Programming code plagiarism plugin:FAQ

Are there any legal issues involved when using the plugin at an institutional level?

Many institutions have certain number of regulations that restrict the use of external services, mainly due to security and privacy concern. You should consult with your institution to ensure that the use of this tool is in line with the policy. Some issues to consider are:

• Personal information such as students’ name, id and any other things that could reveal the students’ identity. The tool pays attention to search for the student’ name and id provided by the database in the comments and mask these occurrences. However, as students could have many ways of writing their names (e.g. a shorthand version different from that recorded in the database), their identities may not be masked totally and will be sent to JPlag and MOSS.
• Expressed student’ consent: if your institution requires students’ permission for their work to be sent out to external services, then, it may affect your decision to use this tool since all the works will be sent to MOSS and JPlag for processing.
• Storage of students’ work outside the university: some institutions do not want the data (even de-identified) to be stored in certain locations. For your information, MOSS service is provided by Stanford University (USA) and JPlag by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany). MOSS will keep the similarity report on their website for two weeks. No information is given on whether these services store or log the data permanently behind.

Why both MOSS and JPlag? Which one should I use?

MOSS and JPlag are among the most common source code matching engines. You can choose either of them, or you can choose both and determine which one you prefer from the similarity report. Generally, the similarity rate reported by JPlag is quite higher than MOSS. However, MOSS runs faster when the submissions are large and it supports more languages than JPlag.

Will students be aware of the scanning that happens behind?

This plugin is implemented as an educational tool in mind, so the students could receive feedback on their similarities with their classmates. However, the teacher of the course has absolute controls over it. If the teacher chooses not to notify students and not to publish the similarity report, students will perceive the assignment just as a normal one.

Why can't I see the scanning configuration block in the assignment edit page after installing the plugin?

Please check these issues in order:

• Plagiarism detection feature of Moodle is enabled (go to Site Administration -> Advanced feature).
• The plugin is enabled (go to Site Administration -> Plugin -> Plagiarism prevention -> Programming Assignment).
• On the plugin setting page, if the radio button “Enable this plugin at course level” is selected, the specific course must be selected as well.