Blackboard Tools > Safe Assign

Recently New Functionality

• SafeAssignment plagiarism detection system now called SafeAssign
  SafeAssign is the new name for the plagiarism detection system available on Blackboard. SafeAssign allows instructors to automatically collect student papers and check them for plagiarism. Instructors can also allow students to check their own papers for plagiarism (i.e. via Draft mode) or manually submit suspected documents to SafeAssign.
  
  For each paper submitted, SafeAssign returns a SafeAssign Originality Report summarizing its findings. SafeAssign supports documents in Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, HTML, Acrobat PDF and plain-text.

Safe Assign Wiki, by Blackboard

Take advantage of the collaboration of information, updates and ideas about SafeAssign through the SafeAssign Wiki by Blackboard:

http://wiki.safeassign.com

What is SafeAssign

SafeAssign is a tool that allows you to check assignments submitted to the Blackboard system against a large number of "plagiarism databases". The tool will accept students incoming papers, and then search each individual paper against databases ranging from "paper mills" and other "term paper for sale" sources, as well as other papers from here at UIC.

To use this tool login in and click on "Control Panel" and browse to the specific content area where you'd like to post the assignment for students to view. In the upper right hand corner of the content area you will see a dropdown menu where you can select what you'd like to add. Choose the option labeled "Assignment" and click the button labeled "Go".

SafeAssign at UIC

Instructors can submit student term papers manually (individual documents or groups of documents in Zip files), or easily set Blackboard Assignments to automatically collect the papers and run them through SafeAssignment's plagiarism detection.

For each document submitted, SafeAssign produces Originality Reports which provide only the necessary information in a highly intuitive form, so that instructors only need to spend a few seconds to determine if plagiarism has occurred and to identify the sources.

Because SafeAssign works as an plug-in module to Blackboard, no special accounts or passwords are needed. Faculty members who do not use Blackboard… but are interested in using SafeAssignment should contact the Instructional Technology Lab for special arrangements.

The system can be used in two different ways:

1 - You can create a "Quick Submit" tool within your blackboard course site where you can upload individual papers, or a zip file of multiple papers in order to check them for plagiarism, or;

2 - You can create a "SafeAssign" that will be identical to any other "Blackboard Assignment" from a student perspective. Once students submit their papers to you the system will automatically run them through the "SafeAssign" system and return plagiarism scores and sources for you to review before assigning a grade to the assignment.

The system works with practically all common file types including MS Word and PDF. PLEASE NOTE - After students assignments have been uploaded there will be a slight delay between the upload and the receipt of the results; this is due to the fact that the system will be searching multiple databases and comparing all the text of the paper submissions against multiple sources. Results are normally available within 10 - 15 min

STREAMING MEDIA EXAMPLES OF HOW TO USE SAFEASSIGN

Example of using SafeAssign for single item submissions (Quick Submit Mode)

Example of creating a new SafeAssign in a content area and then reviewing the results

SafeAssign REACH 2005 Meeting (PDF file, requires Adobe Acrobat - 32 KB)

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Related FAQ's

Q: How do I run single or multiple documents through the SafeAssign Quick Submit?

• Go to the Blackboard Control Panel
• Click on MyDropBox Suite (SafeAssign)
• Click on Quick Submit yellow tab
• Click on "Term Paper" on the Folder tree window on the left
• Click on "> Submit papers" link next to "> View papers"
• Click the Browse button to find the ZIP file containing a number of papers or one individual paper on your computer
• Click Submit to run the plagiarism detection system
• Depending on the number of documents submitted, and the time of day, you will receive SA (originality) Reports for them in a few minutes, or in a couple of hours, if the SafeAssignment servers are busy.

Q: When I use SafeAssign will students papers be uploaded to some proprietary database off campus?

No - the reason we have chosen SafeAssign for the UIC campus is that, unlike many of its competitors, they have always been able to offer a solution that did not add student submissions to a large master database.

Q: I would like to use SafeAssign in conjunction with the Digital Dropbox - can I do that?

The Digital Dropbox has been replaced (to a certain extent) by the Assignment Manager. Instead of using the Digital Dropbox you should be using SafeAssign or the Assignment Manager to accept student assignment submissions. For details on how to use the Assignment Manager please click here. If you have not yet migrated out of the Digital Dropbox you can still use Safe Assignment - first you will need to download the students submissions onto your hard drive. Afterwards follow the example illustrated above and use Safe Assignment in "Quick Submit" mode in order to check the submissions downloaded from the Digital Dropbox.

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