from turnitin due to price, delays in the reports showing up to students, and frequent errors for students - the vericite integration with canvas is supposed to go live with canvas tomorrow! We do also encourage students to use grammarly to check their work before submission! We love grammarly. I will be happy to let you guys know what happens after the integration turns on!
Good luck with that Erika! What is your organization?
American College of Healthcare Sciences in Portland Oregon
Hi Erika,
We were thinking of this, but were wondering if there was a way to import the papers currently in our Turnitin database. Do you know if Vericite offers this service, or does Turnitin even allow it? After several years of building the database of papers to check against, our instructors are reluctant to start fresh.
I don't think TII will allow it, but you may be able to pull the papers from the assignment submissions and VeriCite will add them to your database.
Vericite will do a bulk import of files. We provided them with multiple .zip files and they processed them within a couple business days. Good luck!
Thanks - good to know.
When you copy a course, will the assignment dates change or do you have to manually make the change?
It's a component of an assignment, so the dates should shift with the date offset feature. I've not tried though. We are now testing the new native LTI with SpeedGrader integration...very slick so far.
The dates seem to change fine in Canvas but we're also using the CIDI tools (LOVE them!!!) and they have a bulk dates update (by bulk I mean all on one page) feature!
As far as I know, Turnitin can provide extract of all institution's submissions upon request. There might not be an option in the system interface, but it is worth contacting their representative to request the extract.
Great question. One of the problems we found is that turnitin would give false positives against drafts of the same paper by the same student So we are quite happy to start fresh.
Hey, Erika. When scanning rough drafts through Turnitin, you can leave them out of the repository to avoid false positives on later drafts. I only have TII add the final drafts to the repository. This setting is found in the optional settings of the TII LTI tool:
Thanks Dallas! We were integrating Turnitin with eCollege so perhaps not all that functionality existed with that integration. We did have, overall, a pretty terrible time with Turnitin - lots of errors, bad customer service etc - which was one of the reasons we wanted to go with another choice once we migrated to canvas. Choice is a good thing!!! Yay canvas for integrating so easily with so many third party vendors!!!!
We recently completed our testing of the new Vericite API integration and moved it to production today. It works great. No issues found in testing and gives access to the report and grading from Speedgrader. When creating an assignment, it is another option under Submission Type. Advanced settings can be set institutionally, but changed for each assignment.
Shane
We are piloting VeriCite this semester! Thanks for the good report. Our biggest challenge is an alternative to iThenticate. Turnitin wants to charge almost as much for iThenticate alone as we currently pay for the full Turnitin package. Being a large research university, something like iThenticate is important. Has anyone found an option?
Hi all - sorry not to have noticed this thread earlier...
We made the move from Turnitin to VeriCite at the start of Fall Quarter 2016. Our primary motivations were the same as those listed by others in this thread. VeriCite is doing quite well for us, especially after the recent release of the deep integration, which now allows full use of SpeedGrader in Canvas. We did receive some faculty push-back when using the LTI tool in the Fall, but have received positive feedback on the new version from even the harshest critics.
When we were evaluating VeriCite against Turnitin last spring, we did run comparisons of originality results between the two. The results were satisfactory – not identical reports for each product, but they have different algorithms so we would not expect that. VeriCite caught some things that Turnitin did not and vice versa. Overall, the matching percentages and catch rate met our expectations. We did not use the additional tools available in Turnitin (Peer Review, GradeMark), so the absence of those within VeriCite is a non-issue for us.
We have also been pleased to find additional functionality on the admin side we did not have with Turnitin, such as the ability to submit on the behalf of a student and the ability to delete a paper from the repository. These were two features we looked for in Turnitin but were never released. Overall, we have been happy with VeriCite. Thank you!
Crista, do you know if VeriCite has plans to add a GradeMark-like feature? We use it heavily in Turnitin.
Hi Stephanie - I'm curious why you're not using the SpeedGrader function in Canvas instead of GradeMark in TII? SpeedGrader tends to be much more popular and is built right in to Canvas, not requiring the use of the LTI. One of the reasons we're interested in VeriCite is that they are doing the ONE thing we want of them - originality reports - rather than trying to replicate the things that Canvas already does, thereby adding unnecessary complexity and confusion. So our vote is that VeriCite never tries to start doing those things.
JoLaine, I vastly prefer GradeMark to Crocodoc because of GradeMark's ability to save, organize, and import/export comment templates. When I first started using Turnitin around six years ago, I set up my commonly used comments--and in the ensuing six years, all I ever had to do was a bit of fine-tuning from semester to semester.
(Full disclosure: I am currently not teaching writing-intensive courses, so at this juncture I'm not using either SpeedGrader's Crocodoc capability or Turnitin's GradeMark to annotate papers--so when I say "We use it heavily in Turnitin," I'm referring to my former school, which still does use it heavily. I personally don't have a horse in this race. )
Hi Stefanie - I do not know if that is on their road-map, but then we haven't asked! Grademark was not widely used on our campus - we primarily use SpeedGrader.
Thanks!
Crista
I did specifically ask VeriCite and they said they have no intention of "trying to reinvent the LMS." which made us very happy :-)
For those of you that have made the move from Turnitin to VeriCite I would love to know what research you did on comparing the plagiarism engines for both companies. We are still using TII but the recent move to the LTI integration and the constant support issues has been a large issue over the last few semesters. However, we have been a part of independent assessment of both services and we found that TII returned a more accurate plagiarism percentage than Vericite. I will say this was a couple of years ago that this was done, which is why i ask this question now. If VeriCite has improved their plagiarism engine enough to give comparable results to what we were seeing with TII I would definitely like to give VeriCite a closer look.
I would be interested as well. Pricing was another issue (believe it or not, TII was MUCH cheaper the last we looked.)
For us, VeriCite will be ~ 1/3 the price of TII.
From one Crista to another...beware the introductory pricing offer!! Our cost from TII was set to triple over the span of a few years.
We're in the middle of our VeriCite pilot. I would say that VeriCite is "competitive" with TII. I don't have solid numbers yet, but it seems that sometimes Turnitin scores are higher and sometimes VeriCite scores are higher. We also have to consider that Turnitin is comparing to submitted paper databases that VeriCite doesn't have access to at this point. My charge to the faculty doing the pilot is not so much which has the higher score, but which is catching the most pertinent information. I'm not trying to determine if VeriCite better than Turnitin - but if VeriCite would be an acceptable alternative if we are forced to give up on Turnitin?" At this point, I think the answer is "yes." But it's ultimately the call of the faculty running the pilot.
Hello.My institution is currently considering switching from TII to Vericite. For those who have made the switch to Vericite, how did you pilot the tool? Did you pilot Vericite using the LTI or the native integration (api)? I have been told that I can only install Vericite natively at the account level. I'm not sure I want to turn Vericite on for my entire instance. I just want to pilot it in a few courses. If anyone can speak to this, I would love to hear it. Thanks!
We have suspended our VeriCite pilot due to the new framework that Canvas is releasing in June that requires all anti-plagiarism tools to build new LTI integrations and do away altogether with the APIs. We have no way to know what either VeriCite or Turnitin will look like 6 months - 1 year from now. Canvas assures me that this will be a great improvement over any of the current integrations.
When we WERE doing the pilot, we used VeriCite as the LTI since Turnitin is already turned on as the API. It was hard for our Pilots to get their minds around just checking on the accuracy of the reports rather than their distate for having to use the LTI.
Hi All,
Valerie from VeriCite here. We've been working closely with Instructure on the new plagiarism detection framework and are very close to being ready to pilot that with customers. We're just waiting on them to complete a few fixes. It's important to note that our integration based on the new framework will operate almost identical to our current native integration : one simple check box to enable VeriCite plagiarism detection for an assignment, full integration with Speed Grader for grading, etc. If you'd like to be a part of the pilot, reach out to us at sales@vericite.com or fill out a Contact Us form at our website: Contact Us | Plagiarism Software | VeriCite .
You can try us out for 60 days for free (fully integrated to Canvas), get a quote, etc. all from the website but don't hesitate to reach out if you want to chat.
Thanks!
Valerie
Jesse,
Our new LTI+ integration which leverages the new framework can be turned on in only a portion of the LMS but provides the deeper integration of our native integration. Give us a shout @ support@vericite.com if you'd be interested in piloting that.
Valerie
Good news to everyone interested in academic integrity and plagiarism detection!
It’s time to say “Hello” to Unicheck (ex. Unplag). Have you heard that we change a name? Big dreams, aims, all the whys and wherefores are here, in this post.
@Ivan Klymenko, Director of Partnerships at Unicheck, can't wait to show you all the wonders!
On 24 August he’d love to talk to you about the important things happening in our world. Everything you want to know about native Unicheck integration in Canvas will be on the point. You are welcome to ask, we are happy to answer.
Please find details here https://community.canvaslms.com/events/2220-partner-webinar-meet-unicheck-a-universally-integrated-plagiarism-checker.
Come on, step right up!
For those of you evaluating alternatives, I thought you might found this research conducted by a 3rd party about the effectiveness of various Plagiarism Detection companies useful. https://adam.rusch.me/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Composition-Originality-Tools-Report.pdf
Valerie
We are going to be going with VeriCite sometime this summer. Looks like Colorado State University is already using them - VeriCite Anti-Plagiarism - Canvas Information and Resources - Colorado State University.
Shane