Paraphrase Detection in the Uniqueness Score

How Paraphrase Detection Works

What Instructors Will See

Enabling or Disabling Paraphrase Detection

Paraphrase Detection helps identify writing that may closely follow another post or submission’s ideas, structure, or sentence flow, even when the exact wording has been changed.

This feature adds a new "Paraphrase Match" type to the Uniqueness Score within the Originality Fingerprint. When enabled, the Uniqueness Score is calculated using a combination of:

• Exact text matches
• Paraphrased matches

Paraphrase Detection is designed to provide additional context, not a final conclusion. A paraphrase match does not automatically mean a student acted inappropriately. Students may have unintentionally been overly influenced by another peer’s work or relied too heavily on common phrasing around a topic.

We recommend reviewing the matched passages carefully and using them as a starting point for conversation.

How Paraphrase Detection Works

The paraphrase comparator looks for sections of writing that appear highly similar in meaning and structure, even when the wording is different.

To do this, the system:

1. Breaks both the student submission and potential source text (other posts/submissions in Packback) into individual sentences.
2. Compares each sentence in the submission against each sentence in the source to measure semantic similarity.
3. Looks for sequences where multiple sentences line up in a similar order across both pieces of writing.
4. Allows for small gaps, since students may insert original sentences between paraphrased material.
5. Groups these similar sentence sequences into a paraphrase match when they meet minimum similarity and length thresholds.

This process helps surface situations where a student may have used an AI paraphraser or closely followed the structure or flow of another post/submission without directly copying it word-for-word.

What Instructors Will See

When Paraphrase Detection is enabled, instructors may see:

• A new paraphrase match type within the Uniqueness component of the Originality Fingerprint
• Side-by-side comparisons between the student submission and matched source text
• Updated Uniqueness Scores that incorporate both exact matches and paraphrased matches

Paraphrase matches are intended to highlight patterns worth reviewing. They should be interpreted alongside the assignment context, the student's overall work, and other process signals.

Enabling or Disabling Paraphrase Detection

Paraphrase Detection is turned off by default. However, you can enable it at any time in your Community Settings. Check out the instructions below to see how to do that!

Please Note: When enabled, Paraphrase Detection will only be applied to future reports. Since reports are generated based on the setting that was active at the time the submission or post was processed, our system is unable to retroactively generate Paraphrase Detection for previous reports.

How to Enable/Disable Paraphrase Detection:

1. Enter your Packback community, and find Settings under the left hand side panel.
2. Click Edit Community Details to be taken to your Community Settings. 
3. Once here, scroll down to Advanced Settings where you will find the ability to enable or disable Paraphrase Detection by toggling the option on or off.
4. Scroll back to the top and click Save Settings to finalize your changes.