ESU Learning Technologies: Vericite is Changing to SimCheck

Over the 2019-2020 holiday break, ESU will change the Vericite plagiarism detection software to SimCheck (Similarity Check) - created by the parent company Turnitin. Below we've listed a few common questions we anticipate with respect to this change.

Why is it changing? Vericite was acquired by Turnitin roughly two years ago. As part of that acquisition, the Vericite product has been discontinued and is being replaced with a completely new product developed by the Turnitin company called SimCheck.

Why does ESU need to change now? The Vericite product is no longer updated and support is limited. It is scheduled for end-of-life (EOL) in a few months. Technically, we could wait until summer to convert, but that delay will likely disrupt courses. We've determined that the transition will be less disruptive if completed over the holiday shutdown when courses are not actively running. The actual change will occur on December 17th.

Does it integrate into Canvas? Yes. It will work very similar to Vericite. (See video links below.) There will be a checkbox in the Assignment area that allows faculty to add plagiarism detection to student submissions. And just like Vericite, faculty can see similarity reports from within the Speedgrader and the gradebook.

Can faculty 'direct submit' an assignment? Yes. Unlike Vericite which did not support Direct Submissions (eg submitting papers without creating a Canvas assignment), SimCheck allows submission outside of Canvas. Moreover, faculty can submit multiple files at once.

How quickly are similarity reports created? That is up to the instructor. Reports can be immediate, after the assignment is graded, after a certain date, or never.

Where are the papers stored? Similar to Vericite, SimCheck can index student submissions in a university (private) repository that is not shared with other institutions. That was a primary reason ESU switched from the original Turnitin product several years ago. This important feature provides intellectual property protection for student work. Faculty also have the option of storing papers in a "standard" repository which is shared with other universities. Faculty can define institutional repository or a standard repository when creating the assignment. A feature called Submission Indexing gives faculty the option to compare papers to other student papers within the institution.

What happens to the Vericite Data when we change? Turnitin will make an institutional 'copy' of our data when they convert us to SimCheck. That means we can see historical information related to any assignments dating back to when ESU first licensed the product. This data will be available, but will not carry forward into SimCheck.

Is SimCheck accessible? Yes. SimCheck conforms to WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility standards.

How do I use it with Canvas? This USER GUIDE provides step-by-step information regarding using SimCheck within Canvas. Or, you can refer to the videos below.

How does SimCheck color indexing differ from Vericite? SimCheck Colors are actually easier to interpret than Vericite. They range from light blue (0% match) to dark blue (1-24% match), yellow (25-49%), orange (50-74%), and red (75-100%).