Thanks to technology, students now have access to more information than ever before. However, technology has also made it very easy for students to avoid the difficult task of formal academic writing by simply copying and pasting the ideas of others. As teachers, our challenge is to help our students understand the importance of avoiding plagiarism by properly citing the work of others.
Fortunately, the Google Classroom Originality Checker can help your students check their own written assignment for citation problems before they turn it in. Once the assignment is submitted, another Originality Check will be run automatically so the teacher can spot any problems prior to grading.
If you want to try it out, here are some important things to keep in mind:
Originality Checker will scan virtually every web page accessible to Google, as well as all books housed in the Google Books database, in order to find possible copied content.
Unlike paid services (such as Turnitin), Originality Checker cannot search for student-to-student matches. This is not possible because Google's privacy policy prevents them from uploading and saving your students' assignments. Thus, Originality Checker cannot tell you if a student has copied their writing from another student.
You may only use Originality Checker with a maximum of 5 assignments for any given Google Classroom, so don't use it for every assignment! If you would like to use the feature more than 5 times, you would need to create a new Google Classroom for the same class.
Each student can run Originality Checker by themselves up to 3 times prior to turning in an assignment. We recommend you teach your students how to use this feature so they may fix their own errors before you grade it.
Eric Curts (2021) has published an awesome step-by-step guide to Originality Checker, which includes an 8-minute comprehensive video, which we've linked below.
Curts, E. (2021, January 3). Using originality reports in Google Classroom. Control Alt Achieve. https://www.controlaltachieve.com/2021/01/originality-reports.html
Stay Techie,
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