INSTRUCTOR - SafeAssignment Quick Tutorial
Overview
Today
plagiarism is a greater problem for educational institutions than it
has been in the past. Modern students’ widespread access to information
via the Internet and electronic document databases has resulted in significant
improvements in teaching and learning, but it has also made it easier
to submit unoriginal work. The plethora of sources on the Internet makes
it almost impossible to catch a student plagiarizing. However, with
SafeAssignment™ technology, your educational institution can be
plagiarism free. SafeAssignment works as a plug-in in conjunction
with Blackboard™ Learning System. SafeAssignment enhances your
Blackboard experience by complementing educational features of Blackboard
with plagiarism detection.
With SafeAssignment working on the backstage,
every student’s paper submitted to Blackboard undergoes a thorough
search through the Internet and a number of internal and external document
databases for any signs of plagiarism.
NOTE: We currently have a 150 day pilot license.
If you are interested in having the College purchase SafeAssignment,
please contact Eric Kunnen at: ekunnen@grcc.edu to express your interest!
What do I need to be able to use SafeAssignment?
Only the use of Blackboard
is required. There is no need for any software installation or account
creation procedures.
Creating a SafeAssignment
To create an assignment using the SafeAssignment
plagiarism detection system, please follow the steps below:
1 Log-in to the Blackboard™ environment at: http://bb.grcc.edu
2 Go to the Courses tab and choose the course to which you want to add
a Safe Assignment.
3 In the Course, click on the "Control Panel" button located
at the bottom of the left navigation menu.
4 Once in the "Control Panel" area, select the "Assignments"
link located in the "Content Areas" menu block.
5 The "Assignments" page contains all the course documents
that have been uploaded. The option to add a new course document is
located in the pull-down menu next to the "Add Other Content"
symbol. Select the "Safe Assignment" option and click "Go".
6 Fill in the form with your new assignment information and select whether
the assignment should be available for submission immediately.
7 Setting the options:
Draft Assignment
You can let the students submit drafts of their papers by setting the
Draft Assignment radio button on. Papers submitted to Assignments created
with the Draft option set will not be added to your institution's search
database, and therefore papers submitted in future will not be matched
against them.
Points Possible
The value you enter in the Points Possible field sets the highest possible
grade for the Assignment. This value is automatically passed to the
Blackboard Gradebook.
Students Viewable
The Students Viewable option lets you specify whether your students
should be able to view SafeAssignment reports on their papers submitted
to this Assignment.
Re-submittable
Setting the Re-submittable option on allows your students to re-submit
their papers as many times as they need until the due date. This feature
is particularly useful for Draft Assignments.
8 Click the Submit button to add the new Assignment.
Checking the Plagiarism Score
Viewing and Grading Submitted Assignments
1 To see the list of available Safe Assignments, go to the "Control
Panel" of the corresponding course and click the "Safe Assignments"
link located in the "Course Tools" menu block.
2 To list all documents submitted to a particular Safe Assignment, click
the "View" link below the corresponding assignment. On the
following page you will see a table listing all students in the course
with links to all submitted documents and plagiarism reports on these
documents. The "Plagiarism Score" in the second column should
be interpreted as the probability that the corresponding document contains
plagiarized material.
Please note that the Plagiarism Score and Checked
Content link are unavailable for the papers that were not processed
yet. Also, you can use the "Clear Attempt" button to delete
the content submitted by a particular student, and give the student
another chance to complete the assignment. Clicking on the triangles
in the green header of the table you can sort the list by the student
name or plagiarism score columns.
3 The Bulk Download feature allows you to download all papers submitted
to one Safe Assignment in a single ZIP archive. The original filenames
of the papers are preserved, so that you could easily identify papers
by filenames.
To bulk-download papers, click the "Download" button above
the list of submitted documents and choose to save the downloaded file
to a location on your computer.
4. You can grade Safe Assignments just like standard Blackboard Assignments
in the Grade Book, which can be accessed from the "Control Panel"
of the corresponding course by clicking the "Gradebook" link
in the "Assessment" menu block. You can view the student's
submission by clicking on its mark in the Gradebook and pressing the
"View" button.
Interpreting Scores
A. Sentence Matching Scores:
Sentence matching scores are the percentage probability that two sentences
have the same meaning. This number can also be interpreted as the reciprocal
to the probability that these two sentences are similar by chance. For
example, score of 90% means that there is 90% probability that these
two sentences are the same, and about 10% probability that they are
similar by chance (not because of plagiarism).
B. Overall Matching Score:
Overall matching score is basically an average of all sentence scores,
weighted by a) the length of the sentence; b) the "commonness"
of the sentence (calculated based on the average typical frequency of
usage of the words from the sentence). This score does not have a simple
statistical definition. It is just very highly correlated with a) the
probability that there is some text matching other documents in the
paper; b) the amount of matching text in the document. Please note that
matching (highlighted) text should not be considered plagiarism by default.
In general, this score should be treated as a warning indicator. We
strongly recommend reviewing all reports with high Overall Matching
Scores. For analysis of matching scores, the following interpretation
scale should be used:
1 Scores below 15% - usually papers with such scores contain some quotes
and few "typical" phrases that match other documents. In most
cases, they do not require any further analysis, and there is no evidence
of plagiarism in the report.
2 Scores between 15% and 40% - papers with such scores can contain plagiarism
or can have just too much quoted material. We usually recommend reviewing
the reports with such scores before making any judgments about the papers.
3 Scores over 40% - with such scores, there is almost 100% probability
that the papers contains some text copied from elsewhere, and, even
if this text is properly cited, such amount of cited material is considered
excessive in most cases. Therefore, such scores give a clear warning
to instructors. However, there are few cases when such scores can be
given to authentic papers, for example, when the paper was legitimately
published online before it was sent for processing (instructors have
just to "Delete" the source pointing to the legitimate copy),
or when the same student has already submitted this paper or a similar
paper to another class (it is not plagiarism, but such practice is not
allowed in some institutions).
Recommended Syllabus Policy
Students agree that their papers or other assignments
submitted for credit may be submitted to safeassignment.com to review
and evaluate for originality and intellectual integrity. Students further
understand that if the results of such a review support a question of
academic dishonesty, that further action may be required.