Using the SafeAssign Plagiarism Prevention Tool

Transcription

1 Using the SafeAssign Plagiarism Prevention Tool Contents 1. Introduction 2. About SafeAssign 3. Creating a SafeAssignment 4. Add SafeAssignment Fields 5. How Students Submit a SafeAssignment 6. Upload Safe Assignment Fields 7. Viewing papers and reports submitted using SafeAssignment a. Through the Control Panel b. Through the Gradebook 8. Uploading papers without using the SafeAssignment tool (Direct Submit) 9. Submit Papers through Direct Submit 10. Viewing Direct Submit Reports 11. Interpreting SafeAssign Reports 12. Matching Scores Introduction The Innovative Learning Center is very pleased to introduce SafeAssign, a plagiarism prevention service incorporated into the mytulane Learning System environment. The purpose of this document is to provide a short overview of how instructors create SafeAssignments or manually submit papers to the service (known as Direct Submit), how students upload documents using the SafeAssignment tool and how both parties interpret the reports generated by the service. Last Modified: 3/28/2008 Page 1 of 9

2 About SafeAssign SafeAssign is a service developed to help educators prevent plagiarism by detecting improperly cited content in student papers. In addition to being 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. Papers submitted using the SafeAssign service will be checked against the following databases: Internet - comprehensive index of documents available for public access on the Internet via Microsoft Windows Live search engine 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. There are two methods used for uploading papers to the SafeAssign service: creating a SafeAssignment and using Direct Submit. Creating a SafeAssignment SafeAssignments appear in courses as a new content item and can be added to any course content area. SafeAssignments function like existing Assignments (in which students upload their assignments to the course environment and a gradebook item is automatically generated) with an added layer of plagiarism detection check after papers are submitted. To create a SafeAssignment: 1. Go to the Course Content area where you would like to add the SafeAssignment (such as Course Documents) within the Control Panel a. click Edit View in the upper right hand corner of the screen if you re viewing the content area from outside the Control Panel 2. Select SafeAssign from the drop-down menu on the right side 3. Click Go Last Modified: 3/28/2008 Page 2 of 9

3 Add SafeAssignment Fields The Add SafeAssignment page includes the following fields: Field Title Points Possible Text Available Availability Dates Drafts Students Viewable Urgent Checking Optional Announcement -Create -Subject -Message Description Enter a title for the SafeAssignment. IMPORTANT NOTE- SafeAssignments, Assignments and Digital Dropbox items and submitted papers cannot have special characters such as the # sign in the title. Special characters will cause a database error and the paper will not be accessible. Enter the points possible for the SafeAssignment. This value will be shared with the Gradebook Item created for the Safe Assignment Enter instructions for completing the SafeAssignment. Select whether or not the SafeAssignment should be visible to Students. Use these controls to set the date range when Students can interact with the SafeAssignment. It is possible to set only a Start date or only an End date. Allows Students to validate their paper without submitting it to the institutional database. Useful as an instructive tool to help Students learn how to make attribution in papers properly. Determines whether or not Students can see the report generated when their papers are submitted. Sets papers to a high priority in the queue. Select Yes to create an Announcement about the SafeAssignment. Enter a subject for the Announcement. Enter a message for the Announcement How Students Submit a SafeAssignment Students should follow these steps to submit to a SafeAssignment: 1. From a content area within a course, select the SafeAssignment that has been posted and click View/Complete. 2. The Upload SafeAssignment page will appear. 3. Complete the page using the table below as a guide and click Submit. Last Modified: 3/28/2008 Page 3 of 9

4 Upload Safe Assignment Fields The Add SafeAssignment page includes the following fields. Field Name Instructions Comments File to Attach Global Reference Database Description Displays the title of the SafeAssignment. IMPORTANT NOTE: Again, this title may not include special characters such as the # sign. Displays the instructions for the SafeAssignment. Enter any comments for the Instructor in this field. Click Browse to locate a file to upload as a SafeAssignment. You have the option to volunteer your paper to the Global Database that will allow other papers from other institutions to be checked against yours to protect the originality of your work across institutions. Last Modified: 3/28/2008 Page 4 of 9

5 Viewing papers and reports submitted using SafeAssignment Once you have created a SafeAssignment and made it available to students, they can submit papers to complete the assignment (see above). Instructors can view the submitted papers in two ways: Through the Control Panel To view papers that students have submitted and the associated SafeAssign Originality Reports following these steps: 1. Go to the Control Panel for the Course, 2. Choose SafeAssign 3. You are now in your SafeAssignment Management view and you should see all the SafeAssignments listed that you have created. 4. Click View for the SafeAssignment you are interested in. 5. You now see a list of all student enrolled in the course. If they have submitted a paper - you will see the remaining fields populated with the following: Field Text File Matching SA Report Description Click the icon to see an online, formatted version of the paper text. Click the icon to download the actual file the student submitted Percentage of the paper that matched with source documents SafeAssign Originality Report - click the icon to view the interactive report detailing the results of the matching process. Submitted The date and time the student submitted the paper Clear Attempt Clicking this button will remove the submission, not only from the SafeAssignment, but also from the Institutional Database, as well as the Global Reference Database if the student had opted in when submitting. Last Modified: 3/28/2008 Page 5 of 9

6 Through the Gradebook To view papers that students have submitted and the associated SafeAssign Originality Reports through the Gradebook, use following these steps: 1. Go to the Control Panel for the Course. 2. Choose "Gradebook" 3. You are now in your Gradebook view and you should see all the gradable course content in your course along the top. 4. Find the SafeAssignment you are interested in - you will see a "!" in the field for every student that has submitted a paper to this SafeAssignment. 5. Click the "!" by a particular student to see the following: Text File Matching Click the icon to see an online, formatted version of the paper text. Click the icon to download the actual file the student submitted. Note: you can use this feature to add comments to the paper and re-upload from this page as well. Percentage of the paper that matched with source documents SafeAssign Originality Report - click the icon to view the interactive report SA Report detailing the results of the matching process. Submitted The date and time the student submitted the paper Grade Comments Enter the grade based on the possible points you allotted when you set up the SafeAssignment Add comments to the student here. You can also upload a file with your comments that the student can download and review on their end. Last Modified: 3/28/2008 Page 6 of 9

7 Uploading papers without using the SafeAssignment tool (Direct Submit) Instructors who do not wish to create a SafeAssignment have another option for using the service. Direct Submit generates SafeAssign reports on papers submitted outside of a SafeAssignment. Direct Submit allows Instructors to submit papers one at a time or several at once by including them in a.zip file. PLEASE NOTE:.ZIP packages should contain no more than 100 papers and submitting more than 300 papers in a session is not recommended. Additionally, papers with over 5000 sentences or that are more than 10 MB in size cannot be submitted. Submit Papers through Direct Submit Follow these steps to submit papers through Direct Submit. 1. From the Control Panel, click SafeAssign under Course Tools. 2. Click the Direct Submit tab. 3. A list of folders and papers will appear. This list includes papers already uploaded through Direct Submit. It is not recommended that files be deleted from Direct Submit, as this will remove them from the institutional database of existing materials. 4. Navigate to a folder where the paper or papers will be uploaded. 5. Click Submit Papers. 6. Select Upload File and browse for the file. Individual papers as well as papers that are grouped in a.zip package are accepted. Alternatively, select Copy/Paste Document and add the document text in the field. 7. Select the upload options: Submit as Draft: A SafeAssign report will be generated however the paper will not be added to the institutional database and will not be used to check other papers. Skip Plagiarism Checking: Adds the papers to the institutional database without checking for content copied from other sources. This is useful if an Instructor wants to upload papers from an earlier course to ensure that current students are not reusing work. Viewing Direct Submit Reports To Access Your Direct Submit management console, go to SafeAssign in the Control Panel of your course, then select the Direct Submit tab. Once you are in your Direct Submit management console, you should see a list of every paper you directly submitted. Click on the "SA Report" icon to launch the Originality Report for each. Last Modified: 3/28/2008 Page 7 of 9

8 Interpreting SafeAssign Reports At the top of the SafeAssign Originality Report, you ll see a subheading reading Paper Information. Directly below that is the Matching Index, which displays the percentage of the paper that matched other sources in the SafeAssign database. This is a good overall indicator of how much of a paper has been plagiarised, if at all. The second subheading is Suspected Sources, which displays a list of all the possible plagiarised sources as they pertain to a submitted paper. Click on a source to view the full corresponding source text. You can also click on the magnifying glass icon to highlight the Paper Text (see below) materials that matched that particular source. The third and last subsection is Paper Text, which displays the actual text of the submitted paper. The numbers next to highlighted passages correspond with the numbers of the Suspected Sources listed above. Click on a particular matching sentence in the Paper Text to view the Last Modified: 3/28/2008 Page 8 of 9

9 Source Comparison window. It shows the URL of the matching source document, the percentage of similarity and a direct comparison of each 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, a score of 90 percent means that there is a 90 percent probability that these two sentences 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). Overall score is an indicator of what percentage of the submitted paper matches existing sources. This score is a warning indicator only and papers should be reviewed to see if the matches are properly attributed. Scores below 15 percent: These papers typical 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. Last Modified: 3/28/2008 Page 9 of 9