How Does Canvas Detect Cheating and Plagiarism?

A common question from students, educators, and administrators is, “Does Canvas have a plagiarism checker?” This is a vital question for those that wish to adopt Canvas or any other learning management system for classroom use. 

The education field has undergone some significant shifts in the last few years. Online education has become more common and relevant recently. Teaching and learning have become more flexible, which has helped thousands of students avail of education remotely. Learning management systems or LMS platforms such as Canvas are vital tools in remote learning, and like the field itself, they have undergone dramatic shifts in features and technology.

Canvas Is Benefitting Both Students and Educational Institutions.

Canvas is a widely used platform that has benefited students, educational institutions, and its facilitators. It is web-based teaching/learning software that offers various resources for skill development and assessment. 

With the help of this Canvas, educational institutions can easily carry out the entire task of delivering education online. One of the many perks of Canvas is that it offers customizable courses and a wide range of resources.

Plagiarism—the Biggest Drawback of Digital Advancement

Like the two sides of a coin, digital advancement comes with its drawbacks. The easy availability of resources has encouraged a tendency to adopt shortcuts like plagiarism. Since apps have replaced the physical facilitator’s presence to supervise students during assignments or other academic activities, plagiarism has become more prominent. 

Plagiarism, in simple terms, is content-stealing or cheating, copying from another student or a readily available source without investing any time, energy, or effort.

Plagiarism is a threat to academic integrity. At most institutions, cheating or plagiarism carries strict penalties, including a failing grade or expulsion. There are many ways of avoiding plagiarism. However, plagiarism detector tools have proven to be the most effective in detecting and preventing plagiarism in all fields, including academics. But can Canvas detect plagiarism? 

Canvas enables an institution to manage its digital teaching-learning process smoothly while providing solutions to the glaring issue of cheating and plagiarism committed by students.

Know More About How Does Canvas Detect Cheating:

If institutions use Canvas, it can help them track students’ papers and assignments. And on Canvas, cheating can be quickly detected.  Canvas uses different techniques to prevent plagiarism. 

A quiz log is one of the many necessary features of the Canvas management system. This feature enables the facilitators to monitor and supervise an online assessment like in a physical classroom. They can keep track of the questions answered by students.

Not only that, the Canvas quiz log alerts the instructors when any student becomes inactive on the interface for quite some time. In addition, to reduce and prevent cheating, the quiz log tracks any additional browsers students try to access during online exams and shows them to the facilitator. Thus, it can detect cheating, and the institution can take precautions by warning students about the consequences.

For conducting proctored tests, Canvas uses third-party proctoring software. Just like the supervisor of a physical classroom, the software acts as a neutral examiner. Canvas not just detects and prevents cheating during tests but also verifies the authenticity of the user by validating their ID.

The software acts as an instructor and keeps an eye on the activities of the students online as it works in collaboration with Canvas. It also records students’ audio and video data using the user’s webcam.

Canvas can detect and prevent cheating by locking a user’s browser during an online test. A student’s browser is locked from the beginning to the end of an assignment. This ensures that students cannot easily cheat while completing the assignment.

It prevents cheating and helps teachers regulate students’ online activities, so they cannot unnecessarily surf through websites or open tabs and applications during tests. The software even stops students from copying or printing from other sources by alerting the instructors of any suspicious activity or event.

What plagiarism checker does Canvas use?

Canvas itself cannot prevent plagiarism on its own. Instead, it integrates with other software to provide this service.

Canvas plagiarism checker tools, like Copyleaks, make checking papers for plagiarism easier. Teachers have to initialize the plagiarism check by selecting the app manually from the Canvas user interface. It is useful when students submit an assignment, essay, paper, and more. The tool scans the document for plagiarism as students submit written documents. Copyleaks Canvas plagiarism checker works on a comparison technique that compares the submitted data with its database and generates a result determining whether the content is plagiarized or not, also the amount of plagiarism. The app is also beneficial for students. They can check their work to check its originality before submission.

Key Takeaways

Canvas helps assess learning, understanding, and shortcomings based on facilitators’ feedback. At the same time, teachers can use the software to evaluate students’ performance, ensuring that each learning objective has been achieved.