SafeAssignment is a plagiarism detection tool that is part of the Course Management

System. It is available to ALL faculty to use in any of their courses. For all assignments submitted, SafeAssignment prepares a Plagiarism Report in 24 hours or less. The report indicates which text is similar to text found on the Internet or in papers stored in the vendor’s database. Aside from letting students submit documents using the SafeAssignment feature, instructors can “quick submit” documents themselves as well.

The content of the Plagiarism Report will include:

Plagiarism Score

The score printed here denotes the amount of common material found in submitted paper (which includes properly documented source data as well as common phrases).

Suspected Sources

This includes URL addresses of any suspected sources with matching material. You will have an option to exclude any of these and re-process an assignment.

Paper Text

Full text of the originally submitted assignment will be included within the report.

Printing or saving the report

There is an option for you to save or print the Plagiarism Report. Just click the appropriate icon found in the top right corner of the report.

To Add a SafeAssignment:

• Click the Control Panel button
• Under Content Areas, click the section you wish to add a SafeAssignment to
• Click the drop down menu at the tool bar and choose SafeAssignment
• Click Go
• Enter a Title, Text and Availability
• Click Submit

OR

• Click Edit View in the content area where you wish to place SafeAssignment
• Select SafeAssignment from the drop-down menu on the far right of the Add bar.
• Enter a Title, Text and Availability
• Click Submit

To View your SafeAssignment:

• Click the Control Panel button
• Click My DropBox Suite (SafeAssignments) under Course Tools
• Click View from the list of SafeAssignment you have created

Note: TAs are not able to view the SafeAssignment Plagiarism Report

To submit a file to SafeAssignment as an instructor:

• Click the Control Panel button
• Click My DropBox Suite (SafeAssignments) under Course Tools

• Click the Quick Submit tab
• Click Submit papers
• Click Browse and navigate to the file to be attached
• Click Submit

Important:

In some cases instructors will have to re-establish the connection between their course site and the corresponding information on the server of the vendor by using the “Synchronize this course” feature. Such cases will possibly occur when:

1. A course was copied
2. Changes to the course were made while connection between your Blackboard server and SafeAssignment server was not working
3. A course was created with an older generation of SafeAssignment

Please note that you will not lose any data as a result of course synchronization. For more information about the use of this tool, contact course-management@northwestern.edu.