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How do I check whether student writing is authentic? 🎥
How do I check whether student writing is authentic? 🎥

Use Writable's Authorship Alerts & Draft History, AI Detection, and Originality Check to determine whether or not student work is authentic.

Tim Zaccaria avatar
Written by Tim Zaccaria
Updated over a month ago

Through Writable, teachers can get a clear idea of whether student writing is authentic. Originality Check will flag cases of plagiarism from online resources and other student work, while Authorship Alerts and AI Detection helps alert teachers to concerns about writing behaviors that often signify the student has used generative AI. Ultimately teachers can view a detailed draft history for each student and assignment to verify student writing actions.

On this page:


Authorship Alerts & Draft History

Follow the steps below to get more insights about student writing behavior.

❗️Note: The minimum writing required in order for 100 characters for Authorship Alerts. Additionally, Authorship Alerts may not be accurate for embedded Google Docs and imported work.

  1. Navigate to 'My Assignments', and click on the assignment you want to check.

  2. Next, select a class.

  3. The Student Dashboard will open up. From here, navigate to the Authorship column where you will see a colored dot.

    • Red: The full submission was pasted into Writable by the student (limited or no changes were made).

    • Orange: The submission was started by pasting a large block of text and then was edited in Writable.

    • Yellow: Several blocks were pasted into Writable and the time spent drafting is below the typical range.

    • Green: Student drafting time for the assignment falls within the typical range.

    • Grey (or a dash): There is no draft history (for example, an assignment was imported).

If you would like more detail about your students' writing behavior, follow the steps below to view draft history. This can help assess concerns regarding writing authenticity.

  1. From 'My Assignments', select an assignment.

  2. Next, select a class.

  3. The 'Student Dashboard' will open up. From here, you can scroll down to the 'Overview' tab and click on a specific student to open up their submission.

  4. Click 'Drafts' located in green Review bar on the right.

  5. Here you will be able to see the most recent version of the student writing.

  6. Click on the dropdown menu to see more of the draft history.


AI Detection

Writable's AI Detection (powered by Copyleaks) can be used by teachers to check for AI use. This includes AI-generated writing.

  1. Log into Writable and click an assignment.

  2. Click on a class section to open the Assignment Dashboard.

  3. Click the "Students" view.


  4. In the “AI Detection” column you will see a green document icon or a blue document icon.


    1. A green icon indicates that AI detection has run but no AI was detected or it could mean that there is not sufficient student writing for AI use to be evaluated. Roll over the icon to see which of these situations applies.

    2. A blue icon indicates that some AI use is suspected and there is a report available.

  5. Click on a blue icon to open the report. (Green icons will not open a report.)

  6. In the report, click on a darker highlighted phrase to show more detail, including the number of times a phrase was found in AI-generated text compared to human text. This ratio changes depending on the frequency of the phrase.

The Copyleaks dataset includes millions of AI-generated documents and human-written content. You can learn more about their testing methodology here.


Originality Check

Follow the steps below to check for plagiarism.

  1. Navigate to 'My Assignments', and click on the assignment you want to check.

  2. Next, select a class.

  3. The Student Dashboard will open up. From here, navigate to the Similarity column. The percentage you see is the percentage of the student submission that is similar to another source. Click on a percentage to view the Originality Check report.

  4. The report will highlight any parts of the student’s writing that could have been plagiarized from a source. It will also generate a percentage for overall similarity and will list any source that was likely used.


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