SafeAssign is a plagiarism prevention service by BlackBoard that is included in Valencia's Learning Management System. This service helps educators prevent plagiarism by detecting unoriginal content in student papers. In addition to acting as a plagiarism deterrent, it also has features designed to aid in educating students about plagiarism and the importance of proper attribution of any borrowed content.

What can you do with SafeAssign?

• Prevent Plagiarism
• Protect the Originality of Work
• Ensure a Level Playing Field
• Create Awareness and Educate Students

How SafeAssign Works

SafeAssign can be used in two ways:

1. Instructors can set up SafeAssignments inside their WebCT/BlackBoard CE course and let students submit papers digitally. Since SafeAssign is integrated within WebCT/BlackBoard, the originality reports will be available within minutes!
2. Instructors can also spot-check papers by using SafeAssign's Direct Submit feature. This feature requires no student involvement to run an originality report.

What are papers checked against?

SafeAssign checks all submitted papers again'st the following sources:

• Internet
• ProQuest Research Database Articles (includes articles from the 1990's to present time and updated on a weekly basis)
• Institutional Submissions (other papers submitted at Valencia Community College)
• Global Reference Database (other papers submitted accross multiple Blackboard institutions worldwide)

SafeAssign (WebCT 8/BlackBoard CE) Tutorial for Faculty

Testimonials from universities adopting SafeAssign

“The decision to continue on with SafeAssign as the supported solution was made after a year of careful consideration including comparison of the two products, a two-phase pilot implementation and survey of the user community. In addition, SafeAssign is included in our existing Blackboard license, thereby offering considerable financial benefits in the form of recovered Turnitin costs.”

Central Michigan University
Source: http://www.cel.cmich.edu/faculty/news-and-notes/July-2009.html

"In fact, many prefer SafeAssign's opt-in provision which means that student papers are not included in a global database unless they specifically permit it"
San Diego State University
Source: http://its.sdsu.edu/tech/plagiarism/

“Because of increased concern over plagiarism in the digital age, the University has been offering instructors a Web-based plagiarism detection tool called Turnitin. After an extensive review of several Web-based detection services and an analysis of our current usage, the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost and the Office of Information Technology (OIT) have chosen to not renew the University's license with Turnitin and will instead offer the plagiarism detection service SafeAssign.”
University of Minnesota
Source: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/oit/news/2008/05/safeassign_to_replace_turnitin.html

Resources:

Blackboard's SafeAssign Feature Brochure. Download Brochure [PDF].

SafeAssign Transition Report from FSU

Last updated: October 2009