Brightspace plagiarism checker integration.
Brightspace ships no plagiarism or AI checker of its own — so you're choosing a partner, not a feature. Noplag installs as an LTI 1.3 Advantage tool (Register → Deploy → Link), surfaces inline in the Evaluate view, and posts grades back via AGS. Unlike the Turnitin contract you'd otherwise be locked into, it runs on an Apache 2.0 engine your IT can audit. Free for educators.
Register, deploy, link — then grade as usual.
Admin registers in Manage Extensibility, deploys to the Org Units you choose, and creates the Quicklink. Instructors attach it to an assignment. Students submit normally — the integration is invisible to them.
Register, deploy, link
From Admin Tools → Manage Extensibility → LTI Advantage → Register Tool, exchange the OIDC and keyset URLs. Then External Learning Tools → New Deployment, scoped to the Org Units you choose — one college without the rest of the org. Create the Deep Linking Quicklink, and enable AGS + NRPS on the deployment. No legacy LTI 1.1 link to migrate.
Add it to the assignment
Drop the Noplag Quicklink into the course, or attach it to an Assignment so submissions are checked on arrival. Set the per-assignment threshold (default: flag headlines > 15%, AI-likelihood > 0.7). No separate Turnitin contract, no per-student licence to provision.
Submit as usual
Students submit through the normal Assignments workflow — no new accounts, no separate login. The check runs server-side; the similarity score and AI-writing signal appear in the Evaluate view when the instructor opens the submission, and the grade posts back to the Grade Book via AGS.
Six things the integration does.
Integration depth matters for FERPA and institutional IT review. We list the LTI surface explicitly so your administrator doesn't have to guess what we do with Brightspace roster data.
LTI 1.3 Advantage
Public 1EdTech spec, registered in Manage Extensibility and deployed per Org Unit. Your IT reads exactly what we send and receive. Register → Deploy → Link is the standard Brightspace model — we support all three stages, scoped to the colleges you choose, not the whole org.
Inline in the Evaluate view
The report renders beside the submission in the Evaluate grading view — where instructors already grade Assignments. Similarity score, AI-writing signal, and per-paragraph classification clickable to source. No new tab to chase, no separate portal login.
Grade passback (AGS)
LTI Advantage Assignment & Grade Services. The plagiarism % and AI-writing signal post back to the Brightspace Grade Book on instructor save — configurable as a column, a feedback comment, or both. The instructor can override before saving.
No single-vendor lock-in
Brightspace ships nothing native, so today the default answer is a Turnitin contract on Turnitin's terms. Noplag is an open-core alternative: the Apache 2.0 engine means you're not betting your integrity workflow on one closed vendor's pricing or one closed algorithm.
Auto-roster via NRPS
LTI Advantage Names & Role Provisioning Services. The roster pulls from Brightspace automatically — no nightly SIS sync, no manual list. Role-aware so the right people see the report and students don't, and identity is mapped to avoid the duplicate-account footgun when SAML SSO and LTI coexist.
An AI-writing signal you can question
Several universities disabled Turnitin's AI detector over false positives and a refusal to explain it. Noplag reports an AI-writing signal with the reasoning visible, adjusts for non-native English, and never auto-penalises — a signal to read, not an accusation engine. The instructor decides.
What the integration looks like to an instructor.
The same Evaluate view you grade Assignments in. Noplag appears in the panel beside the submission, with per-paragraph classification clickable to source and threshold-flagged intervals highlighted in the text.
Why the modernist novel matters
MARIA GONZÁLEZ · ESSAY 3 · 1,632 WORDS · SUBMITTED MAR 14 11:42 PMIn Anna Karenina, Tolstoy writes that “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” (Tolstoy 5). This opening line is often cited as the moment the modernist novel first announces its psychological method.
The modernist project, however, did not fully take shape until early-twentieth-century writers self-consciously rejected the omniscient narrator in favor of consciousness rendered moment-by-moment as it flows through perception.
UNCITED PARAPHRASE · Eysteinsson (1990), p.96 · click to view sourceVirginia Woolf put it directly: “life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo.” That sentence, written in 1925, is doing the work the previous century's narrators had refused.
Brightspace ships nothing native — so you're really comparing partners.
What your administrator needs before approving the integration.
Brightspace integrations get reviewed by Information Security and the Office of General Counsel before deployment — typically a 4–8 week process at large institutions. We give your reviewers what they need: a completed security questionnaire and a data-flow diagram showing exactly what crosses the boundary. FERPA-compliant DPA: Noplag as a school official under your existing Brightspace institutional FERPA agreement; the only student PII is the LTI-passed identifier, not name + email. GDPR-compliant DPA for European institutions: data-processor designation, sub-processor list, EU residency endpoint (Frankfurt). We're a relaunching open-core company — formal attestations like SOC 2 are on our roadmap, not yet in hand, and we don't claim otherwise. What we offer instead is stronger for a review: the Apache 2.0 engine means your IT reads the detection logic and data flow line-by-line rather than accepting our claims on trust, which most reviewers find faster than the equivalent closed-source review.
Read the institutional-review packetWhat Brightspace admins and instructors actually ask.
- Does Brightspace have a native plagiarism checker?
- No. Brightspace ships no native plagiarism or AI-writing checker — every option is a third-party LTI integration. That means the real decision isn't whether to add a tool, it's which partner you license. The default has long been a Turnitin contract; Noplag is an open-core alternative that installs the same way but doesn't lock you to one closed vendor.
- How is the install different from Canvas or Blackboard?
- Brightspace uses a three-stage model: Register the tool (Admin Tools → Manage Extensibility → LTI Advantage → Register Tool), create a Deployment scoped to the Org Units you choose, then create the launch Quicklink. It's a little more granular than a single config paste, but it's what lets you roll out to one college without touching the rest of the org. We provide the exact registration values.
- Where does the report show up for an instructor?
- In the Evaluate view — open the Assignment, View Submissions, click a submission, and the similarity score and AI-writing signal appear beside the submission with per-paragraph classification clickable to source. It's the same grading view instructors already use; there's no separate portal to log into.
- Does the score post back to the Grade Book?
- Yes — via LTI Advantage Assignment & Grade Services (AGS). The plagiarism % and AI-writing signal post back to the Brightspace Grade Book on instructor save, configurable as a column, a feedback comment, or both. The instructor can override the value before saving.
- How honest is the AI-writing detection?
- We treat it as a signal, not a verdict. Several universities disabled Turnitin's AI detector after false positives and its refusal to explain what it flags; we'd rather under-claim than mislabel a student. Noplag reports an AI-writing likelihood with the reasoning visible, adjusts for non-native English writing, and never auto-penalises. The instructor makes the call.
- We already pay for Turnitin — why switch or add Noplag?
- Two reasons institutions cite: cost and transparency. Public records have shown Turnitin charging comparable institutions anywhere from ~$1.79 to ~$6.50 per student, with AI detection as a separate upcharge and no published list price. And the algorithm is closed. Noplag is free for individual educators, contract-transparent for institutions, and the engine is Apache 2.0 — your IT reads exactly how a score is produced. You can run both in parallel for a semester and compare.
- Will it work with our SSO (SAML / Okta / Entra)?
- Yes. The LTI 1.3 launch happens after Brightspace authenticates the user through your IdP — the signed launch carries identity and roles, so there's no separate Noplag login. We map identity to your roster via NRPS to avoid the duplicate-account problem D2L warns about when SAML SSO and LTI coexist. Your existing SAML / Okta / Entra posture passes through unchanged.
- Can our IT actually audit the detection engine?
- Yes — github.com/NoplagLabs/noplag-engine, Apache 2.0. The shipping pipeline (winnowing fingerprints, alignment, report assembly) is readable line by line, and MinHash LSH, vector reranking, and the AI-writing signal join it as they ship. Your IT verifies what's checked, against what corpus, with what thresholds — the opposite of the closed-box detectors that drew criticism for not explaining what they flag.
- Are you SOC 2 certified?
- Not yet — we're relaunching as an open-core company, so SOC 2 is on the roadmap rather than in hand, and we don't claim it. What we offer in its place is stronger for a review: an auditable Apache 2.0 engine your team reads directly, an EU-residency endpoint, a signable DPA, FERPA school-official terms under your Brightspace agreement, and a verifiable right-to-erasure SLA.
- Pricing for an entire institution?
- Educator individual: free on the Pro waiver (annual application, no card). Institutional: Enterprise SLA contracts, typically $0–$15K/year depending on FTE and rollout scope — quoted transparently, with no separate AI line item. Because Brightspace has no native tool, this is often the first time an institution sees a plagiarism quote that isn't a per-student Turnitin renewal.
Install in Brightspace. Free for educators.
5-minute admin install via LTI 1.3 Advantage — Register, Deploy, Link. Inline in the Evaluate view. Free for educators on the Pro waiver — annual application, no card. Enterprise SLA contracts for full institutional rollouts, with no Turnitin lock-in.