Question of the Week

This Week's Faculty Question

Q: I created an assignment in Quercus but I forgot to turn on Ouriginal. I have complied with the Conditions of Use for Ouriginal and have included the information about Ouriginal on my syllabus. Also, all my other assignments in the course so far have had Ouriginal turned on - I simply forgot this time. Can I turn on Ouriginal retroactively for this assignment? If so, is there a way for me to bulk re-submit all the assignments so that they can go through Ouriginal? (Please say 'yes' I have a over 200 students in my class!)   

A:  Unfortunately, there isn't a way to bulk re-submit assignments to Ouriginal. It is also not recommended that you re-submit to Ouriginal on behalf of the students, even though your previous assignments have all had Ouriginal turned on. The accepted practice at U of T is to ask students to submit directly to the University’s plagiarism detection tool assignment, rather than having instructors submit on their behalf.  This means that instructors cannot submit a paper through University’s plagiarism detection tool without the student’s knowledge. In your case, where your students have already submitted their assignment, your options are the following:

1. Do not enable Ouriginal retroactively and use an alternative method of checking for plagiarism:
   

   Since your students have already submitted their assignments, you can opt to leave the assignment settings as they are and use an alternative method to check for plagiarism. For ideas on alternative methods, see the FAQ section of CTSI's Plagiarism Detection page, especially the following question at the bottom of the section:  Can I use the University’s plagiarism detection tool to check one student paper? Can I upload a student’s paper to the University’s plagiarism detection tool to check for plagiarism?

2. Tell the students what happened, enable the plagiarism option in the assignment settings, and ask students to re-submit their work:
   

   This option may require that you extend the due date or 'available until' date of your assignment. However, it ensures that your students are informed of the change in the settings and can choose whether they wish to re-submit their assignment through Ouriginal or not. If they opt to re-submit, their new submissions will be submitted to Ouriginal for evaluation automatically. If students opt out of re-submitting the assignment, they must be allowed to do so without penalty. An alternative method of checking for plagiarism should be used in those cases.

Before using Ouriginal in your courses, please review CTSI's Plagiarism Detection information page, especially the Conditions of Use at the University of Toronto.

For additional assistance with using Ouriginal for assignments, please contact us at fase.edtech@utoronto.ca or book a consultation.  

Have a Quercus (or EdTech) question? Please contact FASE's EdTech Office.