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The AQ Office began implementing SafeAssign in courses during the Spring 2023 session.
SafeAssign is a plagiarism prevention tool which will automatically check each submission by comparing it to existing works. When you grade an assignment, SafeAssign will provide you with an originality report which gives detailed information about any similarities between a student’s work and other sources. The SafeAssign reports are extremely easy to find when grading each student’s assignment.
SafeAssign is only available to assignments submitted to the Assignment Dropbox.
How to View the SafeAssign Report
How to View the SafeAssign Report
When grading assignments, you will notice a ‘SafeAssign’ section in the grading sidebar on the right-hand side (click on the picture to see a close up picture). You will see a percentage in this section which represents how much of a student’s work is similar to that of other existing materials (e.g., internet sources, database of assignments submitted at Trent, global database). If you click the small arrow, you will expand this section and can select ‘View Originality Report’. Here you will view the specific results of the report in a new window.
Understanding the Originality Report
The originality report gives you a breakdown of potential issues with a submitted assignment. The highlighted colours represent various places SafeAssign has found matches for the content (e.g., internet, Global assignment database etc.) If you click on ‘View Report Summary’ in the top right hand corner, the system will give you a quick summary of how likely it is that the paper was copied from other courses.
As more students submit assignments, we will have a growing institutional database which will allow SafeAssign to see if students have plagiarized assignments from previous students who have taken our courses.
Source: Blackboard Learn Website- SafeAssign Help
An example of a plagiarized paper. Note the large amount of highlighting. SafeAssign has matched this paper to having been copied from the Internet.
Interpreting SafeAssign Scores
Interpreting SafeAssign Scores
The overall SafeAssign score indicates the probability that the submitted paper contains matches to existing sources. This score is a warning indicator only. Review papers to see if the matches are properly attributed.
Low: Scores below 15 percent: These papers typically include some quotes and few common phrases or blocks of text that match other documents. Typically, these papers don't require further analysis as there is no evidence of plagiarism.
Medium: Scores between 15 percent and 40 percent: These papers include extensive quoted or paraphrased material, or they include plagiarism. Review these papers to determine if the matching text is properly referenced.
High: Scores over 40 percent: A very high probability exists that text in these papers was copied from other sources. These papers include quoted or paraphrased text in excess and need to be reviewed for plagiarism.
Source: Blackboard Learn Website- SafeAssign Help for Instructors | Blackboard Help
SafeAssign is Not Perfect!
SafeAssign is Not Perfect!
SafeAssign is not a perfect tool. Once it produces its report, it still requires a human to look over the assignment to check if the plagiarism it has detected is in fact plagiarism. For example, if students have copied and pasted questions directly from the assignment outline into their assignment, SafeAssign will detect these as plagiarism. Similarly, if multiple students have utilized the same curriculum expectations in their assignment, SafeAssign may also flag these for plagiarism. For this reason, it is very important for the instructor to carefully review the highlighted areas on a flagged assignment to determine if the areas in question are areas of the assignment which should have had original content.
SafeAssign flagged the assignment above as being a 'high probability' of plagiarism. Upon closer look, we can see the highlighted areas are the assignment questions and not the student's answers. This would represent a case of plagiarism.
In the picture to the left you will see an example of an assignment that has been flagged by SafeAssign as potential plagiarism. Upon closer investigation we can see that the areas of the assignment that have been highlighted are the assignment prompts, copied and pasted from the course content and not the student's answers.
SafeAssign will only scan certain file types: DOCX, DOC, PPT, PPTX, PDF, TXT, ODT, RTF, HTML, and HTM. Therefore, if a student submits a link to their assignment (e.g., Google Document or Prezi presentation), you will not receive a SafeAssign score.
If you have ANY questions about interpreting a student's SafeAssign report, please contact the AQ Office. We are happy to provide a second opinion on whether what the system has flagged is potentially a plagiarized work.
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