safe assignment matching

SafeAssign is a tool used to prevent plagiarism and to create opportunities to help students identify how to properly attribute sources rather than paraphrase. SafeAssign is effective as both a deterrent and an educational tool.

SafeAssign compares submitted assignments against a set of sources to identify areas of overlap between the submitted assignment and existing works.

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SafeAssign is a plagiarism prevention tool that detects unoriginal content in students' papers by identifying areas of overlap between submitted assignments and existing works. SafeAssign can also be used to help students identify how to properly attribute sources rather than paraphrase without giving credit to the original source. The SafeAssign feature is effective as both a deterrent and an educational tool.

Note: Delays in SafeAssign occur throughout the semester based on high demand. Please DO NOT have students resubmit papers as this pushes them to the back of the queue. Blackboard currently reports as much as 24-36 hours or more may elapse before report results are returned.

How SafeAssign Works

Enabling safeassign.

• SafeAssign Assessment Reports

Interpreting SafeAssign Scores

The SafeAssign feature is based on a unique text matching algorithm capable of detecting both exact and inexact matches between a submitted paper and a particular source material. Assignments submitted to the SafeAssign database are compared with several different databases, including the following:

• Internet: Comprehensive index of documents available for public access on the Internet
• ProQuest ABI/Inform database: More than 1,100 publication titles and about 2.6 million articles from 1990's to present time, updated weekly (exclusive access)
• Institutional document archives: Contains all papers submitted to SafeAssign by users in their respective institutions
• Global Reference Database: Contains papers that were volunteered by students from Blackboard client institutions to help prevent cross-institutional plagiarism

Assignments accept every possible file type as an attachment to a submission. SafeAssign will only process and create Originality Reports for attachments with compatible file types. SafeAssign is only able to support file types that are convertible to plain text including the following file types: .docx; .doc; .pdf; .txt; .odt; .rtf; .html; .htm; and .zip (processing files that match any of these file types within the .zip). However, Learn Assignment's Inline Grading feature only supports the following subset of file types: .pptx; .ppt; .xlsx; .xls; .docx; .doc; and .pdf. SafeAssign will only process and create Originality Reports for attachments that match the above file types. For unsupported file types, the SafeAssign Originality Report will omit a matching score. This information is visible in the right-hand navigation bar of the new Originality Report.

These two lists of compatible file types mean that there are only certain file types that can be displayed in the Inline Grading workflow and processed by SafeAssign. Below is a Venn diagram outlining which file types support both features:

• Original Course View
• Ultra Course View
• Tutorials and Guides

Enabling SafeAssign in Original Course View

Enable the SafeAssign tool during Assignment creation and editing, under the Submission Details section.

Faculty have the option to Exclude Submissions when creating an Assignment. This option will allow faculty to create Assignments that do not include any student submissions in the Institutional or Global Reference Databases, enabling students to "check their work" against SafeAssign sources prior to submitting a final version without subsequently revised drafts being flagged as matching the previous "draft" submissions. Like other options on Assignments, this option will be point-in-time and editable after assignment creation. If the option were changed at a later date, new submissions would honor the new state of the setting.

Enabling SafeAssign in Ultra Course View

Enable SafeAssign in the settings panel while creating an Assignment or a Test.

• Open Assignment Settings or Test Settings in a new or existing assessment.
• Under SafeAssign , select Enable Originality Report .
• When you enable SafeAssign for the assessment, you can also allow students to view the Originality Report. If you allow multiple attempts, an Originality Report is generated for each attempt a student submits.
• Choose whether to exclude submissions from the institutional and Global Reference Databases.
• Close the layer. Your changes are saved!

You can enable the SafeAssign Originality Report at any time, even after students have started their submissions, but submissions are only checked when SafeAssign is enabled. Submissions received before you enable the setting aren't checked with SafeAssign.

SafeAssign Doesn't Generate a Report when Filename Has Special Characters

Please note that assignment submissions with special characters (i.e., #,:,*,space, etc.) are not evaluated by SafeAssign and will not generate a report.

It is recommended that users only include numbers, letters, hyphens, and underscores in their filenames. In cases where student users have already made a submission, change the assignment setting to allow multiple submissions and then ask them to resubmit the document after making the appropriate filename change.

• SafeAssign Originality Reports

After a paper has been processed, an Originality Report will be available that will show the percentage of text in the submitted paper that matches existing sources. It also shows the suspected sources of each section of the submitted paper that returns a match. The faculty can then delete matching sources from the report and process it again. This procedure is useful to ascertain if the paper is a continuation of a previously submitted work by the same student.

Because the SafeAssign feature identifies all matching blocks of text, it is important that the faculty reads the report carefully and determines whether or not the block of text in question is properly attributed.

Click here for more details about the Originality Report

The sentence matching scores represent the percentage probability that two phrases have the same meaning. This number can also be interpreted as the reciprocal to the probability that these two phrases are similar by chance. For example, a score of 90 percent means that there is a 90 percent probability that these two phrases are the same and a 10 percent probability that they are similar by chance and not because the submitted paper includes content from the existing source (whether or not it is appropriately attributed).

The overall score is an indicator of what percentage of the submitted paper matches existing sources. Please note that this score is a warning indicator only and it is the faculty’s responsibility to review the papers carefully to see if the matches are properly attributed.

• Scores below 15 percent: These papers typically include some quotes and few common phrases or blocks of text that match other documents. These papers typically do not require further analysis, as there is no evidence of the possibility of plagiarism in these papers.
• Scores between 15 percent and 40 percent: These papers include extensive quoted or paraphrased material or they may include plagiarism. These papers should be reviewed to determine if the matching content is properly attributed.
• Scores over 40 percent: There is a very high probability that text in this paper was copied from other sources. These papers include quoted or paraphrased text in excess and should be reviewed for plagiarism.

Frequently Asked Questions

SafeAssign can be used in two ways.

• Faculty Members can set up SafeAssignments in their courses on Blackboard and let students submit papers to complete these assignments, in a way very similar to the Assignmnent tool provided by Blackboard Learning System. The papers will then be delivered to Faculty Members through the Blackboard Learning System together with the SafeAssign Originality Reports, which details the results of the matching process.
• Faculty Members may upload papers directly, without student involvement through the Direct Submit feature.

What information does SafeAssign provide in its reports? A SafeAssign Originality Report highlights any blocks of text in submitted documents that match reference sources, and links back to the matching documents on the Internet or in supported content databases. SafeAssign reports also show similarity ratings for each matching sentence and allow Faculty Members to view a line-by-line comparison of potentially unoriginal text from submitted papers and the matching external documents.

If intructors enable student viewing, each student can view the reports for their own submitted papers.

SafeAssign currently checks all submitted papers against the following databases:

• Internet - comprehensive index of billions of documents available for public access on the Internet;
• ProQuest ABI/Inform database with over 1,100 publication titles and about 2.6 million articles from '90s to present time, updated weekly (exclusive access);
• Institutional document archives containing all papers submitted to SafeAssign by users in their respective institutions;
• Global Reference Database containing papers that were volunteered by students from Blackboard client institutions to help prevent cross-institutional plagiarism.

What is the Institutional Database? The Institutional Database is the archive of papers submitted by students in your institution. Each institution's Institutional Database is stored in the central SafeAssign service and kept separate from other institution's databases. Papers are automatically added to this database upon submission and are stored in the central service to be checked against other papers submitted from your institution. The Institutional Database is completely separate from the Global Reference Database which extends across institutions and students must volunteer their papers to.

Can SafeAssign process papers written in languages other than English? SafeAssign can generate originality reports for papers written in all alphabet-based languages with left-to-right writing. The user interface is currently only available in English.

Who owns the intellectual property rights for each submitted paper? Blackboard does not claim any ownership rights on the content submitted to SafeAssign.

How long does it take to generate originality reports? Reports are not generated instantaneously - it usually takes from several seconds to few minutes to receive a report. During peak use (such as the end of the semester), it can sometimes take several hours.

What file formats does SafeAssign support? SafeAssign supports Word (.doc or .docx), plain text (.txt), rich text format (.rtf), .pdf, and .html formats. In addition, supported file types can be compressed to a .zip file for Direct Submit.

What is the file size limit for files submitted to SafeAssign? There is a 10 MB limit on all files submitted to SafeAssign. This applies to individual student uploads to Assignments with SafeAssign enabled as well as .zip files of multiple papers uploaded by faculty using the Direct Submit feature (in which case the .zip file must be under 10 MB). Unfortunately, this limit is set by the SafeAssign servers, which are managed by Blackboard, so it cannot be overridden.

How does the Global Reference Database work? Blackboard's Global Reference Database is a separate database where students voluntarily donate copies of their papers to help prevent plagiarism. It is separated from each institution's internal database, where all papers are stored by each corresponding institution, and students are free to select the option to check their papers without submitting them to the Global Reference Database.

What if a student decides to remove a paper from the Global Reference Database? Students submit their papers to the database voluntarily and agree not to remove papers in the future.

Are students forced to submit papers to the Global Reference Database either by Blackboard or NIU? All papers are submitted to the Global Reference Database voluntarily, and students are free to choose not to submit their papers to this database. Faculty Members can still use the service effectively, even when students choose not to submit their papers to the Global Reference Database.

What is the SafeAssign "Synchronize this Course" option that appears in the "Direct Submit" area? The synchronize function is to deal with breaks in communication or to update a course which is based on a template or has been copied. It is a good idea for the faculty member to click on this when first using SafeAssign and to periodically update it or update if any course level issues arise. It simply synchronizes the papers in the course with the SafeAssign central database, ensuring the correct associations exist between the course and our central database.

Can students directly submit a draft assignment to check without having it deployed as a SafeAssignment via the instructor or having it be tied to the Grade Center in Blackboard? There is the option to make an assignment a draft. In this case, as mentioned above, the paper is not checked into the institutional database.

Why did SafeAssignment scores in the Grade Center get deleted after the students submitted their assignments? Make sure to enter SafeAssignment scores in the Grade Center after the students submit their assignments. Scores assigned prior to SafeAssignment submission are deleted when students submit their assignments. If paper assignments are collected together with a Blackboard SafeAssign feature, make sure to enter student grades after they have submitted their assignments electronically through SafeAssign.

It is possible to download all of the files that the students submitted to a SafeAssignment. This does not include the originality reports. Those must be viewed within Blackboard directly.

To download all of the submitted files:

• From the course with the SafeAssignment, open Course Tools in the Control Panel
• Click SafeAssign
• On the next page, choose SafeAssignments
• Move your mouse cursor over the SafeAssignment you are interested in. When the Action Link appears, click it and choose View Submissions from the menu
• Click the Download All Submissions button at the top of the page

Your browser will download a .zip folder that has all of the submissions. You can open the folder or extract the files to read the individual submissions.

If you get this error and you are logged into Blackboard, it means that the security or privacy settings of your web browser are set to not allow 3rd-party cookies. You will need to change that setting to be able to use SafeAssign.

For Internet Explorer:

• Click Tools
• Click Internet Options
• Click Privacy
• Set the setting to Low

For Firefox:

• Click Options
• Select Accept cookies from site
• Select Accept third-party cookies
• Change Keep until to they expire

For Safari:

• Click Safari
• Click Preferences
• Click Security
• Change Accept cookies to Always

If you or your students receive this error, you will need to re-synchronize your course. To do so:

• Underneath the  Control Panel , expand the  Course Tools menu.
• Click  SafeAssign .
• On the following page, click  SafeAssign Items .
• On the  SafeAssign Items page, click the  Synchronize this course button.
• You may briefly see a message telling you it will take a moment to synchronize. Your student(s) should now be able to access the Assignment.
• How to Use SafeAssign in Assignments Original
• How to Use SafeAssign in Assignments Ultra

Quick Guides

• Using SafeAssign in Assignments
• SafeAssign Originality Report
• Using DirectSubmit Original
• Grading with SafeAssign

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Blackboard SafeAssign

What is safeassign.

SafeAssign ™ is a plagiarism prevention service, helping 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.

How Does SafeAssign Work?

SafeAssign can be used in two ways.

• Instructors can set up  SafeAssignments  in their Blackboard courses and let students submit papers to these assignments, as an option in the regular Assignment feature  The papers will then be delivered to instructors through the Blackboard Learning System together with the originality reports, with the results of the matching process, attached to them.
• Instructors may upload papers directly with the  Direct Submit  feature, without student involvement. The Direct Submit page is found from Course Tools > Safe Assign. Note that papers submitted by the instructor are limited to Safe Assignment checking only; you cannot enjoy the advantages of the "Needs Grading" page, the inline grading process, or Rubrics, and any scores must be posted to the Grade Center in a manual entry column.

Matching Process

SafeAssign checks all submitted papers against the following databases:

• Internet  – comprehensive index of documents available for public access on the Internet
• ProQuest ABI/Inform database  with over 1,100 publication titles and about 2.6 million articles from the ’90s to present time, updated weekly (exclusive access)
• Institutional document archives  containing all papers submitted to SafeAssign by users in their respective institutions
• Global Reference Database  containing papers that were volunteered by students from Blackboard client institutions to help prevent cross-institutional plagiarism.

SafeAssign Originality Repor t

SafeAssign generates an Originality Report with the results of the Matching process. See the additional link, " Interpreting Safe Assign Reports ."

Set Up a Safe Assignment

• Safe Assignment is now an option within the regular Assignment feature.
• Inside any content area, open the Assessment menu and select Assignment.
• Name the Assignment. This will become the label for the link students follow to submit their files, and also become the header for the Grade Center column.
• Give students their directions in the Instructions box, and/or attach a file of directions. You can also provide directions as a separate Item.
• Set the Due Date, if desired, and then type the number of Points Possible. Associate a Rubric if desired.
• Click the words "Submission Details," revealing several options. Check the boxes to "Check submissions for plagiarism using Safe Assign" and "Allow students to view Safe Assign originality report." Leave the box to "Exclude submissions" unchecked.
• Set other options as desired, and click Submit.
• The new link will be displayed at the bottom of the page, and students will click those words to submit their files.
• You can monitor students' submissions in several ways: the Grade Center column will show an exclamation point for each submission; the Needs Grading page will grow as the files are received, and the page at Course Tools > Safe Assign > Safe Assign Items > View Submissions will show you the comparative results for all of the files.
• Use your pretend student account to observe the entire process for a file submission.

Note: if you copy Safe Assignments from an old course site (before Fall 15), the legacy "View/Complete" links will continue to work as expected. But you should consider recreating these links with the new format, to enjoy the advantages of inline grading and easy association of Rubrics.

Set Up a Draft Assignment

• To allow students to submit a "draft," and then later submit a final version, so that the results of Safe-Assign-checking of the draft are removed before the final version is checked, use the option within the Assignment setup page for "Number of Attempts" to allow multiple attempts. Each time the student submits a fresh version, the previous Safe Assign results are deleted.

View a Student’s Report, and Grade the Assignment

• The Safe Assignment Originality Report is now most easily viewed from the grading page.
• Reach the grading page either from the Grade Details page (opened through the Grade Center) or -- even more conveniently -- from the Needs Grading page (linked under Grade Center on your course menu).
• When you click the student's attempt, the grading page will display the student's file -- if it is in Microsoft Word format -- or provide a link to download the file for viewing on your own computer. At the right side of the grading page, near the box for typing the student's score, you will see a link labeled "Safe Assign," which reveals another link to "View Originality Report." The report opens in a separate browser window with all of the details about matching texts.
• On the grading page, if the submitted file was in Microsoft Word format, you have tools to add comments and other markups to the student's file. This is called "inline grading." When you use these tools, you are actually adding a "layer" to the student's file. EXTREMELY IMPORTANT WARNING: If you use the tools to add comments and markups, you MUST also click the "double arrow" next to the word CROCODOC at the top of the paper's display. This opens a list of the comments and markups you've made, and it is CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT that this list is opened before you proceed to "Submit" the page. Clicking to Submit without opening the list of comments and markups will result in LOSING ALL OF YOUR WORK.
• On the grading page, if you associated a Rubric with the Assignment, the link to the Rubric will appear as soon as you have clicked the score box for the Attempt. The Rubric will be displayed in the right column, for convenient comparison with the student's work. If you prefer, there is a link above the Rubric to open it in a separate browser page. On the grading page, there are links at the top of the Rubric to allow you to use the Feedback boxes for the individual criteria. There is also a final box for general feedback (on the Rubric). If your Rubric is designed to calculate points, the total will be placed into the Attempt Score box when you close the Rubric.
• When you have finished reviewing the student's work, click Submit to record the grade. But if you have used the inline grading tools, recall the EXTREMELY IMPORTANT WARNING above -- make sure that the COMMENTS AND MARKUPS list is visible before you click Submit.
• For files that are not in Microsoft Word format, you can find several links to download the students' files for viewing on your own system. The links to the Safe Assign Originality Report and/or the Rubric are available as described above.

For more help check out the Blackboard Help Center page covering SafeAssign .

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Interpreting the SafeAssign Report

Important - please note.

SafeAssign is used to help detect plagiarism within an assessment by checking the wording of the assignment against a database of academic resources such as books and journal articles to see if there are any matches.

Outputs from the SafeAssign text matching tool can mean different things in different contexts and and disciplines. Therefore it is important to check the output carefully.

For example, scientific and mathematical subjects are likely to have a different level of matching from English or History. Although a result of 0% would generally be an indication that the work has not been plagiarised, this is not always the case.

The SafeAssign Report

The SafeAssign report provides extensive information to help you determine whether you are appropriately citing the works used for your assessments.

• Report Information

Manuscript text

• Printable view - print as pdf to download / share
• Collapse right hand Report Information and Citations panel to have more room for viewing the text

A SafeAssign originality report is divided into three areas: Report information; Citations and Manuscript text.

The sources which include text that matches the submitted paper’s text are listed in the right panel of the report.

You can remove the highlighting from all the identified sources by clicking on the top highlight icon, or just remove highlighting from specific sources by clicking on the highlight option to the right of the source.

The submitted paper appears in the left hand panel. All matching blocks of text are identified. Each source has a colour specific to the source — up to 30 unique colours for 30 different sources. Text matching a source is highlighted in the source colour and identified with a number. To view further information, click on the highlighted section and a pop up will appear showing the percentage match with the source text and the source text itself.

The system will highlight matched text, even if the resource has been properly referenced in the reference list at the end of the assignment. However, it acts as a useful reminder to cross check the resources that have been quoted/used in the text to ensure that they have been acknowledged.

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SafeAssign and Turnitin: Home

What is safeassign and turnitin.

SafeAssign and Turnitin are tools that identifies text matches in your assignment, which should be reviewed to ensure that they are appropriately cited and acknowledged. SafeAssign and Turnitin compare submitted assignments against a set of sources to identify areas of overlap between the submitted assignment and existing works.

After a paper is processed, a report is generated detailing the percentage of text in the submitted paper that matches existing sources. The report also shows the suspected sources for each section that returns a match. 

The originality report does not state whether a phrase that matches a source is properly referenced. 

You can use your SafeAssign or Turnitin report to check the highlighted text matches and evaluate if you need to rephrase, if you need to add an in-text citation or double check that you have done the right thing. 

Ask us at the Library

How to access your SafeAssign or Turnitin report

• To view your Originality/Similarity report, return to the assignment submission point link where you submitted your assignment and click on the link. You will be taken to the Review Submission History screen.
• Click on  SafeAssign to open.  'Report in progress'  message will display until report is fully processed (it may take some time to generate). A  '..% overall match'  will display when the originality report has been processed.
• Click  View Originality Report  to view the full SafeAssign report.
•  Click on the assignment link - this will take you to your Assignment Dashboard.
• Click on the Similarity percentage score to view the report.

How to read your Turnitin report

A Turnitin report opens in Feedback Studio. Use the navigation bar to view details. The report has three sections:

Match overview

Match details

The match overview provides you with your overall score. 

Sources that matches the assignment's text are listed in the right panel of the report. Select the source type to learn more about the match. For each source, a number appears which corresponds with the highlighted text in the submission. You can select 'Open match' source to visit the matching source text in a new window.

The submitted paper appears in the left panel of the report. All matching blocks of text are identified. Each source has a color specific to the source and a number helping to match it to the information in the 'Citation panel'. 

Select a matching block of text to display information about the original source and the probability that the block or sentence was copied from the source.

Download/Print report

Click on the download icon at the bottom of the navigation bar to download and print your report. 

Interpreting your SafeAssign or Turnitin Score

The overall SafeAssign/Turnitin score indicates the probability that the submitted paper contains matches to existing sources. This score is a warning indicator only. Review the assignment to see if the matches are properly attributed.

Generally, you can ignore highlighted text from the following sections:

• The reference list or bibliography of your assignment
• Quotations and block quotations that are properly cited according to the relevant referencing style guidelines
• Assignment titles and tables of contents
• Common phrases or technical terms
• Templates, cover pages, or assignment questions included in the assignment

Keep the above dot points in mind when considering your overall score: 

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

How to read your SafeAssign originality report

A SafeAssign originality report is divided into three areas:

• Report information

Report Summary

Report Summary appears in the top panel of the report - click on 'View Report Summary'. 

Sources - Citations

In the top right corner of the report you will find the option to print or download the report. 

• Last Updated: Feb 22, 2023 3:55 PM
• URL: https://libguides.cdu.edu.au/c.php?g=519508

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What Does a Safeassign Percentage Mean?

• by Judy Jeni
• January 16, 2024

After you submit your work, it’s processed, and an originality report is generated. The report shows the Safeassign percentage, which highlights any unoriginal content. However, when your teacher creates an assignment on Safeassign, he determines whether you will view the results or not.

The report highlights all the matching text. In the light of the score, both the student and teachers should use the report as an opportunity to learn how to give attributions and not just paraphrase.

The originality report gives a list of sources copied from, highlighting each source with a different color. Meaning, if there are 20 different sources, they will highlight in 20 different colors.   

What Is a Safeassign Percentage?

A Safeassign percentage in the originality report is the overall Safeassign score for your paper. This means the percentage translates to the amount of matching content of your work to material that is already existing.

When a Safeassign report has been processed, it is accessed on the Grade Assignment page. A Grade assignment page is accessed either from the Needs Grading page or from the Grade Center.

A Safeassign section is viewed in the grading sidebar on the Grade assignment page.  Similarly, a percentage pops up on the grading sidebar when the report is ready to view.

The originality report is accessed when paper processing is finished. It shows the percentage of text in the submitted work that matches existing sources.

It shows potential sources for the individual text of the submitted paper that shows a match.

The faculty can remove the rhyming sources from the paper and rerun it. This is an essential step to know whether the paper is a continuation of a previously submitted assignment by the same student.

In addition, when a student’s work is deleted from a course, its content remains in the database. This means it can be used to look for any matching by other students in future submissions.

Meaning of Safeassign Percentage

A percentage is used by the faculty to determine if a student copied. A teacher should be keen to read the entire student’s work to identify whether the matching text was adequately attributed since the report shows the matching text taken from other sources.

A SafeAssign percentage means the level of similarity between the scanned text and the source. It is a percentage score that shows the matching level of the two texts. In simple terms, it represents the degree of similarity of the copied text, and the original text that one copied from.

The overall score means the percentage of a submitted paper matches with existing sources.

 For example, a score of 95 means that there is a 95 percent probability that these two passages are the same.

While a score of 15 shows that there is a 15 percent chance that the highlighted text matches with an already existing material. The score highlights content from the existing source, whether it’s well attributed or not.

The Safeassign score is solely a warning indicator, and it’s the faculty’s responsibility to ascertain whether the student’s work is appropriately cited or not.

Low Safeassign scores below 15 percent : this means the paper has a few common quotes and phrases that match other documents. Such submissions don’t require further analysis.

A medium score between 15 and 40 percent : this means the papers are plagiarized. They have extensively quoted and paraphrased content. However, the teacher should check further to see whether it is attributed correctly.

High Safeassign score of 40 and above : this implies the content is plagiarized highly. Meaning a student copied the text extensively from another source.

Difference Between Safeassign Percentage and Safeassign Score

There is no difference between a Safeassign score and a Safeassign percentage; they represent the same. A Safeassign score means the percentage by which a document matches with other existing documents.

Sentence matching score gives the probability by which any two phrases have the same meaning. The score number depicts the reciprocal to the probability that these two passages are similar in chance.

Reading a Report from Multiple Attachments and Attempts on Safeassign

Safeassign does not check a student’s current submission against his previous content submissions.

Uniquely, it can identify multiple attempts for a particular assignment submitted by the same student for the same.

Similarly, if the submission has more than one attachment, each is listed in the report.

What is a Good Safeassign Percentage?

A good Safeassign percentage is any score that is below 15 %.  A that is lower than 15% means a few instances of matching text in your submitted work. Usually, you have used commonly used phrases and quotes.

It is seen as a good similarity score since it lies within the low plagiarism levels of between 0-15, depicting your work as original. Safeassign looks for borrowed content in your work that overlaps with other existing materials.

100 % match on Safeassign

If the report indicates a 100% match, it shows a student copied the highlighted item word for word from an existing source. Usually, this happens when you use quotes by other people: copying and pasting directly. This is not a problem when the cited text matches 100 percent.

However, one can still copy but not get detected with plagiarism. Check out some of the ways to write essays without plagiarizing and see how to have essays that get good scores.

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SafeAssign 100% Match to Submitted Assignment

Anyone ever had SafeAssign match an assignment 100% to the assignment itself? Normally you get a varied list of resources, both web and previous papers, that sections of an assignment match to. But I had a student submit a paper that was a 100% match to itself.

Something janky is going on here - I can feel it in my bones.

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How Accurate is SafeAssign? How to Read SafeAssign Scores

Is Safeassign accurate

If you’re a student wondering how accurate SafeAssign is in detecting plagiarism on your paper, then you are not alone. Your concern is valid as very few people know how to correctly read and interpret Blackboard’s Safeassign scores in its scan results.

In this post, we dwell on these two issues in depth. But first, let us learn what SafeAssign really is and how to use it well.

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What is SafeAssign in Blackboard?

SafeAssign is a plagiarism detection software and system developed by Blackboard as a solution to help educators detect cheating and copy-pasting by students. It prevents plagiarism by detecting duplicated, similar or unoriginal content in student papers.

More importantly, Blackboard’s SafeAssign also incorporates features that help teach students about plagiarism and the importance of citing borrowed work.

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How Accurate is SafeAssign?

SafeAssign is between 92% and 97% accurate in detecting plagiarism, making it effective enough to detect copying. We tested it with 3 papers, and their similarity reports had an accuracy level of 92% and 97% compared to our pre-determined plagiarism percentage.

Therefore, if you read and interpret SafeAssign scores well, its originality report is effective enough to show your plagiarism levels.

To test for its accuracy, we uploaded three papers.

Our office writer wrote all these three papers we used and were 100% original.

This is how each of the papers describes;

The first was an essay A, the second was a research paper, B, and the third was a case study report, C. All these were written specifically for the test.

To test the accuracy of SafeAssign, we copy-pasted content from the internet at the following pre-determined percentages.

Armed with our facts, our papers, and our pre-determined plagiarism score, we uploaded the three files on Blackboard’s normal student account. We submitted at different times of the day and different days of the week when the SafeAssign systems were at different usage levels.

The Results

And the results were astoundingly impressive as the system gave us similarity scores for each file that was as close as possible to the actual rates. The following table summarizes the results;

From the table, it is clear that SafeAssign accuracy for the three files was between 92% and 97%, which explains the possible level of plagiarism detection in a file.

For the essay, SafeAssign was 94.8% accurate, meaning that it detected 94.8% of the total present plagiarism. It did this by detecting that 23.70% of the essay was plagiarized, but the actual was 25% because we pasted it that way to test.

This means that SafeAssign detected that 237 out of 1000 words were copy-pasted, but the actual was 200 words out of the total 1000 words, representing 25% of the paper.

This is fairly accurate for plagiarism detection software, and it shows that SafeAssign is accurate enough.

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How effective is safeassign in detecting plagiarism.

SafeAssign works by scanning all work submitted against four databases: a global database, a campus database, an information database, and an all-content found online database.

SafeAssign uses a proprietary algorithm to detect matches to help avoid false positives for common phrases and ensure the quality of results.

The software provides links that one can use to compare cases of plagiarism found in a submitted paper. These links include;

• Text , where the instructor can view any paper submitted with student comments
• Grades , where grades can be given by SafeAssign the grade book; Matching, where the instructor can see the percentage of the writer’s work matching other sources
• SA Report , where actual SafeAssign reports can be linked by the instructor.
• File , where the downloading of the original student-submitted file can be done.
• Submitted , where the submission dates and times can be seen.

SafeAssign provides an originality report which contains detailed information about matches found in work submitted and the existing sources. The originality report lists the potential sources in different colours, each colour representing a different source.

The campus database is usually accumulated with students’ work making it easy to detect plagiarism from the wide range of work available.

SafeAssign also helps instructors view work that has been flagged and also removes a flag that is viewed as insubstantial.

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Can SafeAssign be Wrong?

Ideally, SafeAssign cannot be wrong because it gives your instructor a similarity score to interpret. The similarity report is based on the detected similar content between the uploaded file and both its database and the online content.

Therefore, Blackboard’s SafeAssign similarity report cannot be wrong because it must be interpreted to determine if a file is plagiarised.

At the same time, SafeAssign does not guarantee 100% accuracy. The SafeAssign program does not scan the content of papers that are from outside the public domain books and scholarly journals.

Safe Assign cannot check anything from any source that has not been submitted using SafeAssign previously. This makes it not able to detect any cases of plagiarism in such texts.

SafeAssign cannot check against sources behind proprietary authentication mechanisms. These are sources that are not available publicly. This makes the detection of matching results difficult.

The use of a proprietary algorithm to weigh potential matches in SafeAssign can mean that instructors may consider matches below the SafeAssign confidence threshold that the instructor can perceive as a false negative.

SafeAssign finds the best matches from any online source or its database, not just any specific source.

SafeAssign can fail to check matches from an instructor’s expected source and, therefore, can return a different report from what the instructor expects.

NOTE: The fact that SafeAssign cannot be wrong should not be confused with having a false positive. To get the difference, we hereby explain the issue of false-positive below;

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Can SafeAssign Give a False Positive?

Yes, SafeAssign can sometimes give a false positive, but it should not be a cause for alarm if you did not plagiarize. The system can return false positives because it hardly differentiates cited and uncited work.

False positives include not flagging plagiarized work and flagging work that is quality and appropriate as plagiarized.

Yes. Just like any other program or algorithm, SafeAssign is prone to giving false positives and false negatives.

What this means is that SafeAssign can indicate that your paper has plagiarism while, in actuality, it does not have.

This is what is referred to as a false positive. It also means that SafeAssign can indicate the absence of plagiarism while in reality, there is. This is called a false negative.

Blackboard updates and tips reveal that false negatives and positives result from the inherent limitation SafeAssign has to public data for comparison.

This means that SafeAssign cannot check works that have not been previously submitted through it. Also, it cannot check primary sources that have not yet been released to the public.

How to Read SafeAssign Scores and Interpret it Report

A SafeAssign score is a score that represents the probability that the submitted paper contains matches existing in other sources. Let us first understand what a SafeAssign score is.

What is a SafeAssign score?

A SafeAssign score is a mark that indicates the probability of a paper that was submitted by a writer containing texts that match existing sources in the SafeAssign database.

This score is only a warning indicator and does not mean a writer plagiarized. This is because SafeAssign may list well-cited and paraphrased work as plagiarized work.

Therefore, this makes it crucial for instructors and concerned writers to review papers submitted to determine whether the matches are properly attributed.

Reviewing the papers helps come up with a more appropriate decision on plagiarism. In fact, reviewing a paper allows you to use other SafeAssign alternatives to check for plagiarism before submitting your paper .

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What is a SafeAssign Originality Report

A SafeAssign Originality Report is a report that is produced when a student submits a paper, it is processed by SafeAssign to show the level of original content and plagiarized one.

The report is provided to both the student and the instructor.

This report details the paper’s plagiarism percentage in terms of the text within the paper that matches the sources from the database and those from the paper.

Since SafeAssign shows all text blocks that match, it is imperative for both students and instructors to carefully go through the report to determine if the block of text has been credited correctly.

How to Interpret Different SafeAssign Plagiarism Scores

To understand what is a good safe-assign score, one needs to know how to read a SafeAssign score and interpret it well.

You will have to know which score is good, which is bad, and which is acceptable.

The originality report provides the percentage of the content in your paper that matches other works.

In order to know this, you need to understand the three threshold levels of the plagiarism scanner. Blackboard’s SafeAssign scores can be low, medium, or high.

1. Low SafeAssign Plagiarism Score

These are scores below 15 per cent. These papers contain some quotes and very few common phrases or texts that can be identified in other documents.

Scores below 15% : Such scores indicate that your paper contains a few common phrases, some quotes, or some texts that match other works. Papers with such scores do not require further analysis.

2. Medium SafeAssign Plagiarism Level

Scores between 15% and 40% : Such scores indicate that your paper contains extensive material that has been paraphrased or quoted. This may indicate plagiarism.

This is depending on the similarities detected. Let’s explore each of them.

These are scores between 15 percent and 40 percent. Plagiarism is present in these texts because they contain much-quoted material and extensive paraphrased material.

While some universities may accept this level, it requires further interpretation by the instructors.

Papers with scores between 15 and 40% show significant matching content that could be copied work or necessary external content.

Therefore, such content attracts the attention of your school or the professor. This is because these papers must be reviewed to determine if the matching text is referenced properly.

3. High SafeAssign Plagiarism Score

Scores above 40% : In such papers, there is an extremely high probability that the material has been copied from other works. There is extreme usage of paraphrased or quoted text.

These are scores that are over 40%. These represent a high probability that the paper you submitted work copied from a source in the SafeAssign database or available online.

The Unacceptable SafeAssign Plagiarism is the one that lies beyond 40%. It is unacceptable because it shows that a paper contains extensive and excessive content from the matching content. This is the content that you either paraphrased quote. These kinds of papers need to be reviewed for plagiarism.

How to check your SafeAssign Originality Report

You can access the processed SafeAsign report on the grade assessment page. You can access this page from the Grade Center:

• At the GradeCentre, locate the assignment you enabled SafeAssign.
• Select the attempt on the cell’s menu. On the grading assignment page, in the grading bar, a SafeAssign section appears. When the report is ready for view a percentage appears in the grading sidebar. 
• One can then proceed to view the originality report by expanding the SafeAssign link and selecting View Originality Report.

What is a Good Percentage for SafeAssign?

A good SafeAssign percentage is the one that is below 15. This means that there are few cases of matching text in your submitted work. Such a score is regarded as a good similarity score because it lies within the low plagiarism levels of 0 and 15, showing your work is original.

At this level, the original content of your writing is above 75% of your paper, which indicates a huge chunk of your work.

The remaining percentage is attributed to sources and references that are necessary for giving evidence to back your arguments.

SafeAssign considers well quoted and paraphrased work as matching text and it is, therefore, the responsibility of the writers and the instructors to review the work to solve such cases.

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What is a Bad SafeAssign Score?

A bad Safe assign score is any similarity score of 40 percent and above. This level is regarded as bad because it indicates that the submitted work has a greater percentage of it copied from online sources of already in SafeAssign’s database. It also shows that your original work is low and cannot be explained by references.

The worst similarity level beyond 40% is the one that matches with files or content already in the database.

That level shows a high probability that you copied a lot of content from somewhere, either online or past papers. You can read our guide on how to outsmart SafeAssign and learn ways to avoid such high plagiarism levels.

This work includes too much directly quoted text and excess paraphrased work. Therefore, the instructors for the course should review the paper and the report to check for plagiarism.

What is the Acceptable Percentage for SafeAssign?

Ideally, there is no single globally acceptable SafeAssign percentage because each university has its own plagiarism policies. However, the widely accepted score is 15% and below. The percentage varies from an institution to another, and there is no universally specified level.

The score range is widely accepted because papers with such plagiarism levels do not require any further analysis because there is no presence of plagiarism.

It should also be noted that the accepted SafeAssign score lies within the Low plagiarism level according to the university’s plagiarism policies.

What Does it mean by SafeAssign Percentage?

Every scanned paper has a score for its report. This brings two questions to mind; What does a SafeAssign score of 100 mean? What does that of 0 mean?

A score of 0% indicates that your paper’s content is your own, while 100% means that the paper is extremely plagiarized.

SafeAssign percentage presents the extent of similarity probability between the texts on the database and texts on the submitted work.

This means that they have the same meaning. For example, a score of 70 per cent means that there is a 70 per cent probability of similarity between the submitted and the work on the SafeAssign database.

This also means there is a 30 per cent probability that the submitted and the database work is similar by chance. This is because the existing source content is in the submitted paper, whether appropriately attributed or not.

What a 100% Match on SafeAssign Score Means

A 100 per cent match in a text or passage means that the text matches a source on the database 100 per cent. There is a high probability that the writer copied and pasted the work directly.

There is no problem when the well-cited statements match is 100 per cent. Titles also may have a 100 per cent match because other contents on the database may have the same title. This is also not a problem.

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Based on our tests on the papers we uploaded and the information from the site’s website, we can conclude that SafeAssign is an accurate plagiarism scanner.

The software produces a good and reliable originality report that shows the score based on the similarity of the uploaded work with the files in its database and online sources.

To effectively understand the report, you have to know how to read and interpret the SafeAssign scores so as to know what level of plagiarism the report shows. This way, you will get the best out of the scanner by Blackboard.

This makes SafeAssign an effective tool to detect and prevent plagiarism in educational institutions, especially colleges and universities or any other institution of higher learning.

Watch a further guide on how to read the scores

Jessica Kasen is experienced in academic writing and academic assistance. She is well versed in academia and has a master’s degree in education. Kasen consults with us in helping students improve their grades. She also oversights the quality of work done by our writers.

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Assignments and SafeAssign

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Get Started with SafeAssign

Instructors can use the SafeAssign service to check submitted assignments for originality. SafeAssign compares your submitted assignments against a set of academic papers to identify areas of overlap between the submitted assignment and existing works.

The SafeAssign process

SafeAssign is based on a unique text matching algorithm capable of detecting exact and inexact matching between a paper and source material.

Assignments are compared against several different databases containing millions of articles dating from the 1990s to the present. After the comparison, a report is generated that provides detailed information about the matches found.

Your instructor is using SafeAssign if you see a SafeAssign statement and a list of supported file types on the submission page.

More on how to submit work with SafeAssign

Safeguard your work

You can safeguard your own work by submitting copies of your papers to the Global Reference Database. Papers from other institutions are checked against your paper. This protects the originality of your work across institutions. The Global Reference Database is a separate database from your institution's database. When you submit your papers to the database voluntarily, you agree not to delete papers in the future. You are free to select the option to check your papers without submitting them to the Global Reference Database. Blackboard doesn't claim ownership of submitted papers.

SafeAssign originality reports

After a paper is processed, a report is generated detailing the percentage of text in the submitted paper that matches existing sources. The report also shows the suspected sources for each section that returns a match. When the paper is a continuation of a previously submitted work, your instructor can delete matching sources from the report and process it again.

The Originality Report does not state whether a phrase that matches a source is properly referenced. Your instructor must read the report and determine if you used proper citations.

Your instructor decides if you can see the report.

Learn more about the Originality Report

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