ScholarScan user manual

ScholarScan checks Moodle assignment submissions for text similarity and provides review indicators that support academic integrity decisions. This manual explains the Moodle workflow for students and lecturers.

Student manualSubmit your work, find your report, understand the percentages, and resolve common problems. Lecturer manualConfigure assignments, review the submission columns, interpret reports, and request rechecks.

What ScholarScan provides

A similarity percentage for supported assignment files.
Matched-source details for academic review.
An optional AI writing indicator with explanatory signals.
Moodle report columns for lecturers.
Optional student report access and automatic report email.

Important

A similarity score or AI writing indicator is not proof of misconduct. A qualified person must consider quotations, references, assignment instructions, discipline conventions, drafting history, and other evidence.

Supported documents

ScholarScan accepts PDF, DOCX, TXT, HTML, and HTM files. The ScholarScan API permits files up to 50 MB, but the Moodle course or assignment may impose a lower limit.

Scanned or image-only PDFs require OCR and may take longer to process. Clear, searchable PDFs produce more reliable text extraction.

Before using this manual

Your institution controls which ScholarScan options are available. Labels may vary slightly with the Moodle version or theme. If a report link or column described here is missing, check the relevant troubleshooting page or contact your Moodle administrator.

Privacy and file handling

Moodle sends the submission owner's identifier, name, email when report email is enabled, assignment context, and supported file to the institution's ScholarScan service. The tenant's housekeeping policy controls file retention. By default, the received original is deleted after successful processing; failed files are retained temporarily for automatic retries or resubmission support.