Validating Student Work: Ensuring Authenticity and Academic Integrity

As educators, it is essential to ensure that all student work is authentic and reflects the students' own efforts. With the rise of digital tools and resources, maintaining academic integrity can be challenging. Here are several ways to validate that student work is genuinely student-created:

Utilize Google Workspace for Transparent Creation

Encourage students to use Google Workspace products—such as Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides—for all assignments and projects. By keeping everything within our Google domain, teachers can easily monitor the revision history of documents to see when and how changes were made. This transparency allows teachers to ensure that students are completing assignments as intended and provides an additional layer of accountability.

To make the most of Google Workspace tools:

Remind students to always create and edit their work within their Google accounts.
Regularly check the revision history to track changes and see the development process of student work.
Use the "Version history" feature in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides to identify any unusual editing patterns that may suggest copying and pasting from external sources.

Leverage Turnitin for Plagiarism Detection

Turnitin is a powerful platform that integrates directly with Schoology, enabling teachers to automatically check for originality and potential plagiarism in student submissions. Turnitin provides a comprehensive report that identifies text matches from a vast database of academic papers, publications, and internet content, helping ensure the authenticity of student work.

To start using Turnitin in Schoology, please refer to this [Turnitin Assignment Tutorial](https://www.iorad.com/player/2416743/Schoology---Create-Turnitin-Assignment).

Explore Digiexam for Secure Assessments

Digiexam offers a secure and user-friendly platform for digital examinations and assessments. It helps maintain academic integrity by providing a controlled environment where students cannot access unauthorized resources or applications. Digiexam also allows for automated grading, which can save time and provide immediate feedback to students.

If you are interested in using Digiexam for your classes, reach out to Matthijs or Matt to get started. For more information, check out this [Access DigiExam guide](https://howdoi.riverdale.edu/wiki/Access_DigiExam).

Use Brisk for Teachers: Inspect Writing Feature

Brisk for Teachers is a free tool that offers a unique "Inspect Writing" feature, which provides a detailed account of how students complete and edit a Google Doc. This feature is particularly useful for detecting instances where content may have been copied and pasted from other sources, whether generated by AI or otherwise. It provides insights into the student's writing process, including time spent on each section, edits made, and more, helping to identify potential academic dishonesty.

Encourage your students to use Brisk for all written assignments and use the "Inspect Writing" feature regularly to ensure the integrity of student work.

By leveraging these tools and strategies, we can help maintain a culture of honesty and integrity within our classrooms, while also supporting students in developing their own critical thinking and writing skills.

Conclusion

By implementing these tools and practices, we can ensure that student work is authentic and that our assessments are fair and accurate. Encourage your colleagues and students to adopt these practices to foster an environment of integrity and genuine learning.