Unicheck (ex.Unplag) is a cloud-based plagiarism detection software that finds similarities, citations and references in a set of text. In 2017, Unplag was rebranded as Unicheck. The company is based in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Unicheck is primarily used in K-12 and higher education, counting more than 400 institutions worldwide. The tool is also used as a stand-alone checker by individual users like writers, editors, bloggers, lawyers.
Video Unicheck
History
Unicheck (Unplag at that time) was launched in 2014. In 2016 Unicheck partnered with X?ulture project and became Certified Partner with Canvas learning management system by Instructure (in 2017 it gained a status of Canvas Alliance Partner). It has also joined the FERPA act. Unicheck was rebranded in 2017. In the summer of 2017, Unicheck became the first plagiarism checker to integrate with Google Classroom. It has also released a new type of integration with Canvas, called "native" and based on both LTI and API. After that in January 2018 Unicheck released Add-on for Google Docs.
In 2017 Unicheck's basic features became available for free in the following countries: US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Malta, and South Africa.
Maps Unicheck
Functionality
Unicheck offers similarities, citations, and references search and recognition in the texts. It can also discover characters that have been replaced in the text from another alphabet. For example, similar characters from Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. To find similarities and paraphrase, checks are performed against the Internet (web pages indexed by Yahoo and Google), open source repositories, and user's internal library or database. The check results are presented in similarity report, where each of the similarity that has been found has a link to the source. These reports can be downloaded in a PDF document.
Unicheck can be used as a stand-alone online tool, or integrated into LMS (Learning Management System) via plugin, LTI, API or LTI+API types of integrations.
Unicheck is compatible with the following file formats: .doc, .docx, .rtf, .txt, .odt, .ppt, .pptx, .html, .pdf, .pages, .gdoc, as well as rar and zip archives, and files uploaded from Google Drive, oneDrive, Dropbox. Unicheck allows to store documents in users' internal library. Global settings allow to configure check sensitivity and if users want to share their checked documents with Unicheck's database. Each newly signed up user receives 5 trial pages.
Technology
Unicheck uses an algorithm that searches for similar text on web pages, in open source repositories, and internal library. Accuracy of searches is achieved by using the algorithm that divides text into small shifting sequences and uses them to look for similarities and by using live web index, which enables checks against all web pages.
The technology was developed by computer science engineers and professors. In 2017, the technology was improved by adding NLP (Natural Language Processing) principles. This enabled the system to recognize synonyms and find paraphrased content in the checked text. The algorithm has been compared to latent semantic indexing, a method used by Google to determine connections between words and phrases.
The technology can recognize citations and references in the text, given they are properly formatted according to any of the academic styles. Currently, the technology recognizes APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, and Harvard styles. The speed of checks per page is 4 seconds.
Integrations
Unicheck has developed the following types of integrations with Learning Management Systems (LMS):
Plugin
Plugin type of integration is characterized by enriching the LMS functionality with added features of the tool, without changing native interface. This type of integration is used with Moodle and Sakai LMS.
LTI
LTI integration is characterized by a completely new interface created within the LMS to enable Unicheck's functions. Unicheck developed this type of integrations for Canvas, Moodle, Schoology, Blackboard, and NEO LMS.
API
When this type of integration is used, the two systems, that of LMS and Unicheck, are connected by API to ensure their interaction. API works through determining the functionality of the system, at the same time disregarding the way that functionality is realized. Thanks to this type of interaction, Unicheck integrates with Google Classroom.
LTI+API
This is a special type of integration that takes principles of both API and LTI to create a native integration, that is presenting Unicheck's functions in the native interface of LMS. This type of integration is only available for Canvas LMS.
See also
- Educational technology
References
External links
- Unicheck official website
- Unicheck blog
Source of article : Wikipedia
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