CheckMyWork- Teacher

CheckMyWork compares your student’s submitted work to the content found in billions of pages on the Internet and other student's papers. The submitted work is assigned a percentage score that reflects the percent of the work that matches other people's work. The CheckMyWork similarity report shows the results of the comparison.

Important: Once a document has been submitted to CheckMyWork, it is kept on file to check against other users’ submissions. If someone else attempts to (re)submit the work after it has been submitted, it will be flagged as possibly plagiarized.

Access CheckMyWork

The CheckMyWork submission page should always be accessed through the Main Menu in the platform and not a copied link to ensure proper user access.

1. From your Pearson Connexus Home Page, expand the Main Menu and select CheckMyWork.

2. The Submit to CheckMyWork page displays. Making a submission on this page will check to make sure your student is using their own work and properly quoting and citing others work when applicable.

Submitting Your Student's Work

Teachers may submit student work in CheckMyWork on behalf of their student(s). Navigate to CheckMyWork and follow the steps below.

1. Select the Review button to review and accept the End-User License Agreement. This option only appears the first time you submit work through CheckMyWork, view a Similarity report, or when the license agreement is updated. Please note that if you do not accept this agreement, you will not be able to use CheckMyWork. 

2.  Enter text in the required fields.

 Fields include:

• Edit submission limit:
  • The number of submissions for a course will populate for a student when they select a course from the drop-down menu. Submission attempts reset each day. Teachers can change the number of attempts by editing the submission limit.
    • Review the directions below.
      • Select the Edit submission limit link to edit submission limits by course or student within a course. A student must be selected in the drop-down menu on the submission page for them to appear in the Edit submission limit window.
      • Teachers can raise the limit as high as ten submissions; however, it cannot be lower than three. By default, students will be limited to three submissions per course per day. They will see messaging about the submission limitation and how many submissions they have left for the day when they select a course.

 

Students will see one of the following visuals on their submission page depending on how many submissions they have remaining.

• Course: use the drop-down list to select the course associated with the work you are submitting
• Student: select the name of the student you are submitting the work for
• Title: enter the title of the work you are submitting
• My Work: submit your work one of two ways: pasting or uploading

• • Enter Text: Allows you to type or paste your work in the text box. The text must contain a minimum of 20 words; entries not containing the minimum number of words will result in an error when submitting your assignment.
  • Upload: allows you to upload your work by selecting a file
    • select the Choose File button to locate the file on your computer
      • only one file can be submitted at a time
      • file must be less than 100 MB in size
      • there is a limit of 800 pages or 2MB of raw text
      • the following file formats are accepted: .pdf, .doc, .ppt, .pps, .xls, .docx, .pptx, .xlsx, .ps, .rtf, .htm, .html, .wpd, .odt, .txt, .hwp, .hwpx.

3. Ensure all field are complete and select the Check My Work button at the bottom of the page.
4. When processing is complete, a confirmation message displays along with a link to the CheckMyWork Similarity Report.  

Note: If you receive an error message indicating that the submission failed, ensure that the size of the file meets the requirements (no larger than 100 MB, contains at least 20 words, and does not exceed the limit of 800 pages or 2 MB of raw text).

The report results may take from several seconds to several minutes to generate depending on the volume of words and size of the file. Even though the link appears, you may still be taken to the Generating Report page before you can view the report.

Note: If you try to view the report and receive a message that says, "The Originality service is not available for this paper" please wait and try to view the report again. Do not resubmit the exact same work again.

6. Select the link to open the report in a new window.

Reviewing the Similarity Report

The Similarity Report is a tool, providing a similarity percentage and summary of details, including the sources matched to your student's submission, to identify if the matches are acceptable or guidance on using a student’s own voice and proper formatting are needed.

The Similarity Report displays the following:

• submission and file details
• the submitted work
• similarity percentages (percentages of how original and similar the submitted work is compared to other sources)
• match groups and sources (list of similarity sources found in the source panel)
• flags (hidden text and replaced characters)

Turnitin compares a student's submissions against their database and highlights wherever a student's submitted writing is similar to a source. The database includes billions of web pages: both current and archived content from the internet and a repository of works other students have submitted to Turnitin in the past.

Note: It is likely a student's submission will match against submissions in the database. If students used quotes and references correctly, that will still be highlighted as a match. Teachers will need to ensure work is cited properly. Properly cited matches can be excluded from the source card to reflect a more accurate similarity score.

1. The similarity report for the submitted work will be displayed.

2. Select Submission Details to view details regarding your submission such as word count, page count, and file size.

3. The report shows the submitted work along with important information. A similarity score is assigned to your submitted work. This number reflects the percent of the work that matches content found in billions of pages of Internet archives, student papers, and websites.

• • A score of 0% means the work does not match any other searched content.
  • A score of 100% means that all of the work matches other people's work and that the work has been most likely taken from other sources.

4. The Match Groups view divides the overall similarity into four categories based on the usage of in-text citation and quotation marks. Viewing instances of similarity based on these categories can help you more easily identify where proper formatting has been used or may need to be added.

5. The sources panel shows a list of sources with content that matches some portion of the submitted work.

6. From Match Groups or Sources, you can use the number and color identifiers to easily link the highlighted source in the source panel to the text in the document.
7. Sometimes there are multiple instances of text matching the same source. Selecting a source will display each of its associated matches within the sources side panel. You can freely navigate through them using the forward and back arrows; however, if there is only one match linked to a source, the arrows will be disabled.

Filters

Teachers have the ability to exclude content at their discretion, either individually on each source card or in bulk by using exclusion filters, such as:

• the source of the match, submitted works or the internet
• bibliography
• quoted text
• cited text
• small matches, remove matches based on a set number of words

When a teacher adjusts the report, either exclusions from source cards or the filters section, those adjustments will be saved and the next time the report is opened by a student or teacher, those changes will still be in place.

Flags

If any flags are detected, a number will appear next to the Flags tab at the top of the report, above the submission.

• Select the Flags tab at the top of the report to open the Integrity Flags for Review panel on the right-hand side of the screen.

• In the Integrity Flags for Review side panel, you will find a quick overview of any instances of hidden text, replaced characters, or further text manipulations found in a document.
• Selecting a Flag card from the side panel will expand the card to display more details. In the submission, you will see a red flag with a number inside indicating the flag type and red boxes around all suspicious text related to that flag.

  • Hidden text: Hidden quotation marks could influence the amount of quoted material recognized in a document. When a user excludes well-referenced matches using the Exclude Quotes functionality, in a manipulated document this would also hide plagiarized content.

    Also, a student may set the color of a block of text to white rendering it invisible on the white background of the paper. This can be to manipulate the word count or break up plagiarized text with hidden characters.

  • Replaced characters: Some characters in different alphabets can look similar enough that to the naked eye, it is difficult, if not impossible, to tell them apart. The program will swap these characters out when scanning a submission so they will not affect the Similarity Report. However, by replacing characters, the intent is to try and interrupt a similarity match.

For more information, review this video on CheckMyWork: The Teacher Perspective.

To learn more about using the Similarity Report, review the following articles in the Turnitin help center:

• Managing Exclusions and Filters in the Similarity Report
• Overview of the New Similarity Report Experience