Plagiarism has always been very difficult for institutions to measure and control, but since a flood of resources has become easily available through the Internet, the problem has grown exponentially. Students writing papers need only do a Web search on the topic for access to thousands of ideas, opinions and arguments, already thought through for them. Furthermore, students do not always understand how to properly cite and attribute borrowed content to maintain the originality of their work. Regardless of intent, plagiarism presents the very real dilemma of some students gaining unfair advantages over others. Unsurprisingly, institutions are still searching for effective methods of deterrence and prevention.*
SafeAssign is a free plagiarism prevention tool that allows for you to protect the originality of work and ensure a fair playing ground for all your students. SafeAssign is integrated with Blackboard and prevents plagiarism by detecting unoriginal content in students papers within your existing teaching and learning environment. SafeAssign can also further deter plagiarism by creating opportunities to educate students on proper attribution and citations while properly leveraging the wealth of information at their disposal.* Download SafeAssign brochure [PDF]
SafeAssign can be used in two ways:
SafeAssign checks all submitted papers against the following databases:
Upon submitting a paper for checking using SafeAssign, an interactive originality report is generated that notes suspect portions of the paper. Click here to view a sample originality report.
Creating a SafeAssignment in Blackboard is very similar to the process of using the Assignment Manager to create an assignment that students can turn in electronically via Blackboard. To begin, navigate to the desired content area where the SafeAssignment will be deployed, such as "Assignments." Click "Edit View."
From the item type drop-down pick list in the toolbar, select "SafeAssign" and then click "Go."
Enter a name for the assignment as well as the number of points possible. Also, instructions may be added to provide further clarification for students. Additional available fields and options when configuring a SafeAssignment are as follows:
After configuring as desired, click "Submit."
The SafeAssignment will now appear in the selected content area.
A corresponding column is now also present in the Gradebook.
As students submit their papers, clicking the "!" in the Gradebook for each item will open the window where the faculty member can view the percent of the manuscript reportedly matching other sources along with a link to view the SafeAssignment report. Clicking the 
link will open an online version of the SafeAssignment report.
A new window will open displaying the generated SafeAssign orignality report.
To view an enlarged version of a sample originality report, click here.
Draft versions of SafeAssignments are created in nearly the exact same way as regular SafeAssignments described above. Faculty can choose to set up SafeAssignments as drafts, allowing students to submit papers without storing them to the institutional document archive. Otherwise, if students were to submit the paper again, it would have a 100% match against itself.**
To set up a Draft Assignment, go through the regular SafeAssignment set up and click the Draft option to "Yes". This specific draft SafeAssignment will allow each student to submit once and will check their paper and generate a SafeAssign Report but will not store it in the Institutional Database.**
Please Note - You also need to create another SafeAssignment that will be your Final Version. This Final version should have the "Draft" feature set to "No" so that when the students submit, their paper is not only checked for plagiarism, but also stored in the database.**
In summary, to allow for drafts of a SafeAssignment, complete the following steps:**
To review originality reports and grade SafeAssignments, access "Control Panel and click Gradebook." An exclamation point "!" will appear in the Gradebook under the column associated with the SafeAssignment for each submitted paper. Click on the "!" associated for any submitted SafeAssignment to view the paper submitted. If the originality report is ready for viewing, the percent matching will appear as well as a SafeAssign link to view the SafeAssignment report. Click to view the report.
To view an enlarged version of a sample originality report, click here.
Direct Submit generates SafeAssign reports on papers submitted outside of a SafeAssignment.
PLEASE NOTE: Papers uploaded through Direct Submit are only added to the Institutional Database - there is no option to add them to the Global Reference Database since students have to opt-in on a paper-by-paper basis. Additionally, there is no Gradebook integration with papers submitted through Direct Submit. So because Direct Submit does not offer access to the Global Reference Database or integration with Gradebook, Faculty Members should set up and use SafeAssignments to collect submissions whenever possible.**
Direct Submit allows Faculty Members to submit papers one at a time or several at once by including them in a .ZIP file.
PLEASE NOTE: .ZIP packages should contain no more than 100 papers and submitting more than 300 papers in a session is not recommended. Additionally, papers with over 5000 sentences or that are more than 10 MB in size cannot be submitted.**
Click here for complete details on submitting papers using Direct Submit.
Click here to download a copy of the printable SafeAssign manual for faculty [PDF].
*Text introduction to SafeAssign provided by Blackboard's Client Collatoral Center. Source document available for download [PDF] here.
**Text content for select documentation items provided by the SafeAssign Wiki, available at http://wiki.safeassign.com.
Last Updated: 3/26/2008