How do I submit an individual student assignment to Copyleaks for plagiarism/AI detection?

As we explain in this related article (page opens in new window), you can enable Copyleaks as part of your Assignment settings in Moodle, and then every student essay submitted to that Assignment will be checked for plagiarism and generative AI use.  If, however, you didn't enable Copyleaks in advance, and you want to check one or more student submissions that appear suspicious to you, you can't enable Copyleaks scanning after the fact and re-scan student submissions.  Instead, you have to use the separate "Copyleaks Scanning Tool," which you can add as follows:

1. Log in to Moodle (link opens in new window), and navigate to your course by clicking on the appropriate link in the Current Course List block, on the right-hand side of the page:
    
   
2. If editing mode is not already on, click on the "Turn editing on" button at the top-right of the page: 
    
   
3. Although you can put the "Teacher Scanning Tool" anywhere in your Moodle block, you might want to add it to the first block in your course (what Moodle calls the "zero block").  Click on the “Add an activity or resource” link  at the bottom of that first block in your course:
    
   
4.  Within the grid (ordered alphabetically) of Activities that you can add to your Moodle course, find the "Copyleaks Scanning Tool," and click on the button for that tool:
   
5. Rather than providing a name for the tool (as you do with other External Tools in Moodle), click on the "Select content" button at the top of the General section of the settings:
   
6. Moodle will open up a new window, as Copyleaks generates the "Teacher Scanning Tool" for your course.   The pop-up window will close, and the "Activity Name" field will be filled out for you:
   
7. Because you don't want the tool to appear in your course Gradebook, scroll down in the settings to the Grade section, and click on "Grade" to expand that section.  Then click on "Point" (for the Grade Type), and change the selection to "None":
   
8. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the "Save and return to course" button:
9. You will want to hide that "Teacher Scanning Tool" link from students, so find where you added it to your course, and click on the three dots on the right-hand side of the row for that tool.  Click on "Hide" to hide the link from students:
   

   
10. Now that you have added the "Teacher Scanning Tool" to your course, you can submit a student paper (or papers) to the tool.  Click on that "Teacher Scanning Tool" link that you just added to your course:
    

    
11. You will see a "Copyleaks Scan Tool for Teachers" screen.  On the far right-hand side of the page, click on the button.
12. Click on the button in the middle of the screen.
13. Your browser will open up a typical file picker dialog box.  Navigate to the place on your computer where you have saved the student file(s) that you want to submit to Copyleaks, and double-click on the file(s) to upload them to Copyleaks.  
14. You will see the file(s) that you selected under "New Scans."  Click on the blue "Scan" button on the far-right side of the screen to begin the process of scanning the document(s):
    

    
15. It doesn't take very long for Copyleaks to return its scanning results.  If you are still on that "Teacher Scanning Tool" page, you will see the AI and plagiarism scores in the row for each file submitted to Copyleaks.  If you returned to the main Moodle page for your course, you can click on the "Teacher Scanning Tool" link again in your course to return to the results page.  Click on the icon next to either the AI or plagiarism score to view a much more detailed scan results analysis.
16. At the top-right corner of the detailed scan report page, you will see a button for the "Matching" score and the "AI Content" score.  Clicking on each button will show highlighted text that Copyleaks believes was copied from other sources ("Matching" score) or was generated by an online AI tool ("AI Content").
17. If you need to download a copy of the report, you can click on the button at the top right of your screen.
     

As we explained in the related article - How do I see the results of the Copyleaks plagiarism/AI scan for my Moodle Assignment? (link opens in new window) - the "Matching" and "AI Content" scores are estimates, based on a continuous process of testing and refining the scoring algorithms.  Copyleaks will record a plagiarism match if the text the student used can be found openly online or in the CopyLeaks database. A student can still copy content from unusual sources or from articles behind a paywall, and Copyleaks might not highlight the match. Similarly, with AI content scores, CopyLeaks might not successfully identify all of the AI-generated content. It's still important to use your best judgment when deciding if the language in a student's essay sounds "too good to be true" - in other words, significantly different in style and tone from the rest of the student's submitted work.

Please contact Digital Pedagogy and Scholarship if you have additional questions about using Moodle in your course(s).