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It falls apart if someone makes the document in any other tool and then pastes it on gDocs.

Unless you make it a requirement to do the entire thing on that platform...

Yeah, you'd have to, but gMail/gDocs is pretty prevalent. I know a bunch of schools already use it for their email/office suite so it wouldn't be too hard to make that requirement. I really like it because it's grabbing metadata out of something people already use rather than having them use some horrible web app from the 90's that was contracted out by a now defunct company.

I am against making anything like this a "requirement." It defeats openness. And all for a stupid anti-cheating system. It's better just to go to turnitin.com

Eventually google docs may become the new horrible web app :)

If I am grading a text for its content, I shouldn't force students to use any particular tool. There should be more evaluation tools that confirm if the student has the skills I'm evaluating for, like written or oral tests in a controlled environment.

then someone can have the pre-written document in the other window and just type and pretend to revise the essay on gDoc!

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