[ARCHIVED] Disable copy and paste

[lmlimpin]

Is there a way we can disable the copy and paste feature for Canvas? So students can write original essay contents instead and copying them from the net?

[James · Accepted solution]

 @lmlimpin  

There is no built-in way to accomplish this.

You may add custom JavaScript to the account that will block copy/paste at the account level. This would require getting your Canvas administrator on board as it would block it for all courses, not just for one. Because the rich content editor is lots of places, you will have to take care to make sure you don't prevent pasting when it is desirable. For example, you might accidentally prevent faculty from pasting their content. Your solution probably wouldn't work on the mobile apps and determined students could go into the developer tools on the browser and override the behavior.

Realize that by preventing copy/paste, you could also be preventing students from entering characters that cannot be entered directly from the keyboard. Spanish and French teachers complain about the inability to enter accents and embellishments.

You would also be preventing students from typing up the document ahead of time in Word where they have grammar checkers and the ability to save their work and copy/pasting it into Canvas. We recommend that our students use the Word route for long posts, so this idea would never be implemented at our institution.

Some people who I've seen write about cheating say a better solution is to write questions that cannot be answered by simple copy/paste solutions. For others, there are several companies who make similarity detection (plagiarism) software. Our online learning team just evaluated and chose one of these products after using Canvas for 7 years without one.

[Alisia_Brin]

Hi @ Lean Limpin,

@James Jones has mentioned the use of similarity detection tools. I present one of such software developers called Unicheck. Many plagiarism checkers including Unicheck are widely used when it is impossible to prevent cheating due to the functionality of LMSs. In case you would like to learn more about the tools like Unicheck or have any questions on their features or functionality, I would be glad to answer them. 

Our team has taken some actions to support our partners, distant learners, educators, and academic institutions at the time of coronavirus pandemic.

For all the institutions that have no active Unicheck licenses, our team shares free access to Unicheck till June 30.

Here you can read more information on the actions taken by Unicheck: 

Coronavirus Pandemic, How Education Moves Online, and the Unicheck Action

If you or your university would like to learn more about our software, please contact us whichever way you find to be more convenient for you:

support@unicheck.com

+1 281 912 0548 (US)

+1 888 231 5356 (the US, a toll-free number)