Last Updated 11/15/2012 SafeAssign Guide for Instructors MATC has access to an automated plagiarism detection service called SafeAssign that integrates with Blackboard. It can be used to prevent plagiarism and to create opportunities to help students identify how to properly attribute sources rather than paraphrase. A SafeAssignment is evaluated and scored against the following resources (which are updated weekly) to determine the work s originality: The Internet A comprehensive index of documents available for public access on the Internet. The ProQuest ABI/Inform Database Over 2 million publication titles and articles from the 90s to present. Institutional Document Archives All papers submitted to SafeAssign by users from MATC. The Global Reference Database Papers volunteered by students from other Blackboard client institutions to help prevent cross-institutional plagiarism. To Create a SafeAssignment 1. After navigating to your course, click the CONTENT AREA BUTTON where you want to place an assignment (ex: Assignments). 2. After the content area page loads, roll the mouse over the ASSESSMENTS menu and click SAFEASSIGNMENT. 3. You will be taken to the ADD SAFEASSIGNMENT form. Here, give the assignment a name, point value, instructions, and indicate your settings for: a. Availability Date: Use the date-picker tool to indicate the availability of the assignment to students. b. Track Number of Views: Records the number of times the student has viewed the assignment. c. Draft (Yes/No): Assignments submitted as drafts are compared against databases, but not saved to them. If you choose Draft, a separate SafeAssignment must be created to accept the final version of the paper. d. Student Viewable (Yes/No): If you would like students to see their own paper s SA Report, click yes. e. Urgent Checking (Yes/No): Checking yes will speed up the checking of these papers. It still may take up to an hour at very busy times.
4. Click SUBMIT. To Evaluate and Grade a SafeAssignment Although the turnaround time to get an SA Report is usually less than 30 minutes, it may take up to 24 hours at midterm or end of the term when a huge number of papers are being submitted to SafeAssign for scanning. Instructors can grade SafeAssignments through their Grade Center s Needs Grading Smart View using this process: 1. Scroll down to the course s CONTROL PANEL and click the GRADE CENTER menu. From the list of options, choose NEEDS GRADING. 2. On the NEEDS GRADING, roll your mouse over the assessment you want to grade. A gray context arrow button will appear. Click the gray button and GRADE ALL USERS from the context menu that appears. Roll mouse over cell, click gray button. Then click GRADE ALL USERS 3. You will be taken to the MODIFY GRADE page. Under STUDENT S WORK, you can download the student s file and review the document s SA report and score by clicking on the associated icon. Links to submitted file, Matching Score, and SA report
Tips for Reviewing a SafeAssignment A B C D a. Text Click the Text Icon to view a Web-based text copy of the student s submitted work. b. File Click the File Icon to download of the student s submitted file. c. Matching The percentage of text in the paper that matches resources in the databases or on the Internet. d. SA Report Click icon to view a marked up copy of the submitted document that indicates which parts may be plagiarized and possible origin of matching sources. Interpreting a SA Report Score - The score is correlated with the probability that there is text in the student s document that matches text in other documents. Scores below 15%: Not indicative of plagiarism. Paper likely contains some quotes or common phrases that match other documents. Scores between 15-40%: Paper may contain plagiarized content or just have too much quoted material. Students should consider revising. Note! The Matching Score and SA Report are not conclusive proof of plagiarism. They should be treated as warnings that indicate the document should be further review by the faculty member. Scores over 40%: Paper contains substantial amount of text copied from another source. Even if the material is properly cited, the paper may use too many quotes. Students should consider revising. 4. When you are done reviewing these files, scroll down to MODIFY GRADE and FEEDBACK TO STUDENT to add your grading information. You may also attach a file to include as a part of your feedback. 5. Click SUBMIT when done.
Downloading All Submitted Files Faculty can also review/compare student SA Reports or download all of the submitted documents through the SafeAssign tool, located in the course Control Panel s Course Tools menu. 1. Scroll down to your course s CONTROL PANEL. Click the COURSE TOOLS menu and select SAFEASSIGN. 2. On the SAFEASSIGN main menu, select SAFEASSIGNMENT. 3. On the SAFEASSIGNMENT page, roll your mouse over the assessment that you want to work with. A gray context arrow button will appear. Click the gray context button and select VIEW SUBMISSIONS from the menu that appears. Roll mouse over cell, click gray button. Then click GRADE ALL USERS 4. On the View SafeAssignment page, you will see a list that shows you links to view the student s document, Matching Score, and SA Report. To download all received student documents, check the checkbox next to the students names, then click DOWNLOAD ALL SUBMISSIONS. Select assignments and click the DOWNLOAD ALL SUBMISSION button.
5. A dialogue box will appear, prompting you to open or save a zip file containing all of the selected documents. Indicate your preference, and then click OK. Student documents can be viewed by opening the zip folder and opening individual files. Copying or Moving SafeAssignments to Another Course After performing a process that would move or copy a SafeAssignment to another course (i.e. course copy, importing an archive etc.), an additional step is needed to activate the SafeAssignment in the new course: 1. In your course s CONTROL PANEL, click the COURSE TOOLS menu and then select the SAFEASSIGN tool. 2. On the SAFEASSIGN main menu, select SAFEASSIGNMENTS. 3. On the SafeAssignments page, click the SYNCHRONIZE THIS COURSE button. CLICK 4. A message indicating that the synching process has begun will appear on the page. Once the process is complete, the SafeAssignments page will reload.
How Students Submit SafeAssignments Students submit their documents to you and SafeAssign through a process very similar to submitting a regular Blackboard assignment. It is recommended that files be under 2 MB in size, follow appropriate file-naming conventions, and be in an accepted file format, such as.doc,.docx, or.rtf. 1. Navigate to the area of the course where the assignment is posted and click the VIEW/COMPLETE link for the SafeAssignment to go to the UPLOAD ASSIGNMENT page. 2. On this page, click BROWSE and select the file to be uploaded from your computer or storage media. 3. Check the I agree to submit my file to the Global Reference Database checkbox. 4. Click SUBMIT. A confirmation page will appear so the student can review or save the submission details. How Students View SafeAssign Feedback Once a student has submitted a SafeAssignment and the document has been evaluated by SafeAssign, the student can review his or her document s SA report and score through this process: 1. Navigate to the area of the course where the SafeAssignment was posted and click the SafeAssignment s View/Complete link again. 2. The student will be taken to the View SafeAssignment page. Here, the student can review the submission history, download his or her file, and view their paper s Matching Score. The student can view their paper s SA Report only if the instructor has enabled student viewing of reports for this SafeAssignment. Students can see their submission history and SA Report (if instructor enabled this feature) here.