SafeAssign integrated into Blackboard assignments

Posted by Stacey Johnson on Tuesday, November 3, 2015 in Features, Tip.

Using SafeAssign is easier than ever now that it is integrated directly into the Blackboard assignments feature.

SafeAssign is a tool used to prevent plagiarism and to create opportunities to help students learn to properly attribute sources.

How does SafeAssign work?

SafeAssign’s proprietary algorithm analyzes submission text and compares the words and terms against multiple data sources including:

• Institutional document archives: Contains all papers submitted to SafeAssign by users in their respective institutions.
• Global Reference Database: Contains over 15 million papers volunteered by students from Blackboard client institutions to help prevent cross-institutional plagiarism.
• ProQuest ABI/Inform database: More than 1,100 publication titles and about 2.6 million articles from the 1990s to present time, updated weekly.
• Internet: SafeAssign searches across the broader internet for matching text using the Yahoo! BOSS search service as the underlying internet index provider.

Source: https://en-us.help.blackboard.com/Learn/9.1_2014_04/Administrator/130_Building_Blocks/010_Featured_Building_Blocks/SafeAssign

Enabling SafeAssign for an assignment:

SafeAssign can be enabled for an assignment that has already been created, or when starting a new one. Open the assignment for editing, then expand the section called submission details. Check the boxes that best fit how you want to use SafeAssign.

The report that is generated by SafeAssign, called an originality report,  lets the user know what percentage of the student’s work was taken from other sources. It is then up to the student and the teacher to determine whether those passages were cited appropriately, and how work can be improved in the future.

Other Academic Integrity Resources

In addition to the SafeAssign feature sheet found here, we encourage you to look through these additional resources on academic integrity:

• Vanderbilt Honor Code: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/student_handbook/the-honor-system/

• CFT Teaching Guide on Cheating and Plagiarism: http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/cheating-plagiarism/

• The CFT Director’s Blog: http://derekbruff.org/teachingwithcrs/?p=799

If you have any questions about how to use SafeAssign well in your own classes, please contact us at blackboard@vanderbilt.edu.