For Educators
How teachers should review AI writing
Use the report to choose what to discuss. Keep the grade decision in the conversation, the draft, and your policy.
Teachers do not need another number on a student. They need a way to see which passages to ask about, and a record of that review. This is that workflow.
1. Scan the assignment
Open Certaffy for Education and run the essay the way the student submitted it. Paste works for a short response. PDF, DOCX, and TXT uploads work for a full paper. Check that the text on the report is the text you assigned. If a PDF dropped headers, footnotes, or a column, fix that before you interpret anything. The PDF checklist is the short version.
You can try the public checker with no account: 3 score summaries a day, up to 2,000 words. A free account adds 3 full highlighted reports, then 1 score-only scan a day up to 800 words. Academic Pro is $9 a month, or $72 a year, and includes unlimited full scans plus branded PDF reports.
2. Read the band, then the passages
- 0–29%: low signal. Mark the paper the way you otherwise would.
- 30–74%: open every highlight. This is the band where a conversation is more useful than a conclusion.
- 75% or higher: elevated signal. Still start with questions, not a penalty.
Read a highlight with the paragraph around it. A methods sentence, a block quotation, or a sentence the rubric required can look unusual without being generated. Note the passages you actually want the student to explain. Leave the rest out of the meeting.
3. Export the PDF before the meeting
On Academic Pro, download the report. A branded PDF, the Originality Evidence Pack, and the Authorship Evidence Report give you a file you can keep with the assignment. Bring that file to the conversation so you are both looking at the same passages, not at a percentage remembered from yesterday.
Draft comparison helps when you have an earlier version. A paper that grows from an outline the student already submitted is a different case from a paper that appears all at once.
4. Hold the conversation
Ask the student to explain the highlighted pages: the example they chose, the source they used, and what they changed in revision. Ask for the outline or the previous draft if your policy allows it. Write down what they could explain and what they could not.
The report is a reason to have that conversation. It is not, by itself, a finding of misconduct. If your department needs this in writing, pair the workflow with a simple AI-writing policy and the policy template.
5. Decide from the whole file
Use your existing academic-integrity process. The score, the highlights, the draft, the sources, and the student’s explanation belong in the same note. If the signal is weak or the writing is the kind that often gets flagged by mistake, use the false-positive guide and say so in the note.
A fair review is slower than a cutoff score. It is also the review you can explain to the student and to a parent.